The $120 Smartphone Patent Tax: Patent Royalties Cost More Than The Actual Hardware In Your Phone
Found on Techdirt on Friday, 30 May 2014
Basically, more than half the cost of making a smartphone these days is in paying off patent holders.
And, of course, many of these fees are going to pure trolls, who have contributed nothing to making actual smartphones. The paper highlights the explosion of troll lawsuits in the past few years.
Rather than going towards innovation and better, more affordable products for the pubic, money is going to lawyers and patent trolls who have contributed nothing to society. It's a massive dead weight loss to the economy.
So next time you pick up your phone, remember than half of the money you paid for it goes to patent trolls mostly. Then let's talk again about whether patents are a good thing.