<story><title>Wil Shipley on Apple&apos;s Patent Enforcement</title><url>http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/open-letter-to-steve-jobs-concerning.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>itistoday</author><text>I fail to see how Apple stating their intent to be an asshole makes them any less of an asshole.&lt;p&gt;Patents are, in the words of @lapcat: anti-competition, anti-free market, anti-consumer. First to market is already a huge competitive advantage.&lt;p&gt;Patents are a huge part of the reason you&apos;re paying so much for health insurance right now. They play a large role in &lt;i&gt;stifling&lt;/i&gt; innovation. Imagine you have a great idea that hasn&apos;t been done before, but you suddenly discover parts of it have been patented. The patenter isn&apos;t doing &lt;i&gt;shit&lt;/i&gt; with the idea, yet they have a &lt;i&gt;20-year&lt;/i&gt; monopoly on it.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and they also happen to be a huge monolithic organization with thousands of employees worldwide that is patenting thousands of ideas every year, yet actually implementing only a small fraction of those ideas.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t think this happens? You don&apos;t know much about patents then. The patent system is one of the best examples of an idea backfiring on itself that I know of. It was supposed to protect the guy toiling in his garage on the next best thing (read: Apple in its infancy), but today it&apos;s doing the exact opposite while screwing consumers over to boot.</text></item><item><author>jimbokun</author><text>Jobs told the world he would do this at the 2007 MacWorld keynote introducing the iPhone:&lt;p&gt;&quot;We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-s...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>potatolicious</author><text>Honestly, I think software people have a largely skewed view of the patent system in general. I used to be in traditional engineering (mechanical/electrical to be precise), and the amount of R&amp;#38;D dollars that has to go into any major innovation is astronomical.&lt;p&gt;The amount of testing, regulatory costs, tooling costs, etc etc, makes bringing an innovative thing to market very, very expensive indeed. Most of these things are also trivially easy to reverse engineer - the patent is the only thing preventing a company&apos;s competitors from cloning the tech, avoiding all of the costs associated, and discouraging innovation overall.&lt;p&gt;The trick is software patents - software largely doesn&apos;t &lt;i&gt;cost&lt;/i&gt; a lot, not compared to big heavy machinery requiring onerous certification and government authorizations. 3 guys hacking for a month straight is peanuts compared to, say, the amount of money it would cost to bring a new fuel injection system to market, yet the software these guys produce can be equally valuable from a marketability perspective. This is where patents fall apart - the point of the patent system is to encourage R&amp;#38;D spending by allowing protection of its results, because being simply first to market is not a large enough advantage in many industries to be profitable. It is, however, true in software, so I&apos;m personally dubious of software patents in general.&lt;p&gt;Just some perspective - I dislike the &quot;patents are evil, always, every way!&quot; kneejerk reaction. It has a very valid role in a lot of industries that aren&apos;t well represented or understood by people on HN.</text></comment>
<story><title>Wil Shipley on Apple&apos;s Patent Enforcement</title><url>http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/open-letter-to-steve-jobs-concerning.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>itistoday</author><text>I fail to see how Apple stating their intent to be an asshole makes them any less of an asshole.&lt;p&gt;Patents are, in the words of @lapcat: anti-competition, anti-free market, anti-consumer. First to market is already a huge competitive advantage.&lt;p&gt;Patents are a huge part of the reason you&apos;re paying so much for health insurance right now. They play a large role in &lt;i&gt;stifling&lt;/i&gt; innovation. Imagine you have a great idea that hasn&apos;t been done before, but you suddenly discover parts of it have been patented. The patenter isn&apos;t doing &lt;i&gt;shit&lt;/i&gt; with the idea, yet they have a &lt;i&gt;20-year&lt;/i&gt; monopoly on it.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and they also happen to be a huge monolithic organization with thousands of employees worldwide that is patenting thousands of ideas every year, yet actually implementing only a small fraction of those ideas.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t think this happens? You don&apos;t know much about patents then. The patent system is one of the best examples of an idea backfiring on itself that I know of. It was supposed to protect the guy toiling in his garage on the next best thing (read: Apple in its infancy), but today it&apos;s doing the exact opposite while screwing consumers over to boot.</text></item><item><author>jimbokun</author><text>Jobs told the world he would do this at the 2007 MacWorld keynote introducing the iPhone:&lt;p&gt;&quot;We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-s...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryanhuff</author><text>Despite the encroachment of patents on the ridiculous (one-click, etc), I respect the value of having a patent system when it comes to real technology or design that deliver a new type of value to the consumer.  Its a noble attempt to reward innovators.  While weakness in the system has been top of mind recently with big player oppressing the little guy, or holding companies using patents to extort money from innovators, patents can also protect the little guy.  So, just because there has been some excess, we shouldn&apos;t see patents, as a whole, as a bad thing.  Instead, what we may need to reconsider are the bounds of what should be patentable, and possibly duration.&lt;p&gt;In regards to Apple, it may be that some of these patents in question are completely legitimate, and are consistent with the spirit of the idea of patents.  I would not view Apple in a negative light for protecting what others might have knocked-off.  Lets see how the case works out.  It may turn out that many of Apple&apos;s claims are invalidated through prior art, etc.  But if they do hold, I say good for Apple.  BTW, I carry an Android phone.</text></comment>