Or maybe Apple just patented all of it. Assholes.
Extremely succinct. Apple's the only company possible that could get a patent for turning a page in a book.
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/apple-now-owns-the...
Extremely succinct. Apple's the only company possible that could get a patent for turning a page in a book.
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/apple-now-owns-the...
It's a design patent. It's for specifically how it looks not for the actual functionality. And they are basically just given out like candy to anyone that applies since they are only useful in situations where companies do an exact 1-1 copy. Otherwise it doesn't infringe.
So feel free to create your own iBook clone knowing you won't infringe on this.
Also, you're either completely wrong or completely misleading, and I can't tell which (maybe both) because of HN's history with completely misinterpreting patent law. They've gotten other software patents before (on things no more based on functionality as the above patent), and utilized them to sue opponents.
"Slide to Unlock" comes to mind.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/2/5676776/samsung-found-to-i...
Companies should be encouraged to innovate on a design and arrive at their own implementation. Otherwise you would see large companies simply duplicate en masse the works of smaller ones.
Utility patents like "slide to unlock" are obviously more about protecting an idea by patenting the most common implementation. But again in this case it was trivial to workaround since we've seen many unique phone unlock mechanisms come from the Android ecosystem.
That doesn't necessarily excuse it, but there's definitely more of a motivation than 'because we can' behind what these big companies do, especially considering that most of these patents never get used for anything inherently money-making and so are just cash tossed down the drain in filing fees and time spent.
Please show us just one example of this.
Because it's a myth that gets perpetuated that this is how patents work. You patent a specific implementation of a concept not the concept itself. If you implement a concept in a different way it won't infringe the patent.
How about the patents at issue in Alice v. CLS Bank? Or any of the “hundreds” of patents, according to Wikipedia, that have been found invalid by lower courts in decisions citing Alice.
Frankly, yes, regulations should exist to serve consumers not companies.
80,000 Apple employees.
~330,171,224 residents of the United States of America.
330,171,224
- 80,000
------------
330,091,224
I would.
And really, optimizing for the rights of the consumer helps everyone, including all Apple employees. And this helps the producer, too, because it allows them to ignore software patents as well.
Software patents weren't for the good of anyone but executives and legislators when legislators first forced them on everyone against the protests of software devs everywhere decades ago, they aren't suddenly for the good of the common man, now, either.
This article explains far more elegantly than I will as to why software patents don't make sense.
Apple didn't get their start by copying Xerox. They got their start by building and selling the Apple 1/2/3/Lisa. Xerox only came into the picture during the development of the Mac. And there is this myth that Xerox invented all of the GUI metaphors we know today. But actually about half came from Apple e.g drag & drop file manipulation, multiple file system views, drop down menus, clipboard.
Also only one person was fired from Apple and that was Scott Forstall. After whom quite a number of memorable iOS gestures were invented i.e. when the click button disappeared.
"got their start" was obviously intended to mean "in GUIs."
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-news-xer...
Every other history piece I've read said Xerox got a good chunk of Apple shares in exchange for them using their research. Perhaps they decided it isn't enough when they saw Apple was successful and sued for more money?
[1] https://androidcommunity.com/google-axed-android-multitouch-...