The sanctity of patents was reaffirmed as was the notion that "yes, you DID do that" to inventors, both corporate and individual, when a jury awarded Apple (APPL, NASDAQ) $1.05 billion in their patent infringement case against Samsung for illegally using Apple's iPhone and iPad technologies.
While Samsung had claimed a right to steal technology, so long as they "improved" it, a jury found such claims grossly violated the fundamental principle of patents protecting inventors' research and development efforts for a period of time to allow the recuperation of costs of new technology development.
The principle behind patents and this jury's decision are a clear vindication of the principle that individuals, whether people or companies, are, indeed, responsible for their own success and deserve to be rewarded for such efforts.
No, said the jury, such accomplishments cannot used without compensation by others because others may have improved upon such technology. To do so would fail to protect the efforts required to bring the basic technology into existence so that it could be improved.
This verdict is a clear repudiation of the bizarre notion that individuals do not achieve by their own efforts, because they can only achieve through the efforts of others ("you didn't do that"), as enunciated in a recent campaign speech by President Obama in Roanoke, Virginia. When one party does build upon the achievement of another party, it is required to compensate that other party. When a party is innovative and creates a new product through its own efforts, it is due a just and fair compensation for its efforts. This is a fundamental principle of our free market system and is protected by our Constitution's enumerated powers.
Obama's Roanoke statement reveals his fundamentally flawed belief in a theory strongly advocated by his father that successful nations only achieve on the backs of poor nations through colonialist adventurism that extracts resources from poor nations. Obama's flawed thinking shows he believes "rich nations" (successful nations) should not retain their standing as leading nations because, in his view, they owe their success to their plundered of poor nations. These gross distortions of reality drive both Obama's views and actions in running up massive new debt and adding tens of millions of Americans to the public dole in an effort to permanently bring the United States to its fiscal and economic knees so that the United States is no longer capable of maintaining its position as the globe's leading economic and military power.
We now know what Obama meant by "fundamental change" when he campaigned in 2008. It is a change few imagined.
A stunning indictment of American media is the reality that they continue to excuse and support this President, doing whatever they can to aid and abet his re-election, despite the destruction he has brought to the United States.
Someone recently noted the similarity between Obama's pose today and that which the Fascist Mussolini famously struck in the 1930s, his jaw jutted upward with a narcissistic smirk adorning his face. Both leaders pledged to fundamentally change their nation. Both leaders succeeded, though not in ways that their admirers could have imagined or desired.
Some believe the same fate will befall Obama as that which awaited Mussolini should peaceful rejection of the Obama blight by way of the election process be undermined.
Let's pray that a clear-thinking public will peacefully and massively correct the enormous mistake made four years ago this November. No matter how successful violence might be in punishing both the perpetrators and fellow-travelers of today's Leftist challenge to our nation's existence, violence will ultimately be seen as vindication of Obama's flawed worldview. We cannot allow that to happen.
There has never been a time in our nation's history when the differences between candidates for President have been as stark and important as they are in the coming election. Will we support the view that we need to reaffirm traditional standards of achievement, work ethic, temperance, honor, unification, charity, civility and individual responsibility? Or will we endorse the notion of a "new normal" of malaise, redistributed wealth, intemperance, dishonor, division, public greed, incivility and government dependence?
The choice is clear.
This election will be the most important in this nation's history since the revolution that led to the birth of this nation as a constitutional republic upholding the principle of limited national government to protect our greater individual liberty. Let's not squander our opportunity to put this nation back on the right track to individual responsibility in an atmosphere of limited government, responsible and sustainable fiscal policy supported by the blessings of a free market economy.
The Apple jury has reaffirmed a key principle of our great constitutional republic -- the protection of risk-reward initiative through the constitutionally-guaranteed protection of patents. This is an underlying principle of our work ethic -- that achievement is due a just compensation.
This affirmation of achievement is a massive rejection of the politics of division and envy peddled by those who attempt to denigrate achievers with rabble-rousing claims that "you didn't earn that"!
Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.
A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.
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