The detractors are just people who do not believe in patents. Their whole idea of progress is to wait for Apple, or someone, to come up with a great idea so that the rest of the industry can copy it and catch up, thus pressuring the innovator to come up with another great idea to continue the cycle. People have as much as admitted this by saying things like Apple should fight the competition by innovating, not by defending patents. That is just another way of saying that the industry is out of ideas to steel and it is time for Apple to supply them with more.
The detractors are just people who do not believe in patents. Their whole idea of progress is to wait for Apple, or someone, to come up with a great idea so that the rest of the industry can copy it and catch up, thus pressuring the innovator to come up with another great idea to continue the cycle. People have as much as admitted this by saying things like Apple should fight the competition by innovating, not by defending patents. That is just another way of saying that the industry is out of ideas to steel and it is time for Apple to supply them with more.
Agreed. Let HTC (and Google) pay for their own innovation. In my view, if HTC can be shown to have violated Apple patents, they deserve to be bitch slapped.
The detractors are just people who do not believe in patents. Their whole idea of progress is to wait for Apple, or someone, to come up with a great idea so that the rest of the industry can copy it and catch up, thus pressuring the innovator to come up with another great idea to continue the cycle. People have as much as admitted this by saying things like Apple should fight the competition by innovating, not by defending patents. That is just another way of saying that the industry is out of ideas to steel and it is time for Apple to supply them with more.
Do not believe in patents or do not believe in software patents?
I'm glad I live in a place where software patents are not allowed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
Which ones? Because it appears to me that every HTC smartphone prior to the iPhone were variants on the keypad and small screen format.
HTC had flip smartphones, qwerty slide smartphones, t9 slide smartphones, smartphones without keyboard.
G1 is almost like an HTC Hermes with a bigger screen.
I don't know how mobile market was in USA, but the iPhone form factor, iPhone screen size and iPhone screen resolution had been seen in a number of smartphones out there.
I don't know how mobile market was in USA, but the iPhone form factor, iPhone screen size and iPhone screen resolution had been seen in a number of smartphones out there.
Were these capacitive touch screen devices loaded with a finger friendly OS?
That's my point. If Apple's playing big, it's feasible that a response will be a big play by Google (like buying and using Palm) or maybe even somebody else getting into the fray (say Microsoft or Motorola or some consortium of manufacturers). Like I said, if you were google why would you not buy Palm to use as cannon fodder to dent Apple? Of course Apple has patents that could dent Palm, but would Google really care how much damage is done to Palm? Or would they care about how much Palm's IP could do to Apple?
It's a fantastical scenario. But once you start getting into patent shooting war, anything's possible....and companies like Palm, with lots of IP, suddenly become very, very valuable.
It's an excessive waste of resources with a huge amount of risk, even for Google. If Google buys Palm, the potential damage is Google's, not Palm's. Apple could successfully defend against or workaround any Palm patents.
LG Prada was the first phone with a finger only capacitive screen.
None of the patents are for anything involving the "first finger friendly touchscreen phone" or "the first slate form factor phone" or "the first phone with a 3.5" screen". You have to look for prior art on the patents themselves.
There's a reason the phones of today look like and try to recreate the experience of an iPhone and not an LG Prada or a Windows Mobile phone or a Symbian phone of yesteryear or a QWERTY candybar. Apple's reason for living is to make fun-to-use, elegant-to-use stuff. That's the iPhone's primary reason for existence (because phones sucked at it at the time), and Apple knew they'd make a lot of money on it because they understood people would pay a premium for it. With the release of the iPhone, everyone is trying to follow the formula laid out by the iPhone. Even the smiling keyboard makers themselves developed an iPhone clone.
There's a reason why there aren't any LG Prada "killers" or clones or copies. All it was was a Symbian phone with a finger UI design to mimic the Symbian-style phone interface. The only similarity was the idea of finger-based touchscreen phone. They are not even close to the same implementation. They are as far apart as finger-based touchscreen phones can be.
Now, I'm ambivalent on Apple's path here, but I knew something like this could come, as the whole intent of Google/HTC's action was to mimic the iPhone experience as much as possible. Maybe there were gentlemanly agreements between Schmidt and Jobs, and the Nexus One + Multi-Touch broke it. Who knows.
None of the patents are for anything involving the "first finger friendly touchscreen phone" or "the first slate form factor phone" or "the first phone with a 3.5" screen". You have to look for prior art on the patents themselves.
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
Apple generates an enormous amount of revenue selling gadgets, and the company has never previously shown an interest in developing a real licensing program. So it's unlikely that the purpose of this lawsuit is to create a new, ongoing royalty stream from a hot product. It's almost definitely based on a genuine desire to shut a competitor out of the market, or to at least throw enough obstacles in HTC's path so that Apple keeps its edge in the marketplace.
Well and accurately said from : Patent Litigation Weekly: Digging Beneath the Surface of Apple v. HTC
Apple behaving like $M. The Android OS is expected to overtake the iPhone as early as next year and clearly Apple is going to do something about that by whatever means necessary - be they fair or foul.
If software patents don't exist where you live, what's to stop you making as many copies of Windows as you want?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwydion
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
My apologies if I interpolated too much.
I'm not a subscriber that Apple feels so aggrieved that they are suing. Well not insofar as the sole reason. Like I said before, you don't sue if you don't feel aggrieved and cheated and whathaveyou. No, I don't think there were any phones like the iPhone prior to its introduction. Any kind of likeness was superficial. The HTC Touch (Elf, Love, whatever) was your typical Windows Mobile Pro phone. To me, they glommed a "finger friendly" launcher on top to take advantage of iPhone hysteria. At it's heart, it was still a Windows Mobile phone. The LG Prada was capacitive touchscreen yes, but its Flash-based UI was mostly a virtual rendition of Symbian S40/S60, not a not UI. Most everything else was a variation of thumb-board be it candybar or slider with WinMob, PalmOS, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.
It's pretty unique. Apple also new iPhone clones were coming. But I think part of what set them off is the Apple-Google relationship and the Jobs-Schmidt relationship. There was a lot of trust and mutual respect. Once Google started Android and ChromeOS, it was over. Android and ChromeOS are both strategic directions in competition with Apple, and Schmidt was sitting on Apple's board all that time.
Moreover, Android started life looking like this:
Yes. Google is tasteless. That's what I think Jobs thinks. They couldn't even be original. Android started out life as a Treo/Blackberry QWERTY candybar copy. They were working on this type of design and form factor in 2007. By Fall of 2008, lo and behind, they completely changed direction and made an iPhone clone as best as they could. By Spring of 2009, the slate form factor Magic came out. By January 2010, Google/HTC achieved the closest iPhone clone yet, the Nexus One.
Quote:
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
I don't think you will be happy at all. Think deeper than that. There is really no difference between a software based patent and a hardware one. They are both a form of invention. What hurts is the definition of invention is too broad, be it hardware or software. What we're really asking the patent office to do is determine what is a real invention and what is not; that is, an actual innovative, life changing invention. That's not an easy task and is rife with vagaries. They are in a no-win situation really.
If software patents don't exist where you live, what's to stop you making as many copies of Windows as you want?
Property, licensing and patents are different things. What "no patents" would do is make everything cheap and crappy. Race to the bottom. The small guy would never have a chance.
Some impressions by some prominent Mac developers:
Shane Crawford:
I am not particularly proud of Apple right now.
I will switch, immediately, to any mobile phone produced by a company that announces and follows this policy:
They make a searchable catalogue of all their own patents, including information on where they believe the patented concepts are pertinent.
They declare the techniques in the patents free for the taking, royalty free, in exchange for a line in the product acknowledgements.
They declare the previous agreement void as soon as any legal action regarding alleged patent infringement is brought against the company.
They truly only use the patents to protect themselves against other patent suits.
I was under the impression that Apple was more interested in continuing to think up new interfaces, new approaches and new implementations that might better serve us in the age of multi-touch and ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. That the value in Apple?s products is a cohesive and speedy experience that is easy to navigate, learn and use, and not the various isolated nuts and bolts or building blocks that mindlessly ported in isolation mean nothing but carefully assembled in aggregate mean everything. That the best way for Apple to counter, say, Chinese iPhone ripoffs was to move full speed ahead.
You?re established in a country with really fucked up patent laws, and I can understand that. You get hounded by a company that abuses those laws, and I can sympathize with defending yourself, even with unsavory attitude. But what I can?t forgive is using these same laws as a completely unwarranted bludgeon against someone who isn?t the worst offender while you sit on a 40 billion dollar war chest.
You can?t write your own laws, but being an asshole by abusing them is clearly your choice. I guess I wish you?d have thought differently.
Will Shipley:
An Open Letter to Steve Jobs Concerning the HTC Lawsuits.
Enforcing patents is wrong. You?ve famously taken and built on ideas from your competitors, as have I, as we should, as great artists do. Why is what HTC has done worse? Whether an idea was patented doesn?t change the morality of copying it, it only changes the ability to sue.
But when you sue someone for doing something you do yourself, you become one of the bad guys. Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?
And the iPhone needs competition to stay awesome. HTC won?t hurt your sales much, anyway ? you know the iPhone?s success is because of the art in each of its million details, not because of a handful of tech patents. Who will want a pale imitation when they could have the original?
I always thought of you as a guy who?d say, ?Well, copy me if you can, because you?re copying what I did years ago, and what I?m working on now is EVEN cooler!? I like it when competitors copy me because it means they aren?t about to leapfrog me: they?ll always be playing catch-up.
If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it's going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn't a good long-term play: it's the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love.
Stealing ideas and stealing work are two different things. Steve said himself that geniuses stand on the shoulders of others. Apple proudly flew the pirate flag at their office, so now they are just being hypocritical... I hope this doesn't become standard practice...
Property, licensing and patents are different things. What "no patents" would do is make everything cheap and crappy. Race to the bottom. The small guy would never have a chance.
Stealing code, firmware, chemical formulas, etc. is wrong. Stealing ideas is different. That shouldn't be illegal in my opinion. It is not a race to the bottom. There is a huge difference between a product created by an innovative company and one that just blindly copies everything. The quality and experience is definitely not the same. The companies who implement those ideas the best and stay ahead of everyone else will come out ahead. This is actually the first time I know of that Apple has sued another company in a cast-the-first-stone situation. I hope they return to the defensive stance they have always taken in the past on these matters.
You can patent a method of implementing that idea, as Apple has done and as Apple has alleged that HTC has copied.
Obviously Apple's implementation was sufficiently different to prior art, that the patents were granted.
So what is the difference between an idea and an implementation? In my opinion, an implementation is something that physically exists. As far as I can tell the patent system only deals in ideas. I think there is something wrong with what the patent system says they do and what they actually do. I have no idea how you would patent an implementation. Submit the entire source code for your implementation?
Stealing code, firmware, chemical formulas, etc. is wrong. Stealing ideas is different. That shouldn't be illegal in my opinion. It is not a race to the bottom. There is a huge difference between a product created by an innovative company and one that just blindly copies everything. The quality and experience is definitely not the same. The companies who implement those ideas the best and stay ahead of everyone else will come out ahead. This is actually the first time I know of that Apple has sued another company in a cast-the-first-stone situation. I hope they return to the defensive stance they have always taken in the past on these matters.
There is a vague line between an idea and a formula or a recipe or an implementation. Very vague and nonobvious. Thought cases:
1. RIM, the smiling thumb board company, believes they own the keyboard layout of the Blackberry keyboard and the fact that it has a curve to it. They also have a patent on a keyboard that has a "V" shape as well as the smile shape. They sued Handspring for it and Handspring had to settle and license. If you haven't noticed, RIM is the only company sells a thumb board with a curve to it. The Treos used to have them since Palm hand a license through Handspring, but now with the Treo retired, no other phone has the feature.
Is the curved thumb board an invention or an idea? Is it patentable?
If you say yes, you have no choice but to grant Apple its unlock screen implementation patent even though it's a GUI design, software, not hardware. Really what's the difference? The design is unique, not obvious, and there are a gazillion other ways to unlock a screen.
If you say no, well I'll try to think of another thought case to see where your boundary is.
2. Xerox successfully sued Palm in the unistroke versus Graffiti case. Xerox says they invented single stroke block character recognition for entering character input on a touchscreen. Palm implemented unistroke style block character recognition with Graffiti 1. They lost the case and implemented multiple stroke block character recognition with Graffiti 2. Some say Palm jumped the shark after this as people had to switch and it wasn't comfortable.
Is it patentable? The idea is character recognition. It was implementable in multiple ways. It just so happens unistroke was just a little bit easier.
If you say yes, you have to allow for Apple's rubber banding scroll and fixed axis scroll patents. Both are just implementations for scrolling.
If you say no, I'll think up another test case to see where your boundary is.
3. In the above, which is the idea and which is the implementation? Thumb board is the idea. Thumb board layout is also an idea. So is a layout (key location and board geometry) of a keyboard patentable since it is just an idea? Extend it to software. Would different touchscreen keyboards be patentable? Is Apple's iPhone word correction patentable? What about the popup keys? They are just ideas too. They also happen to be implementations.
So who was Jobs working for at the time of that interview?
The original quote is attributed to Picasso but there is no evidence of that, it was likely derived from an earlier quote by T. S. Elliott:-
?One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. Eliot, T.S., ?Philip Massinger,? The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com, 2000.
Quote:
Originally Posted by esummers
Stealing ideas and stealing work are two different things. Steve said himself that geniuses stand on the shoulders of others. Apple proudly flew the pirate flag at their office, so now they are just being hypocritical... I hope this doesn't become standard practice...
Comments
If you want to sell more phones, start producing them for different carriers.
There selling every phone they can produce right now! Why would they want to constrain supply further while loosing negotiating leverage needlessly?
Your right, Apple amassed $40B in the bank by being stupid
The detractors are just people who do not believe in patents. Their whole idea of progress is to wait for Apple, or someone, to come up with a great idea so that the rest of the industry can copy it and catch up, thus pressuring the innovator to come up with another great idea to continue the cycle. People have as much as admitted this by saying things like Apple should fight the competition by innovating, not by defending patents. That is just another way of saying that the industry is out of ideas to steel and it is time for Apple to supply them with more.
Agreed. Let HTC (and Google) pay for their own innovation. In my view, if HTC can be shown to have violated Apple patents, they deserve to be bitch slapped.
The detractors are just people who do not believe in patents. Their whole idea of progress is to wait for Apple, or someone, to come up with a great idea so that the rest of the industry can copy it and catch up, thus pressuring the innovator to come up with another great idea to continue the cycle. People have as much as admitted this by saying things like Apple should fight the competition by innovating, not by defending patents. That is just another way of saying that the industry is out of ideas to steel and it is time for Apple to supply them with more.
Do not believe in patents or do not believe in software patents?
I'm glad I live in a place where software patents are not allowed.
Which ones? Because it appears to me that every HTC smartphone prior to the iPhone were variants on the keypad and small screen format.
HTC had flip smartphones, qwerty slide smartphones, t9 slide smartphones, smartphones without keyboard.
G1 is almost like an HTC Hermes with a bigger screen.
I don't know how mobile market was in USA, but the iPhone form factor, iPhone screen size and iPhone screen resolution had been seen in a number of smartphones out there.
I don't know how mobile market was in USA, but the iPhone form factor, iPhone screen size and iPhone screen resolution had been seen in a number of smartphones out there.
Were these capacitive touch screen devices loaded with a finger friendly OS?
Were these capacitive touch screen devices loaded with a finger friendly OS?
LG Prada was the first phone with a finger only capacitive screen.
That's my point. If Apple's playing big, it's feasible that a response will be a big play by Google (like buying and using Palm) or maybe even somebody else getting into the fray (say Microsoft or Motorola or some consortium of manufacturers). Like I said, if you were google why would you not buy Palm to use as cannon fodder to dent Apple? Of course Apple has patents that could dent Palm, but would Google really care how much damage is done to Palm? Or would they care about how much Palm's IP could do to Apple?
It's a fantastical scenario. But once you start getting into patent shooting war, anything's possible....and companies like Palm, with lots of IP, suddenly become very, very valuable.
It's an excessive waste of resources with a huge amount of risk, even for Google. If Google buys Palm, the potential damage is Google's, not Palm's. Apple could successfully defend against or workaround any Palm patents.
LG Prada was the first phone with a finger only capacitive screen.
None of the patents are for anything involving the "first finger friendly touchscreen phone" or "the first slate form factor phone" or "the first phone with a 3.5" screen". You have to look for prior art on the patents themselves.
There's a reason the phones of today look like and try to recreate the experience of an iPhone and not an LG Prada or a Windows Mobile phone or a Symbian phone of yesteryear or a QWERTY candybar. Apple's reason for living is to make fun-to-use, elegant-to-use stuff. That's the iPhone's primary reason for existence (because phones sucked at it at the time), and Apple knew they'd make a lot of money on it because they understood people would pay a premium for it. With the release of the iPhone, everyone is trying to follow the formula laid out by the iPhone. Even the smiling keyboard makers themselves developed an iPhone clone.
There's a reason why there aren't any LG Prada "killers" or clones or copies. All it was was a Symbian phone with a finger UI design to mimic the Symbian-style phone interface. The only similarity was the idea of finger-based touchscreen phone. They are not even close to the same implementation. They are as far apart as finger-based touchscreen phones can be.
Now, I'm ambivalent on Apple's path here, but I knew something like this could come, as the whole intent of Google/HTC's action was to mimic the iPhone experience as much as possible. Maybe there were gentlemanly agreements between Schmidt and Jobs, and the Nexus One + Multi-Touch broke it. Who knows.
None of the patents are for anything involving the "first finger friendly touchscreen phone" or "the first slate form factor phone" or "the first phone with a 3.5" screen". You have to look for prior art on the patents themselves.
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
Well and accurately said from : Patent Litigation Weekly: Digging Beneath the Surface of Apple v. HTC
Apple behaving like $M. The Android OS is expected to overtake the iPhone as early as next year and clearly Apple is going to do something about that by whatever means necessary - be they fair or foul.
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
I haven't said anything about the patents, I was responding a claim that all HTC smartphones before the iPhone were QWERTY phones and, after that, someone has asked about capacitive screens.
My apologies if I interpolated too much.
I'm not a subscriber that Apple feels so aggrieved that they are suing. Well not insofar as the sole reason. Like I said before, you don't sue if you don't feel aggrieved and cheated and whathaveyou. No, I don't think there were any phones like the iPhone prior to its introduction. Any kind of likeness was superficial. The HTC Touch (Elf, Love, whatever) was your typical Windows Mobile Pro phone. To me, they glommed a "finger friendly" launcher on top to take advantage of iPhone hysteria. At it's heart, it was still a Windows Mobile phone. The LG Prada was capacitive touchscreen yes, but its Flash-based UI was mostly a virtual rendition of Symbian S40/S60, not a not UI. Most everything else was a variation of thumb-board be it candybar or slider with WinMob, PalmOS, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.
It's pretty unique. Apple also new iPhone clones were coming. But I think part of what set them off is the Apple-Google relationship and the Jobs-Schmidt relationship. There was a lot of trust and mutual respect. Once Google started Android and ChromeOS, it was over. Android and ChromeOS are both strategic directions in competition with Apple, and Schmidt was sitting on Apple's board all that time.
Moreover, Android started life looking like this:
Yes. Google is tasteless. That's what I think Jobs thinks. They couldn't even be original. Android started out life as a Treo/Blackberry QWERTY candybar copy. They were working on this type of design and form factor in 2007. By Fall of 2008, lo and behind, they completely changed direction and made an iPhone clone as best as they could. By Spring of 2009, the slate form factor Magic came out. By January 2010, Google/HTC achieved the closest iPhone clone yet, the Nexus One.
And I repeat again, I'm glad for living in a place where software patents doesn't exist.
I don't think you will be happy at all. Think deeper than that. There is really no difference between a software based patent and a hardware one. They are both a form of invention. What hurts is the definition of invention is too broad, be it hardware or software. What we're really asking the patent office to do is determine what is a real invention and what is not; that is, an actual innovative, life changing invention. That's not an easy task and is rife with vagaries. They are in a no-win situation really.
If software patents don't exist where you live, what's to stop you making as many copies of Windows as you want?
Property, licensing and patents are different things. What "no patents" would do is make everything cheap and crappy. Race to the bottom. The small guy would never have a chance.
Shane Crawford:
I am not particularly proud of Apple right now.
I will switch, immediately, to any mobile phone produced by a company that announces and follows this policy:
They make a searchable catalogue of all their own patents, including information on where they believe the patented concepts are pertinent.
They declare the techniques in the patents free for the taking, royalty free, in exchange for a line in the product acknowledgements.
They declare the previous agreement void as soon as any legal action regarding alleged patent infringement is brought against the company.
They truly only use the patents to protect themselves against other patent suits.
I was under the impression that Apple was more interested in continuing to think up new interfaces, new approaches and new implementations that might better serve us in the age of multi-touch and ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. That the value in Apple?s products is a cohesive and speedy experience that is easy to navigate, learn and use, and not the various isolated nuts and bolts or building blocks that mindlessly ported in isolation mean nothing but carefully assembled in aggregate mean everything. That the best way for Apple to counter, say, Chinese iPhone ripoffs was to move full speed ahead.
You?re established in a country with really fucked up patent laws, and I can understand that. You get hounded by a company that abuses those laws, and I can sympathize with defending yourself, even with unsavory attitude. But what I can?t forgive is using these same laws as a completely unwarranted bludgeon against someone who isn?t the worst offender while you sit on a 40 billion dollar war chest.
You can?t write your own laws, but being an asshole by abusing them is clearly your choice. I guess I wish you?d have thought differently.
Will Shipley:
An Open Letter to Steve Jobs Concerning the HTC Lawsuits.
Enforcing patents is wrong. You?ve famously taken and built on ideas from your competitors, as have I, as we should, as great artists do. Why is what HTC has done worse? Whether an idea was patented doesn?t change the morality of copying it, it only changes the ability to sue.
But when you sue someone for doing something you do yourself, you become one of the bad guys. Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?
And the iPhone needs competition to stay awesome. HTC won?t hurt your sales much, anyway ? you know the iPhone?s success is because of the art in each of its million details, not because of a handful of tech patents. Who will want a pale imitation when they could have the original?
I always thought of you as a guy who?d say, ?Well, copy me if you can, because you?re copying what I did years ago, and what I?m working on now is EVEN cooler!? I like it when competitors copy me because it means they aren?t about to leapfrog me: they?ll always be playing catch-up.
If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it's going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn't a good long-term play: it's the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
Property, licensing and patents are different things. What "no patents" would do is make everything cheap and crappy. Race to the bottom. The small guy would never have a chance.
Stealing code, firmware, chemical formulas, etc. is wrong. Stealing ideas is different. That shouldn't be illegal in my opinion. It is not a race to the bottom. There is a huge difference between a product created by an innovative company and one that just blindly copies everything. The quality and experience is definitely not the same. The companies who implement those ideas the best and stay ahead of everyone else will come out ahead. This is actually the first time I know of that Apple has sued another company in a cast-the-first-stone situation. I hope they return to the defensive stance they have always taken in the past on these matters.
You can't patent an idea.
You can patent a method of implementing that idea, as Apple has done and as Apple has alleged that HTC has copied.
Obviously Apple's implementation was sufficiently different to prior art, that the patents were granted.
So what is the difference between an idea and an implementation? In my opinion, an implementation is something that physically exists. As far as I can tell the patent system only deals in ideas. I think there is something wrong with what the patent system says they do and what they actually do. I have no idea how you would patent an implementation. Submit the entire source code for your implementation?
Stealing code, firmware, chemical formulas, etc. is wrong. Stealing ideas is different. That shouldn't be illegal in my opinion. It is not a race to the bottom. There is a huge difference between a product created by an innovative company and one that just blindly copies everything. The quality and experience is definitely not the same. The companies who implement those ideas the best and stay ahead of everyone else will come out ahead. This is actually the first time I know of that Apple has sued another company in a cast-the-first-stone situation. I hope they return to the defensive stance they have always taken in the past on these matters.
There is a vague line between an idea and a formula or a recipe or an implementation. Very vague and nonobvious. Thought cases:
1. RIM, the smiling thumb board company, believes they own the keyboard layout of the Blackberry keyboard and the fact that it has a curve to it. They also have a patent on a keyboard that has a "V" shape as well as the smile shape. They sued Handspring for it and Handspring had to settle and license. If you haven't noticed, RIM is the only company sells a thumb board with a curve to it. The Treos used to have them since Palm hand a license through Handspring, but now with the Treo retired, no other phone has the feature.
Is the curved thumb board an invention or an idea? Is it patentable?
If you say yes, you have no choice but to grant Apple its unlock screen implementation patent even though it's a GUI design, software, not hardware. Really what's the difference? The design is unique, not obvious, and there are a gazillion other ways to unlock a screen.
If you say no, well I'll try to think of another thought case to see where your boundary is.
2. Xerox successfully sued Palm in the unistroke versus Graffiti case. Xerox says they invented single stroke block character recognition for entering character input on a touchscreen. Palm implemented unistroke style block character recognition with Graffiti 1. They lost the case and implemented multiple stroke block character recognition with Graffiti 2. Some say Palm jumped the shark after this as people had to switch and it wasn't comfortable.
Is it patentable? The idea is character recognition. It was implementable in multiple ways. It just so happens unistroke was just a little bit easier.
If you say yes, you have to allow for Apple's rubber banding scroll and fixed axis scroll patents. Both are just implementations for scrolling.
If you say no, I'll think up another test case to see where your boundary is.
3. In the above, which is the idea and which is the implementation? Thumb board is the idea. Thumb board layout is also an idea. So is a layout (key location and board geometry) of a keyboard patentable since it is just an idea? Extend it to software. Would different touchscreen keyboards be patentable? Is Apple's iPhone word correction patentable? What about the popup keys? They are just ideas too. They also happen to be implementations.
If software patents don't exist where you live, what's to stop you making as many copies of Windows as you want?
I live in the EU and I don't see the problem you are saying
The original quote is attributed to Picasso but there is no evidence of that, it was likely derived from an earlier quote by T. S. Elliott:-
?One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. Eliot, T.S., ?Philip Massinger,? The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com, 2000.
Stealing ideas and stealing work are two different things. Steve said himself that geniuses stand on the shoulders of others. Apple proudly flew the pirate flag at their office, so now they are just being hypocritical... I hope this doesn't become standard practice...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU