Blame a dysfunctional patent system for Apple vs. Samsung verdict

[Commentary] Whether you think that Apple is already too big for its britches or that Samsung deserved to get slammed for $1 billion by a Silicon Valley jury last week for infringing on the iPhone design, there's no doubt where the blame for this corporate firefight lies. The guilty party is the U.S. Patent Office. Actually, that's a bit unfair. The Patent and Trademark Office, as it's formally known, is understaffed and underfunded and not especially up to the task of judging increasingly complex patent applications. But the real problem is in the law, which utterly has failed to keep up with realities of technology and the marketplace.

"Apple v. Samsung is just a proxy for everything else that's wrong with the patent system right now," says Julie Samuels, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is campaigning to reform the system. The system's biggest problem is with software patents of the sort that underlie Apple's lawsuit against Samsung. Apple charged that Samsung infringed its patents on such software-based iPhone features as its tap-to-zoom function, while copying its devices' appearances to "confuse" shoppers.