Apple Mines App Store Submissions For Patent Ideas

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Apple has started filing a bunch of patents on mobile applications. That might not be so interesting in and of itself, but if you look closely at the figures in one of the patents, you can see that it's a copy of the third-party Where To? application, which has been on the App Store since at least 2008. There's also a side-by-side comparison which should make it clear that the diagram was copied directly from their app. Even though it's true that the figures are just illustrations of a possible UI and not a part of the claimed invention, it's hard to see how they didn't get some of their ideas from Where To? It might also be the case that Apple isn't looking through the App Store submissions in order to patent other people's ideas, but it's difficult to explain some of these patents if they're not. And with the other patents listed, it's hard to see how old ideas where 'on the internet' has been replaced with the phrase 'on a mobile device' can promote the progress of science and useful arts. This seems like a good time to use Peer to Patent."

Comments

It's not a good thing but not the problem stated

[SuperKendall]

Reality 1) Apple is not submitting patents around what the application does. The patent has nothing to do with what the app actually does, even though the illustration is used.

So in fact it's just another annoying software patent.

Reality 2) This is actually the bad thing, that people seem to be overlooking - isn't it copyright infringement on Apple's part to be lifting app screens basically wholesale?

So the summary (and most of the posters here) are totally wrong about what is bad about this.

So you see, Apple users can easily admit when Apple is doing something wrong, and in fact even correct you about why it is wrong - because we are thinking more rationally about the real problem, and not just about how much we hate Apple and hey here's an awesome negative article on something Apple is doing.

Contrast this to people such as yourself, who are pathologically incapable of admitting when Apple does something good.