What’s the next big thing TM?

What seems to be happening is that we in the West are wilfully destroying our future. Once Samsung et al are allowed to copy for free, then effectively there is little point in invention or innovation.

Memo to Trolls: Copying is not the same as innovation.

I’m an AAPL shareholder, and a HUGE Apple fan, but I think that many of the patents that Apple has been granted should have never been approved (just like many other companies’ patents).

But, just like the tax code, we can not blame Apple for playing the game by the rules that have been set. If Apple was not proactive in seeking these patents, others would be.

We definitely need patent reform (and tax code reform, but that is a different topic. ).

Then interest in HyperCard failed.

Then years later this young punk creates this thing, this HTML and this thing called a web server and… whatever. Proving it’s the people who take an idea to fruition that matter the most.

Inspired by IBM’s VM OS and DEC’s VAX/VMS I came up with this nutty idea that we should create a virtual machine that executed a subset of the C language on any computer where the virtual machine had been compiled and ran. Unfortunately Bank of America bought us before it could really get off the ground and squashed the project. Yeah, we were going to patent it, had people already working on that aspect.

Years after that I heard of this thing called JAVA. JAVA was pretty much the same idea. Had we done our patent, I wouldn’t have said, “Hey, JAVA belongs to me! ME! MEEEE!” I would have said, “Cool.”

You can’t own a concept. I mean the idea of virtual machines did not belong to me. I was inspired by how each user effectively had their own VAX while running under VMS. I thought Virtual Machines on the desktop were the future… yada yada.

These days people are patenting fuzzy ideas as etherial as that. I’m of the opinion that software and algorithms are like math. You shouldn’t be able to patent math.

When you look at the myriad ideas that make up the iPhone, it should be clear that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. That sum, the iPhone itself, should be a patentable idea. Synergy based patents maybe?

Cause that’s what we’re really talking about, not that Samsung sniped pinch and zoom, but that they completely shagged the synergy of the iPhone, from the look and feel to the entire, I dunno, gestalt of the thing with no shame whatsoever.

You can’t stop me from building a car. You should be able to stop me from building a BMW 3 Series and calling it the TM100 or something.

IMHO software patents (unlike physical implementations) should never have been allowed in the first place. They enrich no one–not Apple, not Samsung/Google. Only the IP lawyers and patent trolls.

I guess it is end of days. I wonder if I can get a well worded patent about how to screw up any and every situation…. I will call it government….. ?????

Just a typical wednesday I guess.