Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbg0 | Hacker News Reader

> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products

Actually, I doubt it will, as very few people care about the rivalry between large corporations. Apple even started suing mom & pop cafes that had the apple logo or just the word "Apple" in their name, and even that didn't hurt their image much.

View on HN

Short term yes. Though I think we all remember Microsoft walking down the same path and basically paving the way for Apple to become 'the underdog' in the 90s and it sure hasn't helped their public image.

This is true in Silicon Valley's startup world.

A lot of people here dislike Microsoft.

It's hard to find a startup built on the .Net stack.

Microsoft has the BizSpark program that gives away software licenses for free to startups but that didn't make a difference.

I'm starting to see the same sentiment against Apple though not yet to a point that they will be abandoning development on the iOS platform.

Right. Ultimately Microsoft's perceived opposition to the evolving open internet hurt it's perception among developers very badly. Where in the early 90's "everyone" wanted to work for MS and develop windows, by the end of the decade everyone wanted to be working with web apps and JS and Linux. Fast forward to today, and they're just another software company with no particular technical leadership ability.

Right now, the Apple bandwagon is still really full, so it may be hard to tell: but I'm seeing more smart hackers jumping off than on these days. In 10 years, how likely is it that Apple will be just another dinosaur milking a legacy OS?

What does trademark protection (which they are legally required to do) have to do with patents?

If that's true, I don't think a lot of people know about it.

For your reading pleasure:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verkla... [süddeutsche.de -> in german]

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html [thelocal.de]

http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe... [geek.com]

Everything except the first link are the product of looking for English reports on the same issue, so I do not vouche for their quality.

The trademark arguably [arguably, not obviously] infringes on Apple's trademark, and one of the peculiarities of trademark law is that if you do not vigorously defend a trademark, it's scope and strength diminish.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com