APPLE became somewhat of a patent troll around 2010 when it filed its first anti-Android patent lawsuit, having threatened to do the same to Palm years beforehand (Tim Cook played a big role in these threats at the time). Microsoft and Apple are both bullies and they are not hiding it. They really hate Linux; they try to destroy it rather than adopt it like the rest of the industry, especially in Silicon Valley. With the exception of Microsoft, which habitually supports Apple's court cases against Android, almost every significant company is now supporting Samsung's defence against Apple [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Engadget wrote: "Samsung has also found a powerful group of backers in its fight against Apple in court. According to a document unearthed by Inside Sources, Google, Facebook, eBay, Dell, HP and other big tech corporations have submitted a "friend of the court" brief on July 1st, supporting Samsung's stance. The two companies have been embroiled in legal fisticuffs for years, ever since Apple first filed a lawsuit against Samsung for violating various intellectual properties, such as tap-to-zoom, sinle-finger scrolling and two-finger zooming, as well as edge-to-edge glass design, among other things."

"Supporting Apple these days is supporting an arrogant bully, hell-bent on destroying Linux."There is no "patent fight with Samsung" as some media puts it. It is Apple attacking Android by targeting a top Android entity other than Google (it is clear that Google has far greater an incentive to fight back). It is, by extension, an attack on Linux. Apple fans' site keep bragging about new Apple patents, perhaps not caring to realise that they now support the equivalent of a giant patent troll, the world's richest troll.

Google, by contrast, is trying to fix the patent system and to reduce litigation. As Mike Masnick put it a few days ago, "Google Revamps Patent Search To Actually Do What Patent Office Should Do" (that's Masnick's headline).

Masnick correctly recalls that this is not the first such effort from Google. To quote some background: "A few years ago, Google seemed to downgrade its patent search features, pulling away a separate "Google Patents" section and mixing it back into the main Google search. This seemed like a major step backwards, especially given how terrible the US Patent Office's own patent search engine was. Google has tried to do a few things like launching a "prior art finder" and teaming up with StackExchange to help crowdsource prior art."

Supporting Apple these days is supporting an arrogant bully, hell-bent on destroying Linux. Please don't buy anything from Apple as it only makes this aggressor stronger. ⬆