Ideas are cheap, implementations are expensive. It may well be that Google copied ideas from the iPhone but it didn't copy the implementation of those ideas. It still had to pay people to write software to implement the ideas and functionality. Companies and competing software copy features all the time and I think that goes on across industries. If you are competing with a company and that company offers a feature or service that you do not it is natural for you to also want to be able to offer it too otherwise you do no remain competitive. This is usually a two way street. The implementation of the feature or service still isn't free just because someone else thought of it first. Putting some kind of blocks in place to say that no-one can do something because someone else did it first just seems to get in the way. If Microsoft copied Google's techniques for the Bing search engine they still have to implement it. If they steal code then that is a copyright issue not a patent one. What happens if other engineers independently come up with an invention? They didn't steal anything in that case it was their own idea, it just happens some also thought the same. Both Germany and the UK invented a Jet engine independent of each other and without knowledge of the other. The copying of and then improving on features and functionality back and fourth between companies moves industry forward. It keeps companies having to innovate and come up with more new features to stay competitive. People would not buy Android phones if they didn't offer something that the iPhone didn't even if that is a more competitive price. If Google is able to deliver a product with a similar specification but a lower price then that is in itself innovation and part of healthy competition. If a feature is really easy to copy then it is also probably not that innovative. If it was hard to implement it should be hard for others to implement too.
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