The Tim Cook memo: line by line

a) the society doesn't benefit b) then you do nothing with it c) then you don't commercialise it for gain d) if you don't protect it - you get crushed by everyone else who does

and so on and so on. Indeed, Jefferson stated

"Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility"

Discouraging commericalisation of unique ideas - discourages those who are capitalist and want to move society forward. If every had no protection of their ideas - then all good ideas would be copied and the incentive to produce new ideas would be reduced as a result - or rather everyone remains secret and tries to produce entire products by themselves - again argubly reducing innovation. As I stated in my first post

"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 argument with the cavemen is a primitive example. My response - Caveman B would most likely build it or kill Caveman A to build it. Which extrapolated to the protection of ideas in modern society may very well occur - competitor A and competitor B want to succeed more than each other and so on. If Caveman A is stronger than Caveman B - then he may very well ask for fruit to borrow his design - Caveman B gives him something of value to borrow his unique design - the other alternative.

Idea's should be able to be commercially protected. You suggest that by no one having a right to commercialise them that society would be better off - what is then the point of innovating and trying to essentially fulfil the capitalist dream of commercialising inventions to profitability if everyone is freely copying everyone else's ideas ? It results in no competitive advantages to some degree. The desire to be innovative and drive society forward is closely coupled with the profitability and commercialisation attached. That's not to say that all inventions require profitability - but most people seeking to protect their inventions are seeking to do so to ensure they maximize the potential of their idea's from a commercialisation standpoint. If anyone was free to copy anyone's truly awesome idea - that doesn't reward or provide additional incentive for people to innovate per my post below - what you get instead is the Samwer brothers who just outright cloned everything.

I don't follow the line of reasoning there.

There were prototypes at many (probably all) mobile vendors exploring the capabilities unlocked by that technology. Apple "merely" was boldest - but then they hadn't to consider how a new HCI impacts the brand, since they had no old mobile HCI that mattered.

Things might lag half a year or so due to this, but someone, somewhere would have kicked off the "touch revolution" in about the same time without Apple. Maybe even RIM or Nokia.

Funnily, Android/Google was in a similar position as Apple, in about the same time (new market to enter, knowing the old style mobile HCI and touch, having prototypes for both) - and they seemed to prefer the old style for now.

In a world without iPhone they probably would have waited for one of the big guys to introduce touch, and then followed quickly. Google wasn't as confident about pushing an unproven HCI onto users as Apple was.

Is it good for the industry in the short term? I'd say No. Is it the best thing that could have happened to the tech industry in the long term? Yes, I think so. Android and most devices started as a direct response to iOS. All the major players saw that iOS was disrupting the market and there was no time left to invent something on their own, so they simply built a clone. From a business point of view the right decision, Microsoft invented a new UI and new devices with Nokia, but it seems they failed, since they were late to the market and to succeed they would have needed a really disruptive idea themselves. Google had the team and skills to invent something that could disrupt iOS, but they decided to copy it instead and in the process wasted all the brain power of the team that probably has the best chance of finding the next paradigm. What a waste of talent to use all those great people for building a clone.

Patents are not intended to be a lottery rewarding insight. Patents protect development effort. One-click fails that test.

But in terms of prior art, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly backed BountyQuest in 2001 as a forum for researching prior art for patents. They couldn't monetize it, so it shut down in 2003 - but not before O'Reilly received what he calls a "killer piece of prior art" on the one-click patent, which he has on his bookshelf in case "Amazon loses its senses and sues someone". [http://openp2p.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2003/bountyquest_10...]

The point here is not that your example is wrong. Where you go wrong is assuming that a patent granted on software is anything like a useful mechanism to support innovation.