Apple, Oracle, Microsoft Acquire Novell Patents Together
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 16th Dec 2010 21:57 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
Legal Well well well well well, paint me red and call me a girly scout. I've been saying for months now that there's much more collaboration between Apple and Microsoft than their respective fanboys want to believe, especially when it comes to fighting Google and Android, which both companies partly do via patent suits. More evidence for this has emerged today. Remember CPTN Holdings, the consortium led by Microsoft which bought that bundle of patents from Novell? Which other companies are part of this consortium? EMC. Oracle. Apple.
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Tony Swash
Member since:
2009-08-22

It can and has paid for the lawyers.
......
_that's_ an offensive action, because I'm offended.


The key thing to note is who copies who.

Apple is the most copied and imitated company in the tech world.

Apple clearly wants to protect itself, it's intellectual property and to position itself to be able to resist offensive legal attacks by competitors who cannot compete with it in the market.

But it doesn't need the law or lawyers to beat it's competitors, it's already doing that and doing so by a big margin.

Reply Parent Score: 0

jabbotts Member since:
2007-09-06

"Apple is the most copied and imitated company in the tech world."

which is why everyone copied them after they invented the personal mp3 player.. then copied them after they invented the smartphone.. not to mention copying them after they where first to invent the table form factor and netbook..

most copied.. my ass

Reply Parent Score: 6

Tony Swash Member since:
2009-08-22

"Apple is the most copied and imitated company in the tech world."

which is why everyone copied them after they invented the personal mp3 player.. then copied them after they invented the smartphone.. not to mention copying them after they where first to invent the table form factor and netbook..

most copied.. my ass


After the Mac all PCs ended up looking like a Mac. PCs didn't copy Xerox they copied Apple's product (i.e. the one that sold in quantity).

Apple invented the mp3 player that people wanted. If Apple had not got a patent protection on the click wheel all mp3 players would have click wheels.

After the iPhone other phones started to look like the iPhone. The Android changed its previous design for Android following the iPhone launch to look like the iPhone.

This is what Android looked like in 2007.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/a-visual-tour-of-androids-ui/

Here’s an actual hardware prototype from then.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/android-hardware-in-the-wild/google-andr...

It didn’t look anything like an iPhone, nor like anything Apple would ever be interested in making. It looked like a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone — hardware keyboards and non-touch screens.

Now compare a 2010 Android design to a current iPhone.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/19/droid-incredible-review/

Don’t tell me the iPhone has not completely reshaped the design and UI of smart phones.

After Apple launched the iPad all other tablets (or at least the ones with a chance of selling in any quantity - i.e. not Windows 7 tablets) started to look and function like the iPad.

Reply Parent Score: 3

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TheGZeus Member since:
2010-05-19

"most likely to copy company" is more accurate.

Reply Parent Score: 4

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Apple is the most copied and imitated company in the tech world.

Apple clearly wants to protect itself, it's intellectual property and to position itself to be able to resist offensive legal attacks by competitors who cannot compete with it in the market.

And Apple have themselves copied the inventions of Xerox PARC, Microsoft (yes, copying goes both way between those), Palm, Archos, and many others...

Innovation does not come from nowhere. Any "new" product is just a slightly improved version of an already existing product, with new features brought from other already existing products. Human imagination is based on exterior inspiration, you can't get around this basic fact.

You're basically advocating that at some point, Apple made the "final" product and thus got some intellectual property on it, that it should be illegal to copy what they do from that point. That's horribly wrong. In fact, that's the core failure of the copyright/patent system : copyrights and patents which last too long end up being a tool against the innovation which they're supposed to promote.

These should last at most 5 years, nothing more.

Otherwise, if I code a simple operating system, I'm sure I'm already infringing on something silly like "Switching an AMD or Intel CPU to 64-bit mode" or "Loading a computer program from an optical storage medium". The sole thing which protects me from being sued is that I'm not a major actor in the OS market and no one has an interest in suing me.

Edited 2010-12-19 09:09 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 4