

Apple Wins Reversal of $625.5 Million Mirror Worlds Patent Infringement Verdict - ssclafani
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-04/apple-wins-reversal-of-mirror-worlds-patent-verdict.html

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rosenjon
For reference, here is a picture from one of the MW patents:
[http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c013487fbb5...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c013487fbb50a970c-800wi)

You can see how there is some Cover Flow similarity there. However, why should
this be patentable at all? Otherwise, shouldn't I just sit down and sketch as
many UI configurations as I can think of, patent them all, and then sue the
hell out of anyone who then implements them? Just seems silly.

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hboon
Yes, you can, but you'll have to spend some money, say 10k in US each, more
for international markets, as well as a battle-chest of cash for lawsuits.
Depending on how far you take the ideas, you'll either be known as a patent
troll or inventor.

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Derbasti
Is there any other country in this beautiful world that encourages lunacy like
this?

I mean, patenting a specific engine design is fine by me. But that would be
equivalent to patenting _the source code structure_ of Spotlight, which no one
can see anyway. How did we get to the point where we now have patents not for
implementations but for interfaces? I wonder how much money is wasted every
year on disputes like this. How much time is wasted on it. How many lives are
getting wasted on it!

Software does not have visible physical implementations like engines do.
Software consists of ideas, written down so computers can execute them.
Software really only exists in the mind, it has no physical reality. If you
patent software, you patent cell patterns in some brain. If you sue someone
for that, you are claiming ownership of some programmers brain tissue!

It will be a fine day when we programmers can legally own our own brains
again. It will be a day worthy of great celebration! Until then, american
minds must keep their head down lest someone wants to rip their brains out,
which is a sad thing indeed.

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arron61
Well I hope you called out apple when they sued HTC on patents like, sliding
an image to unlock a phone...

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Derbasti
It's not that anyone in particular partaking in this system is evil. They all
have to do it. It's the system itself that is evil.

I don't care who sues who. Software patents in general are an awful mess that
should be abolished.

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kj12345
To me these patents seem less transparently silly than many of those often at
issue in high-profile cases, and yet they end up providing an even harsher
argument against software patents. With the silly patents a couple tweaks to
the system might get them thrown out, but I don't think any patent system that
accepts software patents could find a basis for rejecting these. From that
starker viewpoint its as crazy an idea as ever that the person who typed these
abstract descriptions and made these shoddy diagrams deserves more ownership
than Apple, who actually made the concepts real.

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timr
_"From that starker viewpoint its as crazy an idea as ever that the person who
typed these abstract descriptions and made these shoddy diagrams deserves more
ownership than Apple, who actually made the concepts real."_

To be fair, Gelernter wrote several books about these ideas, founded a
software company based on them, and tried to market several different desktop
software packages using the ideas in the mid/late 90s. He's also a professor
of computer science at Yale, and invented a bunch of concepts (in the same
books) that were inspirations for JavaSpaces and Jini. He's not a wackadoo in
some garage in Texas.

My point is, it's terrifically unfair to characterize Gelernter as a patent
troll. He's been a prolific contributor to computer science, and (speaking as
someone who was a fan of the books that first popularized the ideas in
question), a lot of Apple's UI designs today _really are_ fantastically
similar to what Gelernter was dreaming up 20+ years ago. The Time Machine UI,
in particular, was so much like the lifestreams concept that I originally
thought that Apple had hired him to do the design.

There are situations where ideas seem obvious in retrospect, but completely
out of left-field at the time of their conception. These ideas weren't even in
the ballpark when Gelernter first started publishing them.

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kj12345
Thanks I didn't know all that about Gelernter and his work.

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TheSwede75
The old truths of the OJ trial still rings true. Justice is not black or
white, the only color that matters is green!

