Patent granted on smartphones, everyone sued

Dollar money picsWhat would you do if the US patent office gave you the go-ahead on a far-reaching, non-specific application filed for a "mobile entertainment and communication device"? If your answer was that you would immediately draw up lawsuits against almost every major electronics manufacturer that even looked at a smartphone funny, you get a cookie. Yes folks, as impossible as it is to believe, the holders of the aforementioned patent have just sued Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, and Samsung... amongst others. So eager was this company to sue, in fact, that legal papers were filed a day before the patent was granted, and subsequently had to re-submitted.

The real sucker-punch here is that the patent simply combines a list of prior technologies jumbled into one product, a practice which has recently been ruled against by the Supreme Court.

Source- http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/25/patent-granted-on-smartphones-everyone-sued/