http://www.pcworld.com/article/223436/kodak_wins_important_1_billion_victory_against_apple_rim.htmlSame old story with billions of dollars wastefully changing hands. The promise of technology patents as key innovation contributers is completely unproven, logically dubious and accepted by the masses as unquestionable truth. There's no question that incentives such as patents have some effect on those interested in the benefits. But patents are not here for the patent holders, which most people truly don't and/or won't understand
Patents are here for the express purpose of spurring innovation for the greater good of society 
Dito Copyrights
The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Let's look at that again. The purpose of patents and copyrights is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," and to secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right" to writing and discoveries. In other words, if it's not promoting the creation of more, it's not right under the Constitution. And these rights are held "for limited times by authors and inventors."
Ask yourself this question. If Kodak couldn't create a patent to go along with their business of photography in this instance, would they have built such technologies anyway? If Apple didn't have the capability of creating a patent to incentivize them to build the technology of showing lower quality previews of your photos to save storage space for the higher quality photos on your device, would Apple have built this technology otherwise??
If you're not sure about the answer to the last question, take a red pill. Apple has no patent for this, built it anyway
, and is facing a 1 BILLION dollar, legally enforceable invoice from Kodak for violating Kodak's patent
In truth, clearly Apple would have because Apple DID build this technology anyway - without some phantom patent incentive to "cause" them to build it. Also in truth, Kodak would have obviously built this technology anyway because they wanted to make money off of the feature.
Now ask yourself this question: "Exactly
how is society benefiting from this in any way??"
Breath deep....
It's not
Yet it remains because business keeps it there. The potential to earn a billion dollars for all the big players (Apple included) is
the reason we're all spoon fed the crap about innovation and the poor inventors who need protection. Even if Apple gets the business end of this one, they will still parrot the bullshit about patents because the patents Apple owns contributes to their company's paper value, and
that value is sacrosanct
