Apple Attempts to Patent Pre-Existing Display Software Idea

Nuclear Elephant writes "Apple appears to be taking ideas from commercial software already being sold and is attempting to patent the concepts as their own. According to Apple Insider, Apple has recently filed a patent application for a notification screen on the iPhone. The only problem with this is that Intellisync has been using this concept in their popular iPhone notification screen software for over a year now, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is a clear rip-off. Apple recently became famous (or infamous) for stealing other people's ideas when they rolled out their Dashboard in Mac OS X, which had many similarities to a desktop widget program named the Konfabulator, which later became Yahoo widgets. The case here isn't a simple hijacking of an idea, however — Apple is applying for a patent on Intelliscreen's concept, which could be detrimental to the original manufacturer of the software, who is actively selling it for Jailbroken iPhones"

Comments

Right...

[shinma]

Apple recently became famous (or infamous) for stealing other people's ideas when they rolled out their Dashboard in Mac OS X, which had many similarities to a desktop widget program named the Konfabulator, which later became Yahoo widgets.

Uh, Konfabulator stole their widgets from NeXTStep.

Which is owned by who, again? Oh, right. Apple.

Re:Way to go Apple!

[2nd Post!]

If you read the patents you would see that Apple is doing something innovative in comparison to what Intellisync is doing. It's obvious, but also different.

Intellisync's idea is to provide you a message center while the lock screen is up.

Apple's patent is to provide you a message board before and after you dismiss the lock screen.

Right now no one does it. I haven't seen it anywhere in any OS or operating environment, and in that case it is innovation. Obvious, but innovative.