Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 15th May 2004 08:23 UTC
It is when I read articles like this that I have "my blood all going up to my head" (that's a Greek saying for people that get angry). So apparently, Apple is trying to patent "transparent windows that do a certain action after fading away". While I don't personally find this "innovation/invention" patentable, it's fine with me: Apple is doing the best it can to secure its business (maybe I would do the same if I had shareholders on my back).
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The main problem in the US is the Patent Office, which grants patents seemingly without doing any research and patents which are overbroad.
I'd rather not see software patents in Europe, but there are really innovative ideas where a patent would be applicable. But look at existing patents in different technical fields: they are exact, precise and describe a way of implementing an idea that is new and innovative.
Patents on general ideas and business processes should never exist. Patents should be a new and fairly precise way of implementing an idea. Not the idea itself.
I hope that if we get software patents in Europe, that the European Patent Office is a lot smarter, fairer and strict in giving patents. Otherwise we'll get the same problems as in the US.
Also, like someone else said on LinuxWorld, East Asia is where the action is going to be in this way. They don't care about patents (don't care about copyrights either) and the governments of China, Japan and Korea choose Linux. So I guess we'll see a lot of innovation coming from them.
Remember Japan overtaking the US (and Europe) in the car industry? I guess it's going to happen now in IT as well. Not necessarily Japan, but maybe China or India.