kenster07

You are clearly avoiding the point about a patent for rounded corners and rectangles, and instead relying on ad hominem attacks without providing any supporting evidence.

Your post is a blow to innovation.

It seems like there's an Average Joe approving tech patents as well.

Samsung and Apple fandom aside, patenting a smartphone UI is patently absurd.

You're welcome. :)

"If you want to use jQuery for ajax, for instance, you lose all data bindings because vanilla javascript doesn't have the angular secret sauce!"

Data bindings should work as normal...if you're running into issues, try using $scope.$apply().

Angular uses jQuery, internally, so there are events you can hook into -- jQuery events.

And comparing the complexity of Angular and Backbone's internals is a bit misguided. They aren't meant to solve the same problems. Angular is complete Javascript application framework, and Backbone isn't. To use a non-foolproof analogy, if Angular were Rails, Backbone is Sinatra.

I would bet on contrived.

Using minimal javascript - some webapps nowadays have the exact opposite philosophy, and there are client-side js frameworks which facilitate that

Imagine if Pythagoras, Leibniz, and Newton were able to receive patents for their formulas. What if the quadratic formula was patented? In fact, why not?

Actually, I retract that argument. The average software patent nowadays does not even begin to approach the caliber of the aforementioned discoveries.

Is there not a sense of how absolutely broken the patent system is? Apple is playing a game that should not exist.

This discussion enters into the realm of "myth" so much more often than fact, because in these discussion, no one even tries to define what "average" is. Is a student studying Java in high school for the first time a programmer? By average, do you really mean the level of programming skill that you meet with the highest frequency or the actual mathematical average? How do you even measure "productivity" or "effectiveness?" I bet one can define parameters where the best programmers are only 3x as "productive" as the average programmer.

And I'm not saying such things can't be measured. I'm just saying that discussions about these myths are often devoid of such measurements.

In my view, discussions like this are much more about the human tendency to deify than an objective search for truth.

I don't believe the UI was copied, but that is not the relevant issue.

The LOOK OF AN ICON is not worthy of a patent. This sort of UI is not worthy of a patent. So, case dismissed, imo.

Of course the iPhone influenced Samsung's designs, as well as every other smartphone's design. The iPhone was in turn influenced by the designs of products which preceded it, for which Apple can take absolutely no credit. Such things should not be patentable.

I'm sure you also believe the UX in any given video game should be patentable, and video games need to license each other for the effect of tapping buttons here or yanking joysticks there in order to even build their own.

In China, financial fraud is punishable by death. It is at once crude and effective. The subprime bubble may never have ever occurred if the perpetrators knew they would literally be risking their lives.

I think what many fail to see is that the problem does not necessarily begin with the education system. It begins with the popular culture.

In those countries where doing well in school is almost certainly the difference between a decent life and a really bad life, there is a different mentality at play than in America, where even if one goes to a middle tier college, they can probably still lead a relatively comfortable life.

The second issue is that everyone in our society is encouraged to become a scholar and intellectual. While noble in its intent, society may very well be better off with a system like Germany, where many attend vocational schools and learn a craft that can have a real effect on the economy.

Apple is the new Microsoft. They license and charge fees for everything. They coerce their users to use their proprietary technologies whenever humanly possible. They try to bully their opponents rather than competing on merit.

I, for one, am happy with these trends.

It depends on the profession. In some professions, college is useful, in others, not so much.

What colleges should NOT be used for is a proxy to measure the intelligence or diligence of people (unless you're in one of those very few jobs where a college environment mimics your work environment).

It is dreadfully inefficient, significantly inaccurate, and in net, almost certainly reducing overall economic output.

It's about time.

Thanks for linking the disingenuous comparisons between the two phones.

Oh btw, Apple "rips off" just as much as anyone -- they just have better PR.

There is a sense of justice here. They had this coming ever since Apple blatantly doctored those photos to make it seem the Samsung product look more like the Apple product than it really was, as if implying that they thought tech market was so incompetent that such a strategy could work.

divide and conquer

The problem is fundamentally very simple. Would you ever lend your money to someone dishonest? You are lending your bank money every time you deposit in their vaults.

You raise an important point: the patent system absolutely must only award patents to significant, legitimate innovation.

A patent holder should -never- be able to ban an entity from using an idea in one of their products, if our society's priority to maximize quality of life ('if' because it is clearly not a priority for certain entities).

The patent system needs to balance the need for an incentive to invent, with the goal of maximizing quality of life. The current state of the American patent system stagnates society on multiple levels:

1) Patents, in too many cases, are a prohibitive barrier to entry for entrepreneurs. We have a system in which entrepreneurs know that if an adequately wealthy corporation were to knowingly file frivolous patent lawsuit, the cost, time, and energy to defend such a lawsuit could threaten the life of a fledgling business. Such a system can only have a chilling effect on entrepreneurship and economic growth. Trying to improve the world should -not- feel like walking on a minefield, and until that is fixed, our economy is not receiving the full benefit of its entrepreneurs.

2) Another inventor may be able to use a patented idea as a component for a broader, more useful (patentable) idea. A patent holder should not be able to prevent the development of innovations based upon their own.

3) In many cases, the inventor is not the best producer of his own invention. Society, as a whole, is best off when the best inventions can be produced by the most capable producers, and a patent holder should never be able to prevent this optimal economic arrangement.

American society generally values creativity far more than productivity, as reflected not only in its patent system, but in its popular culture, heroes of industry, etc. But in terms the health and sustainability of society, and economic output, productivity is at least as important. If Americans don't collectively acknowledge this, broader economic, and ultimately geopolitical, consequences will continue.

As a minimal solution to reverse these trends, I would suggest that patent holders be stripped of the ability to prevent others from being able to use their ideas in a product, but should be able to retain the ability to charge reasonable royalties. Thus, our society may be able to approach a healthier balance between its need for innovation and production.

In practical terms, those observers would have to live in the controller, or there would be coupling between the model and views.

m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/27/samsung-apple-smartphone-sales-profit?cat=technology&type=article

Apple is implicitly admitting Samsung is a huge threat to them.

Apple has intelligent people making these decisions. So they know in their heart of hearts that the patents they hold are overly broad to the point of bogusness. They know that the majority of the tech market is also intelligent enough to come to this same realization. They have an awareness that lawsuits exercising these quasi-bogus patents will have a negative impact on Apple's public image. Therefore, the only logical reason for going through with the lawsuits is because they have concluded that the alternative -- letting Samsung + Google have their way in the mobile market -- would be far more damaging to Apple.

Apple's interests aside, is this good for society at large? Doubtful.