Steve Jobs, hes no Edison

[Jakensama]

Furthermore, that is not an apple vs google issue, the

Hmmm deleted my post - I meant to saw the lawsuits are between samsung and apple, not google and apple. And the allegations are over physical design and packaging and not os. Hell they aren't even against googles main line - the motorolla fones.

It's not for nothing that I took two years of german in secondary school. Well...actually now that I think about it...it really was for nothing. But at least it wasn't Latin.

Hey, I took Latin in secondary school. 5 years of it and all I remember is 'tu es foedus leno' - you are a smelly pimp.

Then again after 5 years here my german is pretty much limited to obscene phrases about female anatomy..

Good to be the English speaking overlords.

[Vanraw]

Can we all at least agree that IP law is a huge cluster fuck, that will do nothing in the end except hurt the consumer, and make IP lawyers rich??

My son has several friends in the final years of law school at Iowa, and every single one with the exception of 1 guy (going to be a Public Defender) is gong into Intellectual Property law.

IP was developed to protect individual idea's, and now the individual is just screwed.

We now have IP based companies that are using the Mafia protection model. You have an idea, go to them and they will protect you buy counter suing anyone who attacks you. Their arsenal is 10's of thousands of IP patents and copy rights that they grab buy buying defuct companies rights. The fear of counter suits stops companies from attacking you. Oh and by the way, if you don't pay them for the "Protection" they will sue you and take your IP.

"How you going to stop them"

"I'm going to make them an offer they cant refuse"........

[Grieve]

There are certainly problems, yes. But what's the solution? Get rid of patents altogether? Let anyone steal anything they want?

The worst problem is the patent trolls - the companies that exist onto to buy and hold onto patents without actually making anything themselves. Then when someone inadvertently infringes their patents, they sue. Both Apple and Google have been plagues by such companies.

It's a different story when you are actually a company making things based on the patents, and someone else copies you. I agree that at first glance some of the patents Apple is suing over seem trivial, but that's more due to how difficult it is to create a patent that sufficiently covers what you've done with current patent law. Also now it's become an arms race. All the Android makers (and especially Google) are buying up other people's patents purely to use as a weapon. Yes, Apple have done it too, b/c that's how an arms race works.

Also Apple isn't doing it for financial gain. Jobs makes that very clear - he just wants them to stop copying what the iPhone did. Do what Microsoft did, do what Palm did - come up with your own way to do things.

[Slamz]

I don't know that patent law is bad; it's just that companies like Apple abuse it.

I recall reading that one element of patent law (at least in America) is that you can't patent anything that's obvious. The ability to select something on a screen by pointing at it is obvious. You should not be able to patent that. The idea that you could then zoom in on an image by putting two fingers on the screen and moving your fingers apart (enlarging the image by defining the corners) is also obvious. You should not be able to patent that.

Basically, if you locked 10 people in a room and gave them the scenario and 8 of them came up with the same solution, then we can probably say that it's "obvious" and can't be patented.

Maybe you can patent the underlying technology, but there again, it might be too obvious. "We used resistors and capacitors in our circuits and so did you! Patent infringement!!"


Patents were meant to protect unique, non-obvious, innovative ideas for a short period of time in order to allow the inventor to recoup the cost of the research.

What Apple is doing is clearly abusing the system. They are bad and they should feel bad.

[Grieve]

The idea that you could then zoom in on an image by putting two fingers on the screen and moving your fingers apart (enlarging the image by defining the corners) is also obvious. You should not be able to patent that.

Everything is obvious after someone does it for the first time. The little rings on top of cans to make opening them easier is obvious...but yet no-one did it for decades. If your criteria for getting a patent is that no-one else can say "well duh, I could have thought of that..." then no-one would ever get one.

What a great world that will be. People will just sit around waiting for someone else to innovate, and then since it can't be protected, they'll just steal it and sell it far cheaper than the originator, because they didn't need to spend millions of dollars in R&D developing it and perfecting it.

Oh wait...Google already lives in that world...

[Jakensama]

Indeed, they live in a world where the 2nd place phone os blatently rips off or buys other peoples ideas, package them nicely and then proclaim what original geniuses they are.

If the android is such a rip off of ios then why, especially after Jobs promised to squander his companies wealth to get revenge on google, have there been no significant legal actions against the ios - all of the actions are against hardware manufacturers.

The obvious answer is android is not a rip off of ios, and if apple actually had any legal ground to stand in on the issue they would be hammering them in court.

Also amusing is that ios5 has plenty of features they copied from Android. Of course, when Apple does something that someone else has been doing for a while - it is innovation. Why just look at that blackberry messenger that Google just invented, and the notifications and widgets they totally innovated out of thin air.

Incidentally, I'm getting a leaked galaxy Nexus phone from my google buddies next week.

[Grieve]

Indeed, they live in a world where the 2nd place phone os blatently rips off or buys other peoples ideas, package them nicely and then proclaim what original geniuses they are.

If you mean Siri, where have Apple been proclaiming they were original geniuses for inventing it? They have been very clear about the fact they bought the company - they didn't even change the name of it.

If the android is such a rip off of ios then why, especially after Jobs promised to squander his companies wealth to get revenge on google, have there been no significant legal actions against the ios - all of the actions are against hardware manufacturers.

It's difficult to sue someone who gives something away for free. Similar to George Lucas - create a Star Wars "tribute" and release it free, you're pretty much fine. Try to charge a fee for it, and the hounds of Lucas descend on you. Apple sue companies who create a product (phone or tablet) that rips off the iPhone or iPad, regardless of where the software came from.

Also Samsung went way beyond Android in their copying of the iPhone and iPad.

Incidentally, I'm getting a leaked galaxy Nexus phone from my google buddies next week.

I'm getting an iPad 3 with the 500 bucks I'll be winning from you.

[Slamz]

Everything is obvious after someone does it for the first time. The little rings on top of cans to make opening them easier is obvious...but yet no-one did it for decades. If your criteria for getting a patent is that no-one else can say "well duh, I could have thought of that..." then no-one would ever get one.

Good examples but you've definitely got the wrong idea.

Pop-tops were not obvious. Even now that we have them I don't think you can say they were obvious. The obvious way of opening something is to cut it open somehow. The concept of "cutting a thing open" cannot be patented. The concept of a tab that peels off a bit of metal creating an opening is a great example of a patentable idea. The can opener that you can attach to the top of a can and turn with a key would have been another good patent. Hacking at it with a sharp instrument or hitting it with a rock would not be patentable ideas.

Similarly, while holding papers together is something you would like to do, the paperclip would have been a patentable design. Put 10 people in 10 rooms and have them each come up with a way to hold some papers together and I doubt any of them would have walked out of there with something shaped like a paperclip -- it was not obvious. (Holding the papers together with your fingers would not be a patentable idea, although Apple would disagree.)

Making a malleable object bigger by stretching it is not remotely innovative or patentable. Give a child a rubber band and ask how he can make it bigger and he'll stretch it. Apple is now going to sue all 5 year olds everywhere for stealing Steve Jobs' innovative thinking. All you're doing with gestures on touchscreens is what you would obviously do with any malleable object. Make it smaller by squeezing it. Make it bigger by stretching it. I heard Apple was looking for the inventor of checkers to sue them for stealing touch and drag technology.

[Grieve]

Alright, I surrender. You guys keep pulling me back into the argument, but let's face it...I'm not going to change anyone's mind, and you're not going to change mine.

I'll content myself with my Apple stock and my bet against Jake.

[Jakensama]

I cant wait to use 500 bucks of spray paint to deface the apple store in hamburg.