Quote:
Originally Posted by RockdaMan
Again, if a company feels that its IP and designs are being given away without any recompense to itself, it has a right to seek redress. And then the judge decides...I don't understand the complaints about going to a neutral third party to settle grievances.
|
What people are complaining about is Apple's stance that it owns its most basic hardware/UI choices, which makes everyone else have to use a workaround or go to court to implement whatever choices prove obvious and intuitive.
Apple is far from being the only company that beats everyone else to death with patents; Samsung does it as well as do countless other companies. But from a consumer's POV, wouldn't it be best if we could choose individual devices (including those made by Apple) based on personal needs and features alone? Imagine going back to the 60s and not being able to buy an old-fashioned phone with buttons instead of a rotary dial unless you got it from a single unchallenged company -- one which, without competition for that feature, could charge whatever it liked. Imagine being limited to answering machines with one-jack I/O because they were the only ones that worked with touch-button phones and no one else was allowed to combine the same button interface with multiple I/O configurations. From the POV of features, the customer would lose.
The problem with Apple is that they'll take out patents on what amount to design choices in attempt to limit the options of their competitors. The musical equivalent would be patenting note patterns using the C Major scale. If the patents were honored, virtually every musician who ever lived would be guilty of infringement.
I don't blame Apple so much as I do the concept of intellectual property.