Thread: Da fuq, Apple

Originally Posted by a weakling spaz

You might think the same folks that like to grandstand the free market would embrace patent reform. Who needs a patent anyway? If we both make the same thing, and one is better/faster/cheaper, the market will decide who "wins" right?

Anyway, all the major tech companies are guilty of exploiting the patent system. This isn't something unique to Apple.

Well, in most cases the patent system is in place to protect those who do the actual innovation and create new things, cause R&D ain't cheap. The second person into a market can almost always produce something cheaper than what the first person did, because most of the R&D was already done and person 1 is still trying to recoup the money from their R&D investment. For instance, suppose I invented a new type of lamp (hypothetical, because this wouldn't really apply in the patent world, but it's a simple example). I would've had to spend X on R&D, and my choices are to either treat X as a loss (which is unfeasible for many companies because X is large) or to raise the final price of the lamp up a little bit by considering a portion of X to be part of my production cost. A lot of people would just say to eat the loss, you'll make it back up in the end if the product is good enough....the problem is that may never happen. Using regular profits to recoup the money spent on R&D is a slooooooow process. Now, if someone else came along a short time later and started selling the same type of lamp that I'd created at prices that undercut mine, made possible by their not having big R&D costs to recoup, that kinda discourages innovation because someone else is just gonna copy your designs and you're gonna lose every penny you put into R&D.

There does need to be some form of patent reform though, because acquiring patents where you had no investment previously is basically exploiting that system. Patents are basically designed to let an innovating company get their R&D expenditures back before other companies start selling the same product for less.

~Morningfrost

The real root of the problem is that the patent office is flooded with overly broad submissions and does not have the manpower to properly vet that all submissions are specific enough and that there is no prior art. They end up leaving it up to the courts where lawyers end up deciding these things.

An easy reform for software at least would be to make software subject to copyright instead of patent. Another reform would be to require that patent holders actually bring the technology to market or license it to someone who does within a reasonable time frame. That would help cut down patent trolls.

Sent from the land of bier and bretzels on my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by iLLusioN

That's great...except that it's been around for like 5 years already...longer if you just count the basic concepts of the technology(yes I know the article says that..some people won't even open it so figured I'd get it out of the way). Another reason why patents should just go the fuck away. The system no longer serves it's intended purpose. Apple is far from the only company doing this...some companies do nothing but patent troll...but they are one of the worst. One more reason I won't buy an Apple...

Well that's Apple doing what they do best: Steal ideas.