Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
That design should not be patentable.
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What?!
Why is design less worthy of protection than anything else? It's protection of someone's work and ideas, exactly the same as any other field.
That betrays a total ignorance of the visual world and of the notion of any value of design. The patent laws cover things like widescreen TVs because of obviousness.
The term 'design' covers both function and appearance. These can be viewed together and separately. In the case of Apple vs Samsung, it's both. The physical design was copied, and the interface appearance and function. I'm going to use the dots to indicate which screen is current as an example.
Are you really sure you want a world where one company can spend a fortune making something beautiful or functional, and then a competitor who isn't prepared to invest that money comes along and steals all that work?
You would end up with a situation where everything was mediocre because no-one designed anything, because it made no money because it had no value.