

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal - jcsalterego
http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal/

======
joao
Here's a photo of Steve Jobs using Concurrence when he returned to Apple, in
the late 90s:
[http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/life/5-1995-1999/08-pr...](http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/life/5-1995-1999/08-preboston/lightbox.html#10)

Notice that even if he was at a keynote, selling to the world Mac OS 9 and new
iMacs, he personally used a PC laptop running a version of NeXT/OpenStep and
the software that was sold to Sun. They eventually hired the same developers
to build Keynote.

~~~
ovi256
The biography on that site is great reading :
<http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/long/01.html>

I just found a quote from Steve that could be one of my favourites quotes
ever: "I started to realize that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve
the world than Karl Marx and Neem Kairolie Baba put together."

------
freetard
Respect for Jonathan, the guy who successfully got Steve Jobs to shut up and
back up.

~~~
sabat
Sorry, but I have a helluva lot more respect for Steve Jobs than I do for
Jonathan. Steve has legit bragging rights. What can Jonathan brag about?
Taking $12 million in severance from Sun while his employees got two months of
pay at most?

~~~
jonknee
And I have a helluva lot more respect for Bill Gates than either of them. He's
done something worthwhile with the riches.

~~~
jacquesm
He's done something worthwhile with a fairly small portion of the riches and
is using that as a very successful propaganda machine to counter his negative
image.

Please keep in mind that this was the CEO under which a number of very
questionable actions (anti-trust, SCO) were effected.

~~~
jonknee
Propaganda? Please. Outside of the open source tech bubble Bill G
doesn't/didn't have a negative image to counter. He has given away ~$30
billion which is not a small portion at all (> half of his current net worth).
It's his main focus and he will likely donate teh bulk of his remaining
fortune. iMacs and iPods don't save lives, providing vaccinations saves
millions.

[http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/01/29/davos.bill.gates.dona...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/01/29/davos.bill.gates.donates/index.html)

In the innovative products race Steve Jobs wins. In the does good things race
Bill Gates wins. It's admirable.

~~~
nailer
> Outside of the open source tech bubble Bill G doesn't/didn't have a negative
> image to counter.

His company is a convicted monopolist by the US government,not by OSS fans.

More anecdotally, most people acknowledge that Windows is pretty shit these
days.

~~~
ewald
I own a MacBook Pro, but use Win 7 at work. I think it's great, and have
considered switching back at home.

------
mattmaroon
"Having watched this movie play out many times, suing a competitor typically
makes them more relevant, not less. "

I don't think that's exactly true. I think suing people has largely no effect
on relevance, but you tend to sue competitors whose relevance is on the
upswing. Nobody is going to sue Myspace right now for IP infringement, for
instance, they're going to sue Facebook.

~~~
btilly
It is definitely not always true.

Some history is illuminating. The first important lawsuit that Apple filed was
against the Franklin Ace. This was in the early 80s. Heard about the Franklin
Ace recently?

No matter how many times people tell Steve Jobs otherwise, he's been here
before. And the very first time he did it, he won an important victory.

------
delano
I really enjoyed reading Jonathan's blog at Sun. I'm not sure if he was the
first, but he was certainly one of the first large company CEOs to blog and
blog candidly (within the constraints of his position).

There were a few posts that stuck with me. I remember this one in particular,
from 2005, about reducing their customer survey to a single question: would
you recommend Sun?

<http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/defining_quality>

I'm glad he's back at it with this new blog.

------
makeramen
love it. to quote steve again from his famous commencement speech:

for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked
myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am
about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in
a row, I know I need to change something.

I wonder if he's proud of suing HTC over those silly software patents like
"Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image"

I'm not sure what to be more appalled at, the fact that the patent office
actually issued that, or that apple is seriously suing over it.

~~~
GHFigs
Is there something specific about that patent that you find silly or do you
find the whole notion that the specific way that an interface element works to
be silly?

It seems to me that if such things can't be copyrighted, or trademarked,
aren't covered by design patents, and shouldn't covered by utility patents,
then choosing to implement something in software rather than hardware would be
a losing proposition for anyone trying to differentiate or innovate.

~~~
smackfu
I think it's a bit silly that you can take a $0.05 component, implement it in
software, and get a patent on it.

~~~
GHFigs
I don't understand. What component? We're talking about software here.

Just because an interface object behaves in a way reminiscent of a physical
object does not mean it _is_ that object. It has an entirely different
mechanism. What you're saying is that one kind of mechanism should be
patentable while another should not, but it's not clear _why_ there is a
distinction.

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Nwallins
Somehow the link to the (awesome!) patent troll patent got hosed up --
[http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080270152%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080270152&RS=DN/20080270152)

------
wallflower
$100M+ for infringing on Kodak (Wang's) patents with Java Remote Method
Invocation. I wonder why they didn't go after CORBA? (IBM too big?)

> Lo and behold, the local jury decided Sun should pay Kodak more than a
> hundred million dollars.

> Groups with no business focus other than litigating patent suits are
> affectionately known as trolls – pure litigation entities.

Patent #5,206,951:

Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between
object managers corresponding to object types

[http://www.google.com/patents?id=3KUXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=3KUXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

Patent #5,421,012:

Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different
application programs which manipulate data objects of different types

[http://www.google.com/patents?id=M44eAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=M44eAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

Patent #5,226,161:

Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation
between data managers corresponding to data types

[http://www.google.com/patents?id=wbkXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=wbkXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

Patent list: <http://java.sys-con.com/node/46599>

~~~
smackfu
"IBM today announced that it received 4,914 U.S. patents in 2009, marking the
17th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world's most inventive
companies."

~~~
wallflower
The IP arms race

------
wallflower
It is not ironic that Jerome H. Lemelson, arguably the most successful
individual U.S. inventor ever [Sony paid him royalties for magnetic tape drive
used in tens of millions of Sony Walkman], equated financial success as an
inventor with protracted litigation.

"The American dream is that if the average American invents something novel
and worthy of patenting, he'll find someone to license it. However, for most
contemporary inventors , it hasn't worked out that way. The independent
inventor today still has an extremely difficult time convincing corporations
that he has a product which deserves to be on the market. Most companies have
a tremendous resistance to ideas and technology developed on the outside."

"You cannot develop a reputation for somebody who gives up. You have to be
known as a fighter for your rights. Otherwise, you'll never license
anything...Even Thomas Edison had a tough time supporting and protecting his
patents. He spent about $1.4 million [to defend his inventions], and this was
around the turn of the century, when beer was a nickel."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson>

------
Jim72
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" - Albert
Einstein.

Obviously Apple, MS, Google, and others need to do a better job of it.

~~~
Groxx
The secret to hiding is to not be the biggest elephant in the stampede.

------
Gupie
Good article but scary. If you've a start up without a wad of defensive
patents what can you so if a large company gives you a "stepping all over our
IP" threat?

------
aresant
Don't miss the video of Steve saying "We have always been shameless about
stealing great ideas . . . "

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

~~~
staunch
Playing devil's advocate. He could be saying that they're shameless in
stealing ideas from _different_ fields, like the examples he gives: music,
art, zoology, history. Copying the sleek lines of a panther's eyes for your
icons is one thing, blatantly cloning a competitor's UI is another.

This may be why he can reconcile suing HTC while practicing the "great artists
steal" mantra.

~~~
aresant
That's a good point.

On the other hand, the legend that Steve lifted the Xerox PARC UI persists ->
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface)
and

~~~
marilyn
The movie _The Pirates of Silicon Valley_ does a pretty good job of telling
this story.

------
yters
I may be alone in thinking this, but it's odd when people I'd consider pretty
rich have blogs with ads.

~~~
yungchin
He's probably not even aware of it; it's the default on WordPress. To get rid
of the ads, you'd first have to be aware that there are any at all (and you
won't normally be served ads when you're logged-in as an author), and then pay
for the no-ads upgrade. <http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/go-ad-free/>

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jbyers
Read all the way, it's got a good punchline.

------
ShabbyDoo
I wish someone would point out to me a software patent which he thinks
justifies the patentability of software/business processes. I haven't seen any
yet which makes me think that software patentability results in an economy
more optimal than if it was not protectable under patent (as opposed to
copyright) law.

~~~
dschobel
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research>

MSR regularly does amazing stuff, of which a lot gets patented:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=MS+Research+patents>

I'd say hiring lots of bright guys and girls and investing heavily in R&D
($9.5B according to _1_ ) constitutes positive economic activity.

_[1][http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3214217&...](http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3214217&*)

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I don't disagree that many of these inventions are novel, but would MSFT still
have spent this money without the possibility of software patents?

~~~
awa
Possibly yes, but they wouldn't have made it public.

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kloncks
The fact that Jonathan had the courage to say that is just amazing...

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rick_2047
I don't get this idea of sueing just for the sake of it, most of the times
they just fall on there faces. Not a good tool to cut down competition. Its
like pricking someone with a pin, you certainly annoy them but never actually
accomplish anything.

~~~
chubbard
At most I thought it was just a distraction technique or see if you can scare
them. While you threaten the company with your lawyers and patents the top
brass will have to dedicated some amount of time to fight it with their
lawyers, figuring out which patents your infringing on, or what they can say
to get rid of you.

If you're lucky you might get a settlement out of it. Otherwise you've slowed
them down a little while they were distracted fighting your lawsuit.

~~~
glhaynes
Or it can influence your competitors toward a direction that you think is less
harmful to yourself:
[http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/apple...](http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/apple-
talks-tough-to-handset-makers/)

------
sutro
Yeah, Jonathan's the big stud who faced down Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Those
guys got nothing on him! Except the ability to run profitable companies.

~~~
bad_user
In terms of IP, Sun had pretty big cojones ... while the number of patents
they got was certainly smaller than Microsoft's, their arsenal touched
practically anything you can think of in our field.

So yeah, he's the big stud who "faced down Steve Jobs and Bill Gates". If you
want to critique something, disagree with what he's saying, since ad hominems
add nothing of value and are insipid / rude / a waist of time for everybody
reading.

