I think I’m officially going to boycott Apple. This HTC lawsuit (as a proxy of course against Google’s Android OS) is clearly an attempt to clear the marketplace of any competition. Rather than innovating and competing they are stooping to bullying because when you get right down to it, as much as Jobs is a genius, he’s also and asshole and and asshole worth 5.4 billion and leading a company with 30billion in cash is an asshole with way too much power.

Yes the root cause of this is that the patent system is broken. Patents are given for anything and everything and the only winners are those with enough money to fight protracted legal battles. However, the system stays moderately functional because of the Mutual Assured Destruction of patent wars. Everyone holds tons of patents that their competition no doubt infringes upon so no one sues for the danger of counter-suit. Apple wants to break all that so that they can dominate their markets.

Who wins if Apple gets its way? Apple wins. No one else. Do developers in the mobile application space win with one platform stuck on one carrier? Do consumers win with no choice and no competition? Do internet sites win with a stagnant mobile internet market? Do other smartphone manufacturers win with the fear of patent wars constantly hanging over them? The short term winners now seem to be Windows Mobile and Symbian, but its pretty clear that they are next in Apple’s scopes. Honestly nobody wins, and even Apple might lose out by effectively chilling the marketplace and pushing manufacturers and developers in different directions.

Obviously Apple is a business in a competitive marketplace and they will do anything to stay ahead, as a good business should. However as we saw in the fall of 2008, a business aggressively pushing its own dominance of the marketplace can easily take down the marketplace (AIG, Lehman Bros, etc) and we are dangerously close to that happening here.