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0 pointsOlivierLi14y ago0 comments

It is a real issue. A human and personal issue.

But it is not a systemic issue that represents the state of patent law.

If for example the child's Ipad was taken away because it was found out to be stolen property it would have an equally negative effect on her development. It would still not be a call to arms to change legislation.

Appeal to emotion is wrong in an adult debate.

I feel very bad for the mother and I wish her and her daughter the best. But if the story was about a guy who lost his fortune to copycats and thus can't feed his handicapped daughter, it would be equally as sad and equally as manipulative from my point of view.

That said I do believe the patent system needs a massive reform. I just appreciate honest and fair debates.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

rwallace14y ago· 2 in thread

> If for example the child's Ipad was taken away because it was found out to be stolen property it would have an equally negative effect on her development.

No, it would not. In that scenario, her parents would have a straightforward recourse - go and buy her another iPad. The closest parallel would be a law that forbade her from using any portable computing device regardless of where it came from. And yes, that would be a call to arms to change legislation. Appeal to emotion is wrong in a technical debate. It is not automatically wrong in a moral debate. Emotion is where our sense of morals - of which the law is supposed to be an implementation - comes from in the first place.

Maascamp14y ago

I disagree. In this scenario her parents do have a straightforward recourse - go and buy her the physical device sold by the patent owners (who's interface is apparently almost exactly the same, hence the patent infringement claim).

Now, you could argue that the patent isn't legit (it may not be) or that the dedicated device is prohibitively expensive (it may be), but both of those arguments are tangential to the point you were trying to refute.

mauricioc14y ago

From the article:

"Interestingly, we also carefully considered purchasing a communication device from PRC, and met with one of their representatives in November, nine weeks before a post on my Facebook wall introduced me to SfY (and seven weeks before it even existed in the iTunes store). We examined PRC’s devices and were disappointed to see that they weren’t a good fit for Maya. For us, this wasn’t an issue of an expensive device versus a “cheap” app. This was an issue of an ineffective device (for Maya) versus an app that she understood and embraced immediately. The only app, the only system, that she immediately adopted as her own way of communicating."

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