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David/Goliath Story Brewing Between Apple and iControlPad Makers
relliker writes "Apple has just patented a design for an iPhone gaming add-on after admitting that the iPhone is somewhat hard to use as a games machine. The catch is that the design is not theirs. It was designed by a team of gaming aficionados, one member of which, Craig 'craigix' Rothwell of OpenPandora fame, is already twittering like mad about the shot just fired by Apple in their direction. The iControlPad team are in contact with their IP lawyer, since their design is already in production. Will Apple still try to steamroll right through them?"
This is about an iPhone docking station, essentially.
Not software.
At least checkout the links before blindly spouting off something that, while still likely to get a +5 insightful, is -infinite Offtopic.
it's true the issue is to do with hardware, but note this: the iControlPad team are up in arms talking about 'their rights' and how they've been 'ripped off' and 'infringed' yet if you visit their site you will see they are more than happy to promote this - through screen-shots and videos - as method for running pirated games, such as Super Mario Kart and (what looks like) Mario Brothers DS. Could that be... 'hypocrisy'?
If the "Icontrolpad" people would have purchased a license to use the iPod dock connector then things might be different. Instead, the Icontrolpad people chose to use Apple's patented iPod dock technology without a license. And their product only works with jailbroken iPhones - so after infringing on two (or more) of Apple's patents / copyrights they decide to complain when Apple patents technology similar to theirs.
So what shall we as Slashdotters choose as our position on this issue? One one side we have a large (and getting larger) corporation that turns out some pretty popular devices. On the other side we have a small company whose product violates the big corporation's patents and copyrights. It's tempting to beat on the big corporation but it's not Microsoft and we're not quite sure how. And while it may feel good to support the underdog - in this case, the underdog's hands are dirty and their product can't be legally sold. I'm sure this will get bent all kinds of ways and I'm going to enjoy seeing how the trolls work this one...