[berntb]

To put on the Devil advocate's horns:

Those patents will be used to protect Google from a company suing them, when Google arguably copied their product (iPhone, iPad) which was totally new under the sun.

Yes, the patent system is fscked but there must be some protection for companies inventing new ways of doing things.

[paulsnx2]

"... (iPhone, iPad) which was totally new under the sun."

No, the iPhone and iPad and all of Apple's products have been built upon ideas and inventions created by others outside of Apple. If I was made of time and money, I'd wander through the patents held by Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intellectual Ventures, Nortel (Apple only recently got rights to their patents), HP, HTC, Samsung, Nokia, and the hundreds of other companies (trolls and product companies alike) and document the thousands upon thousands of patents that cover aspects of the Phone and IP

Then I would go through all the public records and and to the best of my ability guess how many of these patents were actually licensed by Apple prior to selling the IPhone and IPad.

My guess? (It is nothing but a guess, but still) I'd expect Apple incorporates 100,000's of thousands of patented features. And I would be shocked if they licensed anything over 50 percent of these patents.

Why do I think their license rate would be that high? I would guess they have a cross license agreement with IBM, TI, and Microsoft, which might cover nearly that many of the infringing patents.

Anyway, I had to respond when someone claims these products were "totally new under the sun".

[berntb]

>>No, the iPhone and iPad and all of Apple's products have been built upon ideas and inventions created by others outside of Apple.

They also incorporated steel -- an invention centuries (millennia?) old...

Point was, they did something new with the iPhone. The same thing with the iPad, when they invented a way to make tablets which people would pay money to use.

>>I had to respond when someone claims these products were "totally new under the sun".

You really didn't get the point...?

[mantrik00]

Apple did not invent the tablet computer. Tablet computer's existed even before the iPad. Even a start up by the name Fusion Garage launched joojoo before Apple launched the iPad. Just because Apple's tablet has succeeded in cornering a large part of the market doesn't mean they were the first at it. In fact, Apple has no manufacturing capacity. It outsources all of its manufacturing. It is just a marketing and retailing company.

[bergie]

Ideas are worth nothing. Execution is. Touchscreen phones were nothing new, it was just that Apple built the first one that was actually fun to use. And as their reward they've made quite a bit of money.

[berntb]

There must be some form of intellectual protection for books, painters and user interfaces.

Every manufacturer had failed for many years to build something really good -- and the ones without internal problems (Nokia, Microsoft) copied Apple's ideas to compete. So ideas aren't "worthless".

The ones doing the copying might end up eating Apple's lunch.

You can make an argument for that real innovation (not moving libraries from IE into the operating system) should have some form of protection.

(-: I'm doing a Devil's advocate here, thanks for the down votes, people... :-)

[bergie]

Again, iPhone is a great example on how execution matters. It was introduced in 2007, and only now other companies are starting to catch up.

Not having a monopoly means Apple also has to keep improving their stuff.