Apple seems to have an uncanny knack of really annoying me sometimes. The latest story about their Patent lawsuit against HTC has got me a little upset. Its just another lame attempt at money grabbing and competition stifling (no matter what they say). I don't argue against someone having the right to making some money of their own invention, or someone being able to protect their work. But Apples love of patenting ideas is just ridiculous. You should patent the technology at the transistor level, patent the code, but not the idea. Isn't there a better way of doing that.... *** copy write *** (and I'm aware that there are plenty people around that do this rant better than me).
Also, I'm becoming increasingly interested in buying an iPad after a few months to see how things fair. It doesn't have flash, but its likely to be the only tablet with a healthy amount of comic distribution and game distribution for some time. Such things interest me.
This leads me to my conclusion of - Bugger.
As far as I know code is covered by copyright not patent. You patent solutions to problems that are innovative. The code serves as the "one embodiment of the design". Which is required to get a patent (i.e. you have to show one way in which the patent could be used).
ReplyDeleteIt's ironic that the patent system is meant to help stimulate ideas by allowing things to flow into the public domain after a short protected period. It's just that the system has got so turned around and weighted towards big business interests that it doesn't work.
The apple suit has me a little annoyed with them as well, but not because they are suing.
If you look at:
http://gizmodo.com/5485518/the-mobile-patent-mexican-standoff
You can see they are hardly alone in doing this, in fact there a bit late to the game. They only have 2 outgoing cases and the one with Nokia is a counter suit to one Nokia initiated (interestingly the number one Google hit for the word "suing" is a BBCarticle on that Nokia case).
Nokia seems to be the real bad guy, there suing 6 other companies at the moment.
What has me annoyed is that is basically a thinly disguised anti-android case and their suing HTC to make it harder for Google to fight back. Of course the fact that HTC make the nexus 1 doesn't hurt.
I'm pretty sure this isn't how it was meant to work when they started putting patent law into place.
Yikes, I hadn't seem that picture before. What a mess. I did however read an article that talked about how Apples targeting of HTC was coldly calculated. Apple can paint itself as the hard working all American company having its property copied by an upstart Taiwanese manufacturer.
ReplyDeleteEither way you look at it, its a pretty disturbing situation.
I have a number of software patents, well my employers have some with me as the inventor at least. Work I've done for my last two jobs has been patentable so the company obviously wants to get them to protect there business. It's awkward situation, I generally don't like software patents but its part of my job to make sure the company gets ones for my work where possible.
ReplyDelete