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Apple Files Patent For Digital Wallet and Virtual Currency
another random user writes "Apple has applied for a patent on a combined virtual currency and digital wallet technology that would allow you to store money in the cloud, make payments with your iPhone, and maybe communicate with point-of-sale terminals via NFC. The patent application, published [Thursday] by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Organization, details how iPhone users could walk into a store, pay for goods with their phone, and walk out with their merchandise. Though Apple is late to the virtual wallet game, that doesn't seem to stop them trying to patent the process. There does not appear to be anything in the patent application which describes something that can't already be done."
"Apple files patent for wheel"
It's a shame so many other companies have ripped off Apple's innovation in the mobile payment market. The audacity of them, to release stolen copies before Apple even finished thinking up the idea...
Caveat: This is the engineers understanding of the patent process as explained by the legal department. I won't bet even two cents on it being right.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
'Erm', it's called a Japanese cell phone from several years ago.
The idea of patenting an idea, material or process in this day and age makes no sense to me. /rant
All these things are built on 10.000 generations of improving upon others inventions, and the changes are incremental. What hubris to claim an idea or process as your own? Marketing an idea et al. for profit needs no such protection (see the fashion industry). It is a cowing to profit beyond the interests of society as a whole. And this is even ignoring the fact that due to the principles of discovery many idea's, materials and processes can be discovered near-simultaneosly.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
More metadata for the NSA to harvest!
Whenever a patent story comes out, everyone's concerned about whether the patent will be used to lock up some obvious functionality. That's not why Apple gets patents. It works like this:
1 - Apple gets patent
2 - Apple sells patent to Irish subsidiary for small amount of money
3 - Apple comes out with iPhone that incorporates patented technology.
4 - Apple pays subsidiary royalty on patent for each iPhone sold
In this way, Apple moves profit on iPhone sales from Apple itself to the subsidiary. The subsidiary is incorporated in Ireland, so it is not taxable in the US. The subsidiary's major operations are in the US, so it is not taxable in Ireland.
Profit!! Tax-free!!
Patents are no longer an IP strategy. They're a tax avoidance strategy.
Most of this appears to already appears to happen on my android phone (NFC payment via Google Wallet). So apparently something you can already do is now novel if you do it "on an iPhone"?
Bitcoin exchanges sued in 3...2...
Apple files patent for digital wallet drivers license,receipts, business cards,proof of insurance and condoms.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
This is the kind of shit that drives us crazy, but if we were running a company like Apple, we would do the exact same thing. In this climate you have to patent taking a crap and the manner of wiping said turd residue of the user's ass - otherwise some fucktard patent holding nonmanufacturing entity will come along and sue you for inventing sharks with frigging lasers on their heads because they bought up an old patent which described something something something in the water something something.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
How the hell did Apple file a patent on this. This concept has been around in Japan for 10 years. The patent system here makes no damn sense. Now there will likely be patent infringement suits that will drag on for another 10 years. Who foots the bill for all the courts and Justice's time, we the taxpayers of course. We got to change the system so that frivolous patents are not awarded.