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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Wrawrat, it's like you said, the company that applied for the patent didn't enforce it for six years, but that doesn't mean that everyone else should be using it. Enforeced or not, you should still get permission.
Fifteen years. 6 + 9 = 15. It's almost like they deliberately waited until the format was widespread. This case is a bit similar to BT when they wanted to enforce a 30-years-old patent that could possibly cover hyperlinks.
Anyway, you can't blame the users for not getting a licence. JPEG is an ISO standard so they expected that it was patent/licence-free. Don't tell me they should have done a patent search. Who has the time to do this for everything they are using/developing? I think Friedman's quote ("you can't write more than 1000 lines of code these days without hitting on a patent -- without your knowledge") is quite accurate. Imagine how costly would be software development if programmers were doing patent searchs at every 1000 lines of code.
I believe that the current patent system need a serious overhaul. Old patents that were never enforced should be invalidated and become generic just like unenforced trademarks. Trivial stuff like "fading windows" shouldn't be allowed either. Apple probably spent more money on the patent itself than on the R&D of that "new" technique... I don't care if they are doing it for competing against Microsoft. It shouldn't be granted. Likewise, many Microsoft patents should be revoked for the same reason. The patent war is getting stupid and everybody but huge multinational corporations are getting hurt.