28 January 2009
Is Apple becoming evil?
Today I stumbled upon an article (Apple vs. Palm) in Engadget, where they analyze the rather blunt patent infringement threat that Apple made towards Palm (and Android) when asked what do they think of ‘em. Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of software related patents, just because you basically seem to be able to patent anything, be it simple or complicated. However, now I’ve got new pet peeve: user interface patents. (I try to keep this short, as I have tendency to rant…)
Patents, bad!
Patents started as a way to protect something that was basically expensive and time consuming invention to develop, and could be copied by competitors thus earning unfair edge; gaining new tech without the resources spent for actual research. In those golden ages patents were good, in fact, in many cases they were essential for upstarts and thus healthy market. The problem comes when they are applied directly to the fuzzy world of IT; they just don’t work. In fact, they start to work against the market, restricting the possibilities of upstarts and fortifying the big companies. Basically, patents have become a stick that you keep beating your competitors with, by patenting everything and all you absolutely can. *wham* *bam*
Killing the free market
What we are now seeing with Apple’s threats towards Palm is just the tip of the iceberg, the rest of the big ass problem is still somewhat not to be seen. But, like we can assume from the shape of the traditional iceberg that there probably is more of it down there, we can also see the problem with patents getting bigger, and at the moment there is no tipping point visible. Software, and even worse, user interface patents, are making the market more and more restricted to new upstarts, thus strangling the competition. In the eye of Big Company CEO, they are doing good work by staying ahead of the curve and top of the market, but for the consumer, they are actually making things worse by practically killing the competition. Competition is the absolute driving force in free market and that’s what makes it so good to the simple Jack (consumer). Competition drives the technology, competition drives the prices, competition drives the services. Without competition the market grinds to halt and only ones to monetize on this are the big ass companies and monopolies.
As a side-note, I should say that I don’t think all of the software patents are bad. Things like patenting algorithms and such, concrete and expensive IP should still be able to be patented.
Apple vs. Palm
Granted, Palm did go against Apple and it’s patents with the Pre. This however is more of an even playing field, specially seeing that Apple infringes Palms patents with iPhone. Palm has the money to whip out enough lawyers to have a proper fight with Apple. Clash of the titans basically. However, when young David comes along, there is no stones around and poor David gets either crushed, swallowed or bullied out.
Apple = evil?
The reason I’m bringing out Apple in this post is the well known eagerness of patent absolutely anything, the constant threat spitting and the eagerness to send out the zombie lawyer army to attack anyone who dares to touch their patents. Just the Engadget post lists things like locking the scrolling to certain direction or letting the user scroll “outside” the image/picture/menu and then springing back. Come on! These are things that most of “computer whiz-kids” could whip up in matter of minutes. If my memory doesn’t fail me Apple is even (trying?) patenting gestures, like the four finger gesture on new MacBooks. In my books, as a consumer, that does not classify as a proper invention (not to mention something that should be protected) as multi-touch and gestures as such have been around for a long time so in my eyes Apple is just using patents as a beating stick.
Now imagine young upstart doing something like Palm Pre: The moment the product would hit the market they would be bullied out by Apple lawyers. Such actions in my eyes make it just a bully. And I would classify a bully as evil. Now imagine market full of bullies owning pretty much every user interface patent there is.
Specially for consumers/users of the new tech, UI patents should be seen as the ultimate evil. (Well, ok. Nazis win, but UI patents come pretty close) Free user interface development and “intelligent loaning/stealing” (taking bits and pieces here and there) would just create more competition, thus resulting to better user experiences and better tech to us all. (I fully support protecting the graphics etc. though. Cloning is still bad.)
Certain quote springs into mind,
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