Apple Awarded Patent For iPhone Interface 449
Toe, The writes "Apple's 358-page patent application for their iPhone interface entitled Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics has been approved after more than two years of review by the US Patent Office. Apple's claims include: 'A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.' As Apple seems eager to defend their intellectual property, what will this mean to other touch developers?"
Re:Prior art is available (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, I think you are right. Since I loathe iWTFever, I suppose I'll not be using any touchscreen devices anytime soon. Shame. This will be much like getting a patent on a brake pedal, IMO.
Sometimes a patent is not such a good thing for the public. I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one of those times.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is the new Microsoft.
Re:Prior art is available (Score:4, Insightful)
Touchscreen devices are far older than 2001; the distinction here, I believe, is that it detects 'one or more' touches and applies heuristics to them (presumably to determine gestures such as pinch, twist, etc.), and then acts on the results of those heuristics.
Scrolling patent... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's basically a patent on how Apple handles scrolling on the iPhone. They've patented:
- Using a touchscreen to scroll in one dimension
- Using a touchscreen to scrollin two dimensions
- Using a touchscreen to shift between items in a list
Basically, scrolling in your address book, in Safari, and coverflow. The "heuristics" are all about analyzing the inputs and motions in the context of the application, and not interaction with any onscreen element.
Now it's HTC, Google, and Palm's turn to scramble for prior art. The attempt to claim this with single inputs even, however, may weaken the basis.
IANAPL. HAND.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because Apple's been well-known lately to rest on its laurels.
The whole point of patents is to reward and encourage innovation. I don't recall having seen anything like the iPhone until the iPhone came out; all the companies since are just jumping on the bandwagon, and generally doing so pretty poorly.
The patent seems like it might be pretty broad, but it seems to basically cover touch 'gestures'. Developers should be able to innovate their way around that specific interface - unless, of course, no one else out there is up to the task of innovating.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
> It means 20 years of waiting for the patent to expire before this kind of interface can be advanced at all.
No, it means Google Android will be the only viable alternative to an iPhone -- in America, at least. Apple can stop HTC from cloning their UI, and they can stop American cell companies from distributing Android phones with an infringing UI pre-installed, but they can't do a damn thing to stop American Android users from downloading code to do it anyway from a server in Bulgaria, Vanatu, Russia, or anywhere else not subject to the long arm of American patent law.
Ditto, for allegedly-infringing open-source extensions for WinMo. Apple wants to sue someone who makes a free shell extension to let HTC phones look like an iPhone? Great... they're awarded 100% of the money he's ever made by selling his infringing product. Oh, wait a minute...
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple is the new Microsoft.
And like Microsoft, Apple also patents ideas with clear prior art. Take a look at Daniel Stenberg's post about two cases where Apple patented ideas that were included in Rockbox years before [daniel.haxx.se].
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope! Go get a BlackBerry Storm. Touch screen device that is improved via mechanism to detect difference between touching a widget and pushing a widget. I used to have one of those other touch screen phones, and navigation was a complete pain in the ass. My new phone with the clicky screen is much better, and it still uses multi-touch for on-screen text selection purposes. Interface improved, patent improved, life goes on.
What we really need is some patent reform to keep up with modern engineering and manufacturing speeds. A 20 year patent is a little long these days since time to market from prototype is often well under 2 years. Maybe 5-8 year patents are in order. Long patent durations encourage competitors to embrace/extend. Short patents encourage the original patent holder to continue making improvements, rather than sitting on their duff.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the rapid movement of the tech industry, doesn't 18 YEARS seem like a fairly significant time to stop anyone else from using your innovation as a foundation for further innovation?
Also "innovate their way around" is one of the craziest phrases I've ever read. We're happy to waste creative energy on getting around artificial restrictions now rather than simply creating?
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope they are willing to be generous with license agreements to competitors since Apple products suck.
Yeah, I said SUCK. I already have my DragonArmor vest on, the windows are boarded up, and I think I will survive the siege with a few tons of hot pockets. I await the storm...
Apple has been so disappointing as they have repeated Sony's mistake about obsessively locking down their products. The iPod on its own is a great product. The software support for it is horrible and Apple has made it incredibly difficult to use anything but iTunes to manipulate the music stored on MY FREAKIN DEVICE. iTunes does not offer the features and abilities I want and I have always found it to be unstable on every system I have put it on.
There are plenty of other examples, but I don't mention this to bash Apple. Truly I don't. I mention this since it would make it nearly impossible for competition to survive the LawyerPult over at Apple HQ.
If nobody else can use this technology for 20 years (possibly more since we are going nutso over IP protection) then Apple will have far less motivation to make a great product, develop better software for those products, and service them.
It's the beginning of a monopoly over a human interface. Any company having that makes it bad for the consumer, but Apple has demonstrated to me, that it already does not care about my needs as a consumer.
Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe any company has lost as much money as Apple due to not having proper patents and enforcing them. Microsoft alone built a large part of their business courtesy of Apple's prior ineffective enforcement, from Windows to QuickTime and a lot in between.
The fact is, if Apple had not done multitouch first, they would have nothing to patent.
Since they had the vision, did the R&D, bought a few companies and released an actual product incorporating the technology, it would seem they are entitled to a patent on that work. If there is nothing unique or prior art in the patent, it will not stand anyway.
Re:Consequences for competitors? (Score:2, Insightful)
but threatening that you "are ready to suit up and go against anyone," is not the actions of a company that's as ethical as Apple like to present itself.
How? If your ethical system agrees with patents and enforcing them in court, then it's perfectly ethical. It's certainly legal.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, it's interesting. I have an iPod Touch and find its interface to be vastly superior to the Storm, which I have borrowed a few times from friends and thus had an opportunity to try out. However, I asked someone who was obviously not familiar with touch screens to type in their address on my iPod Touch the other day, and they had a very difficult time working out how to use the thing. They kept trying to push down on the "keys" and were frustrated when it wouldn't click. The idea that they just had to tap was apparently very difficult to comprehend.
On the other hand, to me (having used touch screen technology in general, and the iPod Touch / iPhone interface specifically), the "clicking" that the Storm implements seems forced and hokey. I thought it missed the point of the, "But there are no buttons!" complaint, since one still can't type without looking at the screen (i.e., one can't feel their way around the keyboard). I had not previously considered that it might be a more intuitive interface for someone who had never encountered touch screen technology before.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a patent is not such a good thing for the public.
I'm curious if a patent ever is a good thing for the public. it really only ever seems to do exactly this.
I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.
It's also clear that Apple has already gained the competitive advantage a patent is supposed to provide, without the patent.
Which means that all the patent does, in this case, is retard progress for twenty years by preventing anyone else from beginning to compete with the iPhone. It's the difference between building new and exciting interfaces that start with the iPhone and expand beyond it, and instead having everyone else have to build ugly hacks to avoid infringing on that patent even when the iPhone is a horribly obsolete product.
Patents should last the amount of time it takes to bring a product to market. That's a year, maybe two or three. Not fifteen or twenty.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
they can't do a damn thing to stop American Android users from downloading code to do it anyway from a server in Bulgaria, Vanatu, Russia, or anywhere else not subject to the long arm of American patent law.
Except provide the iPhone as an alternative which doesn't force you to do those things.
And users don't particularly want to know or care about patent law. They'll just assume Apple is better or smarter than these other phones, and that the iPhone is better.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:1, Insightful)
We're happy to waste creative energy on getting around artificial restrictions now rather than simply creating?
Where by "creating", we mean "copying the thing apple created for us"?
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Truly.
Where would we be if the creator of the first spider patented the concept of a spider building a searchable index of web sites, and a web form being utilized to query said database?
Google, Yahoo, etc could have never been born, due to the inevitable litigation that would kill those portals before they got started.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of patents is to reward and encourage innovation.
And they have failed miserably at that.
Do you suppose Apple would not have built the iPhone if they couldn't patent its multitouch? Of course not. They'd still have first mover, it'd still have that Apple gleam, and everyone would still want one. And they'd still have carved a large chunk out of the smartphone market -- and expanded it into a large number of people who never wanted a smartphone before -- before anyone else even had a shot.
What this does is prevent other people from building on that work, without Apple's permission.
all the companies since are just jumping on the bandwagon, and generally doing so pretty poorly.
Gee, I wonder why? It couldn't have anything to do with Apple patenting so much of the iPhone that no one else can legally compete with it?
The patent seems like it might be pretty broad, but it seems to basically cover touch 'gestures'. Developers should be able to innovate their way around that specific interface
Let's pretend, for a moment, that Xerox had been smart, and patented the GUI. So now everyone has to innovate their way around the mouse?
Let's not forget: This is about promoting the general welfare, not the welfare of specific companies. And when someone locks some new development up for 18 years, consumers are the ones who suffer.
Just as an example: I'll bet Apple patented the magnetic cord of the MacBook. That means I won't be able to buy any laptop other than a Macbook for the better part of two decades which has that feature. And they also have iPhone-style multitouch in the touchpad -- probably won't be able to get that anywhere else, either.
Which means I've lost a significant amount of choice. Because I don't want a Macbook -- Linux doesn't run well on them, they have a single-button touchpad instead of two or three, the keyboard is an Apple keyboard -- great for OS X, sucks for anything else...
I think, we should just drop patents altogether. They cause more harm than good. It's still possible to exercise first mover's advantage, or compete on quality or price -- unless, of course, no one out there is up to the task of innovating in their business model.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple is willing to license the use of the patent for a royalty fee; sure, it can be advanced by other companies.
Apple isn't even willing to allow an interpreted language on the iPhone. What makes you think they would be willing to relinquish control here?
Re:Consequences for competitors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but not everybody thinks that the concept of Intellectual Property is inherently evil.
Which "concept of intellectual property" are you talking about?
IP as it is currently implemented in the law? IP in the patent office fantasy land? IP scientifically and rigorously justified to advance the state of the art? IP that protects hard work and not just fishing expeditions? IP that represents true innovation, as recognized by peers and not some bureaucrat? IP that is unambiguous and not handwaving?
The reality is that the entire patent edifice, as currently implemented, is at the bottom based on a very dubious and entirely arbitrary ideas about what it means to say two ideas are the same or different. It's all hand waving.
The patent office can't even separate new words from new ideas. Let alone something as utterly trivial as (compared to the universe of ideas) e.g. deciding whether two shades of orange are the same or different.
Unlike physical property where boundaries between property items are very carefully defined and generally recognized.
---
Patents: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only competitors that would then have a problem with the patent is those who were already in development of an infringing device when the patent takes effect. True innovators would get hurt by these short patents occasionally, but copyists never would. I don't see the point.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.
What is the new invention?
The interface itself? Hmm. Maybe, but an idea of how to arrange graphical objects on a screen shouldn't be patentable.
The actual touchscreen? Well... I haven't seen many solid glass touchscreens before, but I have seen them, only bigger. It might be an evolution or adaption of an old invention. If it's a new way of designing touchscreens, that exact design is indeed something that should be patentable.
The act of registering more than one finger at once on a touchscreen? Might be a new idea, but hardly a new invention and it should definitely not be patentable.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or suppose it was medicine -- you'd have people dying because they couldn't afford the prices of the main supplier, and their competitors couldn't use the formula.
This is happening all the time.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
More interesting the phone that inspired the iPhone (or that the iPhone ripped off) the Prada phone now has to be taken off market or pay royalties. How ironic.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where by "creating", we mean "copying the thing apple created for us"?
Exactly. Apple, who have never copied what others created.
By the way, I was being sarcastic. ^_^
Re:Prior art. ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is, basically, no real difference between multitouch gestures and singletouch gestures.
And the Apple interface isn't only multitouch. It is also singletouch. There is only limited use of multitouch in the Iphone/Ipod
And, anyway, that is simply a interface-design idea. Shouldn't be patentable in any sane system.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
How were they able to patent gestures? Isn't that something that Microsoft Surface, among others, had first? I love the iPhone interface, but is there really anything brand new there?
Re:Prior art. ??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then defend it. What? You never filed a patent on this?
As I recall Leibniz was to Calculus what Newton was to Calculus. Newton got most of the fame for publishing first and Leibniz notation became the most commonly used notation.
If Apple didn't patent their work, Microsoft would and claim they invented it first [citing the patent] and screw everyone over.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
patenting software techniques is a whole different thing because the patent is the only thing stopping others from implementing this technique. instead of being an intellectual field where you get rewarded for the quality of your work, software development becomes a game for the very rich where you can buy certain must-have technologies.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is that those have been on water heaters from Asia for many years, including one I had six years ago. Innovation is cool and all, but taking a plug from a water heater and putting it on a computer isn't beyond what someone "skilled in the field" would come up with. An Apple hardware engineer probably just visited Japan and came up with:
(1) MAGNETIC CONNECTOR FOR WATER HEATER
(2) s/WATER HEATER/ELECTRONIC DEVICE/
(3) profit!
Someday I hope to see a patent system based on the expected time it would take an engineer to develop something (with the current time as an upper bound). That way some revolutionary Fusion powerplant that takes 30 years to develop can get a long 20-year patent, wheras putting 1+1 together for a magnetic plug for electronics can get a year or two (generous), and the one-click Amazon patent can get the 2-3 months it deserves. Instead, we have a system where if you meet a fairly low bar you get the same 20 years and true breakthroughs in the field.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Prior Art: Jeff Han's multitouch display at TED (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeff Han even practically says in his presentation: "I'm not doing anything new or patentable. I'm just making it cheaper and bigger."
Apple didn't do anything new or patenatable. They just made it smaller and cheaper. But most importantly they actually did it.
Apple deserves accolades for actually implementing a sane interface on a phone. Then again what made the iphone possible wasn't someone saying "let's do multi-touch!" it was a screen with an accurate enough touch screen that multi-touch was affordable and usable in a product.
Apple is really good at getting to market first with cutting edge technology. Their 'innovation' is really in their hardware aquisition and licensing department. The Toshiba microdrive (not developed for the iPod but certainly exploited at its earliest convenience). Intel small form factor CPU (Macbook Air). Inexpensive capacitive touch LCDs. The hardware which enables these notable products is almost always made by someone else and designed for anybody to use but exploited first and well by Apple.
Does Apple deserve credit for being quick to pick up on opportunities such as Han's amazing presentation? Yes. Do they deserve a patent for putting the finishing touches on a marketable implementation? No.
If Apple were in Microsoft's position... (Score:1, Insightful)
...I'm pretty sure it would be safe to say that they would be far worse than Microsoft. Apple would be downright draconian. Their vision seems to be "don't touch anything, everything is done my way". I'd much rather have a sneaky bastard than an iron fist tyrant.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, if you look you can find instances like that where the patent system failed. I bet if you looked equally hard, you'd find example where the competing companies developed more effective and more efficient workarounds.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe other companies could license this engine. Conceivable, you could even have small engine motor shops, that would invest on designing innovative engines, only to license them to big manufacturing companies.
Without patents, such a small company would never had a chance against giants like Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen or Peugeot-Citroen* because they would steal the idea and come to market first.
This is not the case with this patent. But it's not like all patents should be eliminated, there are clearly cases where a patent is useful for the society as a whole
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's clearly a new invention.
iPhone is not a new invention. In fact, LG had problems with Apple for a while because on their Prada phone, which uses a very similar design. The most inventive element is probably the UI, and I'm sure that this was inspired by some other design as well.
It's definitely an innovation, and a very good one at that.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
yes.
Wilbur and orville wright waited a couple of years before they announced they could fly so the patents would clear. At that same time dozens of hobbists were working out how to fly repeatably around the world.
Most inventions are a product of their time. Necessity drove them to be created. More than one person was trying to figure it out anyways, as they saw money from selling said product.
Patents should exist, but should depend on the market. Software patents shouldn't last 3 years as then they are out of date. medications 5-7, and if you actually build something maybe 10.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.
Except for those pesky people who did it before dating back to 1984.
Seriously, Apple's patent is an instance of "something-already-done . . . on a phone!" As ridiculous as the large number of "on the internet" patents.
I do agree with you that the duration of phases of patents are fubar. For instance, the time between application and granting of a patent is absurdly long. This means a potential small business owner that wants more assurances than "patent pending" may avoid committing to that endeavor. Then after bing granted, there is a conundrum. For a product like the iPhone and generally large companies, the protection is much longer than required to let the originator benefit. On the other hand, for a small business, a three year term may not be enough for them to barely get off the ground.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps if there was no possibility to patent steam engine developments, the producers wouldn't have started selling them until they were sure they could make a product that wouldn't be reverse engineered immediately. If it could, someone else may start producing and push them out of business almost immediately.
It's like the Wright brothers waiting on the patent (a couple of comments above) before they announced they could fly. They'd have little incentive to show the world, if any company with more capital could push them out of business immediately.
20 years is too long for a lot of things, especially today when innovation in some technologies goes so quickly. But perhaps it would be better to 'revise' the system to be up-to-date with current technologies and not 'obliterate' the entire thing.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's different from software licensing, because with software licensing you are only prohibited from taking the code and building upon that, while with patents, the idea is protected. Let's say no one before me had written a hello world program, and I were the first one to write one. Software licensing means you may not use my code without my permission, but it doesn't prevent you from writing your own hello world from scratch, even after having seen what my program does, and possibly improve on it (e.g. by adding localization). However if I had a patent on "hello world", you wouldn't be allowed to distribute a hello world program without my agreement even if you write all the code yourself! Basically I'd have the monopoly on everything saying "hello world".
Re:Consequences for competitors? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm talking about the general concept. Many people on slashdot seem to think any form of IP is immoral, criminal, or wrong.
My point in part, probably badly expressed, was that there is no "general concept", despite what the patent lobby claim.
IP changes character completely depending on who you assign the ownership to (user, inventor, developer etc.), how far reaching each ownership grant is (all possible variations of an idea or just a particular example) and for how long it is (zero time or forever). Most people here would at least support what you probably regard as a weak concept of IP ownership, that of giving credit in perpetuity. Most also think that first mover advantage is sufficient reward for most forms of IP.
Others support assigning financial control on some combination, or not, of business processes, chemical processes, computer algorithms, mathematical algorithms and traditional machine patents. Some would support automatic patent assignment like copyright, others no. Others like you appear to support copy control with all financial rights assigned to the first person past the gate. Others support more limited rights like split ownership for bonafide independent re-invention. Some support the patent office bureaucracy as a means of assessing patents, others no. Other more blue sky variations include things like patents not applying to certain groups in society (e.g. children or researchers), patents having varying time periods depending on field, patents only having value to the extent that they are explicitly paid for, innocent until proven guilty for patent infringement, independent re-invention being a valid patent infringement defence, patents not given to the inventor but to the best exploiter, only a fixed number of patents given per year. patents not awarded for anything except things that can be explicitly and individually proved to have high research costs, independent reinvention invalidates a patent, different aspects of patents given to different entities etc.
All of these things change the character of IP completely. Patents as they are currently implemented are only one of a virtually infinite number of possibilities. People here typically disagree with the patent office way of doing things but I think most people here would agree that intellectual work should be rewarded while also saying that copying of ideas should be as liberal as possible. Personally, I find it strange that the legal system allows a single individual to restrict the use of an idea that could potentially be copied/used by billions. Patents made more sense when the population was smaller. In addition it seems that most of the ideas the patent office assigns ownership to are ideas whose "time has come", that in a population of billions will be independently re-invented many times, negating most of the ethical basis for patents.
---
Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something. Any ethical (not legal) argument based on "because they own it" is bogus.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That patents on life saving drugs in poor countries is tantamount to mass murder.
More people would die if the companies that created the drugs didn't make them in the first place. If they don't have a way to recuperate their costs, there's going to be less incentive for them to create *NEW* life saving drugs. Does that mean getting rid of the patent system would be a holocaust?
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I haven't read the actual patent on this, but it seems to be fairly legit. Apple is the first one to deliver the whole multitouch thing. The point of a patent is to reward the person who gets it done first with exclusive rights to it for a limited time. It makes innovation a race and encourages it. The only other thing even remotely similar I have seen is that godforsaken Microsoft Table video. When Microsoft actually manages to deliver a product that does what they claim it can do, let alone fancy vapor products that aren't even built yet...call me. No really...I would like to see it. When Apple announces their new fancy shmancy dodad they generally have on ready and waiting...when MS announces their fancy shmancy dodad you still generally have to wait 5 years until it is on the market in a usable state.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's... optimistic. When SmallBlock Ltd goes to Zaibatsu Motor Industries and Fish Gutting Mega Concern Incorporated waving their handful of patents, they'll get a hundred waved back at them.
Which is why patent trolls thrive: you can't be countersued if you don't produce anything. So SmallBlock Ltd live long enough to make a minor "invention", sells it to Trollcorp, and vanishes in a puff of stock options. Trollcorp mugs Zaibatsu, who pay up to settle the suit, and then throw the "invention" on the huge slush pile of ideas that their thousands of in house engineers will ignore anyway because it's Not Invented Here.
Nobody benefits from that. There may be a very few exceptions where the patent system plays out in the favour of a genuine inventor [guardian.co.uk], but I'd have to see more case studies to believe that's a statistically significant outcome.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the drug companies illustrate two interesting point about the current patent system. Not just what is wrong, but what is right as well.
First, drug patents are awarded for the same 20 years as technology patents, but exclusivity is only for 7 years in most cases. This is to improve innovation in a field where we have a pretty clear public interest in keeping things moving. The original point here was not so much that patents were a bad idea per se, but more that they should probably be shorter. The exclusivity stuff for drugs kinda show how that could be a very good this for innovation.
Second, drug patents are VERY specific. If company A has a patent to reduce heart irregularities by combining compound XYZ with compound CZF, and company B comes along and tries to patent controlling heart irregularities by combining compound XYZ with compound ABC, no one is going to argue that Company B's patent is infringing on Company A's. Both companies had reason to think that with the right additive XYZ could control heart irregularities, both were right, and since they used different additives it's not a problem. If these same two patents were for software, there'd be all kinds of arguments about how similar or dissimilar they were, whether one was derived from the other, etc.
This shows two points in my mind. First, it seems likely that in a world where product cycles can be measured in years or even months, 20 years is too long for a patent. The iPhone will be an obsolete brick in 20 years, why not allow others to benefit from its innovations after it is no longer a commodity itself (and I say this as an iPhone owner and moderate fan of Apple's work). Second, patents should be granted in such a way as to maximize addition innovation in the field. Granting very general "A method for entering data with your fingers" kind of patent hurts innovation more than it helps. Now, Apple's application for this patent is over 250 pages, so it is probably is very specific. I don't know that this point necessarily applies to this particular patent (at over 250 pages I didn't read it), but we HAVE seen some very obvious and VERY general patents granted in this field. That creates situations where companies are afraid to innovate because they can't tell if they're in violation of a patent or not. If software patents looked more like drug patents, it might be a lot better for everyone.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to the inefficiency and red tape necessitated by retaining a huge legal department and strong-arming any competitors who lost the raced to file?
Which still doesn't work, because your competitors either just paint your red McGuffin blue, or simply ignore your patent and damn your eyes. See most of the Far East, where Chinese companies clone and sell whatever they like. The only people profiting from patents are the lawyers.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
For a unique drug, most of the time the preliminary research is done at universities etc., normally in the US under an NIH grant. Many university researchers don't engage a company until they want to go to trial.
So yeah, clinical trials are expensive, but compared to the amount of money coming in from these patents, it's peanuts. It's why so many pharmaceutical companies are fortune 500 - they make big money.