| Your post as a whole is perhaps the most absurd thing I've read on patents, and I'm left to wonder whether it's some kind of parody. I guess not based on your posting history, so I'll answer it seriously. > If this were the case, there would be no Android, and no Windows Phone 8 System either. Google would be spending years trying to reverse engineer how it all works (even with the advantage of patents they're still trying to make android work smoothly like the iPhone does) and Microsoft would be just stuck. I don't know where you get the idea that other people's software patents are somehow a major component of the development process for these kinds of systems. It's a laughable idea. 1. The information you get from a good software patent would save you maybe 1% of the implementation effort. And most software patents are not good. 2. It's theoretical anyway, since nobody working on the iPhone or WP8 or Android on a technical level is ever going to be reading patents by the competition. Even if they were useful, having read the patent would potentially aggravate any infringement. 3. If you desperately wanted to clone something, you still would not work from the patents. You'd have somebody just use the system you're trying to copy and write down notes. It'd be much more efficient than trying to somehow translate a patent into a useful design doc. I am absolutely, 100% sure that your claim that without Apple patents "Google [would need] to spend years reverse engineering how it works" is wrong. Most likely the only reason these patents are for the exact opposite reason - you need to know exactly what's patented so that you can work around the patent. The suggestion that these patents would somehow be a key to smoothness highlights exactly why. There is not going to be a magical smoothness patent that would somehow be applicable to other systems with completely different design decisions done all over the system. |