It was always going to be controversial, whichever way it went, but Apple have 'won' the initial ruling in the 'Look and Feel' patent battle.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/apple- ... infringes/
An appeal is expected, and the only winners I see are the legal people.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

It saddened me when i read this. I can understand apple in a way, since they do look kinda similar. But as samsung said, sad days when you can patent rectangles with round edges.
I'd rather see them building upon each others research and so-called innovation instead of trying to undermine the opposing parties success. I kinda wonder how they're being highly technological companies and not understand the concept of ideas and innovation.

In fact i was kinda hoping that this case would start the debate about the necessity (or rather the obstacle) of patents in a lot of ways.

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

That is absolutely sickening. Patents on UI functionality? Are you kidding me? You can't patent functionality, that's rediculous. Game companies can't do that - imagine if ID had patented the idea of FPS? What if one company had patented the cover system we're so used to in many games? What if LMB = Shoot was patented by one company, or maybe space to jump, or whatever. We'd have a pretty boring game industry.

What if Microsoft had pattented the mouse and keyboard back in the day? Whoa whoa... draggable icons and resizable windows? Sorry buddy, that's our patent too. See you in court!

This kindof stupidity does nothing but murder innovation and pad the wallets of the legal reps. Worst of all? APPLE! 'Cause they don't have enough money right now, they need to sue for billions.

Pathetic.

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Complaining doesn't work, if you want to fix it, do something.

I don't know how old you are, but Microsoft was once the big numbero uno in computer-land. People complained for years about it, and were completely ignored.
Then came Linus with the Linux kernel. Instead of complaining, he and many people around the world jumped on it, and built Linux. That hit MS very hard, and there wasn't anything they could do about it. You cannot buy Linux, and sue-ing doesn't work either. They tried FUD, it failed.
Today, MS is struggling with its platform, following Apple.

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My project: Messing about in FreeRCT, dev blog, and IRC #freerct at oftc.net

Sounds exactly like what total bisquit said in one of his mailboxes some time ago. Although i agree, there's pretty big problems with the patent wankery and there's not much the average joe can do about it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson ... remix.html

This talk is pretty much on-topic and he nails the main points. Keep in mind that it isn't very elaborate within it's ten minutes, but i mostly agree with his statements.

I think as long as patents and copyright work the way they do, there's not much that can prevent all those lawsuits.

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

And I tend to agree with him on the subject. It's a sad state of affairs when this sortof thing is allowed to happen.



Like I said in my first post - what if MS had laid down some patents when they could've? Maybe patent point and click? drag-n-drop? We'd be navigating MacOS and Linux with foot pedals. But they didn't do that.

There's limits to what you can patent, but verdicts like these (made, by the way, by a jury who was according to the article "Not technically minded") set a disturbing precedent that paves the way for more frivolous lawsuits.

If Apple can get away with this, what's next?

_________________
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

It's not really the jury's fault. How did the patents get approved in the first place?

Then again, Apple is just following in the footsteps of other major tech corporations.

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2003/08/dell ... pport.html

http://www.theonion.com/articles/micros ... eroes,599/

Dun dun dun...

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Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve

This is my biggest concern. Apple aren't going to be happy to leave it at this. They'll be looking for the next target to extort 'licensing' fees from in the same way that Microsoft are taxing smaller Android vendors with undisclosed filesystem patents.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
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Apple already have dibs on that... See the case of Apple Computers vs Digital Research Inc.

DRI's GEM Desktop environment created in 1984 was arguably the forerunner of windows. But it was alleged to be copying the look and feel of the user interface of the Apple Lisa, from 1983.

I was given an old box that ran Gem in the mid-90s. It was pretty poor by the time I got my hands on it, but you could easily see the roots of Windows there.

The whole GUI wars saga has been muddied by time, I've read a couple of conflicting accounts in the past few days. Some say Apple paid for the rights to the Xerox system, others say it was blatantly stolen.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
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Judging by some of the clarifications that are coming from the jury (http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/2 ... ng-verdict), I'd say this verdict is going to be thrown out.

It's already been put on hold till December. Plenty of time for both sides to get the next round of wrangling worked out.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10