All this blog post is one person's misunderstanding of patent and copyright law. Jacques would have been better served trying to understand what trade dress means and why Apple's UI patents were about the implementation and not the idea.
After all the idea of "how to let the user know they have reached the top of the scroll view" can be implemented many ways. Apples is one way. LG, Samsung and HTC all have different ways.
"All this blog post is one person's misunderstanding of patent and copyright law": If you refer to the current patent laws in the USA, then you're probably right. But I think that laws that grant the possibility to give anybody a 20 years monopoly on something like "double tap to zoom" (or "1-click purchase") are completely against the original spirit of patent laws, very stupid, and, most importantly, pose a severe risk of slowing down innovation almost to a halt.
I just hope that this madness will not come to the EU too (eg the 1-click patent was never granted here).
Protecting the hundreds of design decisions that go into making a product look and feel a certain way, against people who are willing to just basically make a copycat product that does everything the same way - that's not so absurd.
I think Samsung lost not because of one specific patent, but because of the overwhelming number of points on which they copied Apple.
Yet the individual patents are still there. If Apple decides to go after any company for implementing a single one they can still do so, and probably will.
Then make the stink when they do. Honestly, as an Apple "fan" who has no plan to switch from MacBook/OSX/iPhone/iPad, if they decide to just sue others for infringing one or to non-important patents I'll stop using their products and devote my time renouncing them.
But that's not happening, and I seriously doubt that would ever happen. We all "know" that Samsung copied Apple in almost every thing. Home screen icons, packaging, UI elements, icons, USB charger, the "Mac mini" clone (which is almost identical to a Mac mini) they made recently, showing App Store icon and icons of iOS-only apps in their booth at a conference, audaciously cloning "Smart Cover", and hundreds of other little things. Their own lawyer failed to distinguish between a Tab and the iPad! They're suing over just these petty patents because they can't sue them over a hundred un-patentable ideas that make a product great and they (Apple) has spent billions of dollars of R&D on researching them.
Every one of these was a "fuck you" to Apple. I'd do the same if I were Tim Cook or Jobs and would want to teach Samsung a lesson.
The purpose of the patent system is not to "teach Samsung a lesson". The purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation.
Apple made hundreds of billions of dollars even with Samsung copying them. If the patent system disappeared Apple would still make hundreds of billions of dollars, thus they would still have spent billions on R&D without the current patent system.
If you'll notice the jury also found that Samsung violated Apple's trade dress--that was the proper way to go after someone who copies the "look and feel" of your product.
Furthermore I don't care whom Apple sues, I care about the broken system that allows them to do so.
I'm not blaming apple for anything. I've used a macbook pro for the last 5 years by the way, and I only recently switched to a thinkpad running linux b/c I don't like the iOSification of OS X, not because I care whom they sue.
I want the patent system to be changed just as much as others, but I find it extremely hard to sympathize with Samsung, or not be glad about the verdict in this specific case.
Hey, I think the patent system is broken too... but I think Apple used the broken tools at its disposal to make what was ultimately a completely fair case.
He pretty much didn't misunderstand anything about patents or copyright law in the post. And regardless, his overall point is correct: Apple is being a bully through abusing the flawed patent system for selfish, even short-sighted gain.
Is it possible that there's in some sense a unique "global optimum" of UI and/or aesthetic design (as opposed to just a bunch of equally good but very different designs), at least as far as is possible under the constraints of available technology and resources at any given time? I would guess probably not for aesthetics (too subjective), but it's reasonable IMO in at least some very minimal cases of UI design - e.g., the idea of using some kind of touchpad gesture to scroll on a laptop. If so, maybe that optimum should be considered a "public good" that no single entity should be allowed to monopolize (or, they could be allowed to monopolize it only for a certain period of time like in the pharmaceutical industry and/or forced to license it for a reasonable fee) - otherwise for all of eternity it's illegal for any other company to use the "best possible UI" in their competing product, and in the meantime the company that filed a patent for it could have stopped developing their product entirely.
Less abstractly, I think the author's point about the standardized "UI" for cars is a good one - society is better off, not worse off, as a result of companies copying each other in the auto industry. If you can drive one car you can drive them all (well...except for the automatic/manual thing). You don't need to spend three days relearning how to drive every time you rent a car. In the same way, society benefits a LOT from familiar UI design across different software companies - e.g., anyone who has ever used any mainstream desktop OS in the past 15 years or so can pretty quickly figure out the basics of any other mainstream desktop OS - they all have programs partitioned into "windows", have a "desktop" with "icons", etc. These UI elements all seem trivially obvious to us precisely because of copying, but there are certainly alternatives to all of them.
The automobile UI standardized far, far earlier than it was regulated. In 1905 there was a regular Cambrian explosion of steering devices - that disappeared when the Model T succeeded wildly.
I suppose Ford should have patented the car UI and still be earning money on it today from every car sold - after all, the Model T was clearly innovation, and innovation should be rewarded with long-term rent.
(I can't believe people can actually think that way.)
After all the idea of "how to let the user know they have reached the top of the scroll view" can be implemented many ways. Apples is one way. LG, Samsung and HTC all have different ways.