The Tim Cook memo: line by line

I´m personally quite conflicted in this case: Apple has a point that Samsung was copying them. Pure copying, not using elements of it and turning it into something new.

On the other side, the ways of protection with patents of tiny bits of it is silly and broken. They are trivial and regard the overall design and should not be allowed.

Famously the Mac itself is based upon the work of Xerox Parc. To the credit of Apple and Steve Jobs they put in a lot of work, made many concepts useable and re-developed the mouse to actually make a consumer product out of it.

For me the morale right or wrong is the following:

make it your own: While heavily using concepts existing prior, you´ll re-combine them into something way better than the thing you copy: That´s ok for me, it has creative value.

copy: You simply dumbly copy things line-by-line without even understanding the basic concepts of why something is great and throw it on the market at a lower prive: That´s wrong and ripping of the creative work of others.

Samsung to me falls quite clearly into the copy category. I doubt that they have a deep understanding of UX design and the subtleties what actually made the iPhone great and delighted the users.

All that matters to Apple is sales. Do they care what consumers say about them on the web? Silence the nonbelievers!

Consumers do not need to understand patent law to make purchase decisions. But most consumers know what lawsuits are, especially ones that make a mockery of the justice system.

It's possible many consumers really don't care if they're buying Apple or Samsung. If they did care, if they only wanted Apple products, then Apple wouldn't need to sue other manufacturers, would they?

"These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent."

Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would come into play and it wouldn't be patentable. Yet it is - and yet despite all of Samsungs insistences and millions (no doubt) spent on prior art research - nothing has been shown prior to the date of filing that anything existed. It's no different than Amazon's One-click.

It would be interesting - if you invented something, you spent ten-of-thousands on patents, you spent huge amounts of capital in developing a product - you launch it to much positive press and then someone simply copies everything you have done. You're a small business - what do you do now ? According to your article you sit back and say "oh thats totally ok because thats innovation and I'm happy that everyone has copied me and destroyed my advantage".

The problems with the patent industry are patents abused by companies who have absolutely no interest in developing them but rather trolling them to simply extract money from other companies. Hence the reason the law should be reformed to attach patentable rights to have a enforceable requirement to actually 'use' the patent - thus destroying the majority of trolls. If you dont actively use it as it is meant to be - you have nothing. The requirements and the search of prior art should be greater and longer - to ensure patents are truly innovative and this should not be the role of the courts (due to expense, time and so on within the legal system)

The entire basis of patents was essentially trying to protect the little guy, with an idea against the onslaught of bigger companies just copying them outright and giving them no chance. You state "gone are the days of Steve Wozniak" and indeed "gone would be the days of apple" long ago - because he just wanted everyone to have everything and thats not how you run any business.

I agree that patent law needs reform - but I totally disagree that your somewhat misconstrued article that we should simply destroy patents all together. It should destroy them if they are not being actively used - but a company trying to protect its innovations in not something that I'm against. If you had a startup and a patentable innovation - it would be ridiculous to assume that you would be willing to forgo millions/billions in revenue for some abstract concept of "a greater good". America is a capitalist society and therefore you are fighting that as a concept - not the patent industry. I know my post will get down-voted but it's a reality of business and running a business - you either file for protection or you don't and get copied.