[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.