The Unexpected Patents of Steve Jobs

Harry writes "It's no surprise that Steve Jobs' name is among those credited in Apple's patents for MacBooks, iPods, and other iconic gadgets galore. But the man holds patents for packaging, a staircase, iPod cases, and several intriguing products that Apple hasn't built to date. They all add up to an interesting portrait of the world's most famous tech CEO."

Comments

Don't Forget the Lanyard

[eldavojohn]

His name is also on a patent for the earphones/iPod lanyard and that patent references 47 other patents.

You can find a complete list of Steve's patents here. For what it's worth, I find Jobs listed on 100 patents or patent applications and Bill Gates listed on two as the inventor.

Probably a fair indication of what kind of leader you have on your hands ... definitely marketing/business for Gates.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Probably a fair indication of what kind of leader you have on your hands ... definitely marketing/business for Gates.

Wait, what? Did I miss the irony?

You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product? Heritic! May the Woz have mercy on your soul.

And a patent that references 47 other patents is far less impressive than vice-versa.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[jonbryce]

Pretty much all Microsoft's products come from buying up small companies that have the technologies he wants.

Marketing certainly plays a part, but finding the right companies to buy up in the first place is also a very important skill.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[falcon5768]

While Jobs is certainly not technical minded, in terms of design he HAS been the main patent holder, and main developer on a lot of items. The iMac g4 in particular that the article cites was almost ALL Jobs, it was well known in the company he spend months working on the arm before handing it off to Ives and the Engineers to test and finalize.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Anonymous Coward]

"You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product?"

Actually, yes.

Jobs is nowhere near technically competent as Woz, but can hold his own. Probably better than most coders here. Woz would probably agree if asked.

I know in the project that ended up being OS X, he was one of five engineers developing the product and while his role was more along the lines of project manager, he would get his hands dirty occasionally and contribute code or fix others foul ups.

I know this goes against the heavily manicured image he likes to maintain...he wants to be seen as the inspiration and not the source, but he still has a lot of geek pride. Those that work closely with him know that he is as willing to tear a piece of hardware apart as look at it...or ask to see the source. Occasionally his 'revisions' are more zenlike reductions of the code (which goes along with the infamous ordering of the engineers to align resistors on the back of the iMac circuit board to be more aesthetic). Those not within his inner circle only get to see the superficial side of all of this.

Left anonymous for obvious reasons.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[amicusNYCL]

Probably a fair indication of what kind of leader you have on your hands ... definitely marketing/business for Gates.

I don't understand how you can come to a conclusion like that. All that shows is that Steve Jobs thinks that it's important to get his name on patents, and Bill Gates doesn't. I can't find definite numbers, but Apple has at least 2000 patents, and Microsoft had at least 5000 three years ago. Frankly, I think the fact that Steve Jobs is more interested in getting his name on patents means that he is the more business and marketing-oriented of the two, not Gates. Gates could have his name on several thousand patents, but apparently he didn't think that was important.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Jeremy Erwin]

The vast majority of Steve Jobs's patents are design patents. Bill Gates's patents are both utility patents. So, it's pretty much a tie.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[LKM]

You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product?

He probably did. He did work as a technician at Atari before starting Apple. Clearly, Woz did most of the work, but Jobs has at least some basic knowledge of these things and probably has contributed something. The bigger picture is that he's very much involved in product development at Apple. The patents in question aren't very technical, they're more along the lines of user interaction design.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Sandbags]

He is that good. Every design, even in it;s most basic form, comes before him (or starts with him). He has very critical input, changes the direction of the deisgn, adds aesthetic charm to it, and has it redesigned at his orders to meet those specifications.

One of his programmers wrote a personal application for streamlining video editing. After seeing it, jobs gave him dozens of ideas how to make the app flow better, designed a more aesthetic interface, and commissioned a team to further the application based on his specs and ideas using the programmers initial work as a starting point. Although the idea was not his, the final product was very much shaped by him, and he was credited in the design of the current iMovie app.

jobs is not a coder, he's not a system engineer, but he's a design genious, and one of the singular most powerful infuencers of overall system design at Apple. Ideas like the lamp iMac, the apple remote design, how the apple store is staffed, software interface look and feel, and more all come from his mind.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Hmmm so my two patents on fire and the wheel aren't as impressive as your 47 patents on lanyards? OK, good to know. ;)

BTW speaking as someone whose work has received more than one patent I can tell you that someone's name being on a patent doesn't necessarily mean they contributed in any intellectual way. They may simply have provided money. I'm not dismissing the importance of money to a design coming into existence but I'm not so sure that anyone should be listed as an inventor if they didn't make an intellectual contribution to the design.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[harlows_monkeys]

I don't know a lot about Gates' role, but Jobs had absolutely nothing to do with almost all of those patents other than being CEO at the time they were submitted, and in most cases having the opportunity to torpedo the invention but choosing not to do so.

You are almost certainly wrong, as the patent attorneys who drew up the patents would not have put Jobs on them unless he in fact made a significant inventive contribution. Patent law requires that a patent list all of the actual inventors, and only the actual inventors. List someone who wasn't a real inventor, or leave a real inventor out, and your patent is invalid.

If Apple ever has to sue someone over one of those patents, the defendant will get to depose Jobs, and will ask him under oath exactly what his contribution was, and if all he can say was "I was CEO", that suit will go nowhere.

He may not be the main inventory, or contributed to all the things claimed on the patents, but you can be sure there will be something in that patent that really was contributed by him.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[je ne sais quoi]

According to this, Jobs does more than just act as cheerleader, at least while he was at NeXT:

Just as with the Macintosh, Jobs devoted most of his attention to the user interface and physical design of the case, probably because he wasn't a trained engineer. Jobs designed the Macintosh as a personal information appliance.

If you look at those patents in TFA, they're mostly related to design. It is not stretch of the imagination that Jobs actually designed the cases for those patents while working at Apple the second time.

Jobs might charm smart people, etc., but there is substantial evidence that Jobs does more than that. Yes, it actually looks like he works for a living sometimes.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Lars T.]

I'm not sure about that. I don't know a lot about Gates' role, but Jobs had absolutely nothing to do with almost all of those patents other than being CEO at the time they were submitted, and in most cases having the opportunity to torpedo the invention but choosing not to do so.

So why isn't his name on all Apple patents since he became CEO?

Really? The *infamous*?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Steve Jobs is not the world's most famous tech CEO.

Bill Gates has better name recognition than Jobs, if only because his philanthropy reaches so many more people than Jobs' work does.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[apodyopsis]

His philanthropic accomplishments are certainly praiseworthy, but it's worth remembering that his vast wealth was mainly accumulated with some really unpleasent business tactics.

See "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf

Whilst I congratulate the man for subsidising research and giving to worthy causes I have to wonder if he would do so much if he was not one of the worlds richest man.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[TheRealMindChild]

So spending money to save lives is a PR stunt? Maybe. Regardless, he is still saving lives. Give the man some bloody credit.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[Colonel Korn]

His philanthropic accomplishments are certainly praiseworthy, but it's worth remembering that his vast wealth was mainly accumulated with some really unpleasent business tactics.

See "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"

http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf
 

Jobs has led his company through fewer, but still not close to zero, unpleasant business tactics. On a personal note, he goes out of his way to make his employees unhappy. He's also fabulously wealthy, and he doesn't give significant money to charity, where Gates has so far given half of his wealth away. Gates seems like the rather bad for some other businesses and good for the people he's affected, where Jobs is moderately bad for other businesses (or perhaps much worse, considering the inability of other companies to produce make clones) and terrible for the people he directly affects.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[Hatta]

I'm sure Bill Gates has excellent credit already.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[LandDolphin]

More Companies make money because of Microsoft then Apple. If Apple had Microsofts market share with their current business model, how many other companies would not exsist?

I read that as...

[ciderVisor]

"unexpected parents".

I thought TFA was surprised to find that he wasn't a product of the immaculate conception.

Re:*cough*

[harryandthehenderson]

I'm pretty sure they were referring to only those people who are currently CEOs. Not people who haven't held the position of CEO of a company for 9 years.

Clarity for you

[SuperKendall]

*cough* Bill Gates*cough*

He said famous, not infamous.

Gosh, I almost misread that...

[idontgno]

"The Unexpected Pants of Steve Jobs"

Like he inadvertently wore Hawaiian-print Bermuda shorts with his mock turtleneck.

The weird thing is that we'd probably never notice, with the RDF making us see what we expect.

Pardon me, but...

[denzacar]

How do you "almost misread" something?

P..P-a... (OMG! PANTS!)...P-a-t... (OMG! SOMEONE MISSPELLED PANTS!)...P-a-t-e... P-a-t-e-n... (OMG! SOMEONE HAS NO CLUE HOW TO SPELL PANTS!)... P-a-t-e-n-t... (OH! Not really pants... OMG! I ALMOST MISREAD IT AS PANTS!)... P-a-t-e-n-t-S... Patents...

Re:Absolute Bullshit

[tkohler]

It's called a design patent and they are almost worthless except for stopping exact knock-offs. Design claims have no bearing on function so he didn't "patent a staircase", he patented "that particular look of a staircase".