How PatentlyApple Harms Patents – Including Apple’s

The point made here is a very important one: those who are not trained routinely completely misunderstand what a patent is actually a) describing and b) actually claiming. It happens throughout the media on a daily basis, but is particularly bad when a website like PatentlyApple, who many assume know what they're talking about, get it so wrong.

Many people seem to believe that once a patent is applied for and/or granted, no one can patent anything using that invention ever again. But 99.9% of all patents are based on inventions already known, and those are not what is claimed. What is claimed is the inventive step above what the prior art had accomplished. If someone had a patent for 'a pen', a pen with a novel and inventive tip would be perfectly acceptable. The inventor may need to licence the use of the pen patent to commercialise their improvement, but there is sighing stopping them from getting the patent to an improved pen. I could probably go on for hours on the issue, but I won't unless asked. It's just so depressing seeing the media making such a dog's breakfast of an issue that's not inherently all that complex and leading to the devaluation of a system that works quite well.