I know Joe is a fan of Formula 1, so I thought I'd add this to the discussion.
Last season, the Brawn GP team started the season with a new part called a "double diffuser". They had clearly spent time and money developing this innovation, and it gave them a competitive advantage, and their car was by far the quickest. Had Brawn been able to patent that design and stop all the other teams from using something similar, then the season would have effectively ended after the first race. Instead, Brawn had an advantage for a few races until the other teams also got similar parts, but it was enough for them to win both the drivers and constructors championships. Comparing this with software patents, I think the Multitouch feature is similar, in that it was first brought to market by Apple, and it's given them a massive advantage and they've sold a lot of iPhones. Now the other manufacturers are catching up, and it's up to Apple to find another killer feature. Consider if someone had patented 'The Web Browser', and decided it would only run on Windows, then there would be no iPhone and probably no Apple. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
