2011/3/7 Josh Berry <[email protected]>
>
> The conclusion I draw is that the entire clone market would not have
> existed had patents entered the equation.
First of all, software patents already existed back then.
Second, Gates intentionally decided not to file any patents nor enforce
copyright on PC-DOS. It was a business decision, and quite a visionary one.
Finally, none of this has anything to do with the topic at hand ("Are
software patents evil?").
Then, there is the question of whether or not MS would have been
> screwed had Apple held patents on their UI implementations.
This is a bit too far in history to actually be meaningful, but I have a
much more current and more relevant example to give you: Apple and Android.
Obviously, Apple has a lot of patents on the iPhone, both hardware and
software, which Android had to skirt around.
It doesn't seem to have stopped Android from 1) innovating and 2) being a
success. I'll even argue further that the very existence of these patents
belonging to Apple is what forced Android to innovate a lot more than it
would have if these patents didn't exist in the first place.
--
Cédric
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