[kelnos]

Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking. Patents on standards tend to cause more standards to spring up, which overall increases both consumer confusion (wait, is this one compatible with my device?) and costs for manufacturers (either by requiring extra hardware to detect what it's plugged into, or extra SKUs that hurt economies of scale).

I'm certainly not an "all patents are bad" kind of person, but this one is definitely a bad patent that Apple filed for anti-competitive purposes that ends up hurting everyone but them.

[disgusting_guy]

I disagree - a simple solution exists, which means you cannot use the mic and a button at the same time. Apple invested time and money to solve this problem in a non-trivial way; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that headset manufacturers wanting to use Apple's solution should pay royalties

[kelnos]

I can't believe the time and money they "invested" was at all significant, certainly not enough to justify any non-trivial amount of royalties.

But frankly I just don't care about Apple's costs: I'm far more interested in the broader economic effects of moves like this, and it's clear to me that both consumers and device-ecosystem manufacturers are harmed economically by patents like this.

So who "wins"? Do we grant the monopoly because Apple is oh so clever (they're really not, in this case), and allow Apple to enrich itself at the detriment of others, or do we look out for the greater good? I argue the latter is the correct choice in a civilized society.

[coldtea]

>Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking.

Either you don't believe in patents at all, or this is a fair patent. Apple did find that workaround, others had lots of time until's Apple entry to find it, patent it themselves or open it up.

[kelnos]

> Either you don't believe in patents at all, or this is a fair patent.

Completely false dichotomy. Patents are there to promote innovation, not to fracture technology choices, make things difficult and confusing for consumers, and disproportionately raise costs for manufacturers. There's a balance to be found between the economic pluses granted to the patent holder and the minuses inflicted on everyone else due to the patent, and in this case I feel the balance is all wrong.

[upofadown]

One way to look at this is that Apple used a broken patent system to achieve an unfair result. There is no way an arbitrary assortment of resistances should be patentable.

The fact that someone else could potentially do a bad thing does not absolve you of the responsibility for doing that bad thing.

[coldtea]

>There is no way an arbitrary assortment of resistances should be patentable.

Indeed. Which is why they didn't patent an "arbitrary assortment of resistances", but a technique that so happens to include one.