If the US patent office can grant a patent for a stick, i’m sure it can grant this one.

meta data has been around in MacOS since the 80's. Meta data is something MacOS knows really well.

If you had not noticed most companies that have something to sell don't try to make money off of patents but generally defend themselves with it.

Patent claims are designed a certain way.

If you put all the details into one enormous claim, then the patent guys could find one niggly problem and there goes the whole thing.

So they layer it. A typical patent application might look something like this (converted to plainer speak).

1. WE OWN THE INTERNET!

2. Like 1, but not. Only when playing games. WE OWN ONLINE GAMES!

3. ...

27. Like 26, but not. Only when your gaming client automatically scans the users hard drive and issues topical insults after you've 0wned their character in World of Warcraft.


If all you show is claim 1, of course it looks silly. Hell, on that basis I own the concept of code generation. But the guts of my codegen-related parent don't get interesting till about claim 11.

Apple is like Microsoft in every way. The fact that Apple is the "underdog" (read: hasn't succeeded in reaching Microsoft's stature) shouldn't obscure that fact, and shouldn't be taken as an excuse to give Apple a free pass for all its dirty tactics.

'Apple is like Microsoft in every way'.

I presume that would be claim 1 in the great design of patent claims as described above. Not sure it will get any more interesting (or indeed accurate) by step 11 mind.

Spyinthesky

Apple actually creates usable stuff with the idea of helping the end user and benefiting from this creation.

Microsoft can't create anything. By the time they know there is a new idea and understand it the idea is huge in users minds and experience. They steal the code directly and try to make it work in their kludge OS. They partner essentially same as previous method. They buy a working product and employees who know how to create, if potential partner is too smart to work with them. They use their money to cut off your air supply or any other illegal way to eliminate competition. Microsoft always looses any fair fight because they have no creative capability, no skill in creating likeable or usable product, no vision of where the market or users want to go in the future.

Apple has phenomenal vision and the skill to know what people will want and create it before the market gets there. They know what makes people care about a product and leave all else out, so products serve people well emotionally, functionally and intrinsically work like people think and feel they should. Apple creates highly desirable and highly functional products 99% of the time. Microsoft steals the same or creates a kludge 1% of the time .Any MS product forces people to function in a way that serves the product and infuriates the user. Without vision or understanding of the user they are left to pile huge features in with no vision or concept of the value of these nor how to group them for ease much less simplicity.

To say Apple and Microsoft are the same shows that you are in the Microsoft camp. Someone who is incapable of discerning differences so only crude measures like market ownership rate in your world. If you were self aware enough to understand user designed product verses product imposed control you would have already migrated to using Apple product and freed enough brain cells to have developed some discernment.

I saw it in Pirates of Silicone Beach. Bill Gates and Steve Balmer have a secret building in Redmond where they take stray puppies and kill them. Sometimes, after a round of golf, they go to the Redmond Pound and buy abandoned puppies that they can kill. Just before each killing, they show the puppy the blue screen of death, then send him to puppy heaven. It is really sick that these people have money. It is even sicker that we let their monopoly continue. I hope everyone will write their Senator and ask him to outlaw rich people killing puppies. Steve Jobs would never do this.

Please, no more of the Apple's-the-greatest-in-the-history-of-the-world-Microsoft-steals-everything-including-the-commode comments. They are so '80s and '90s and just boring.
Every corporation, including Apple, would LOVE to be Microsoft in terms of its domination of the computing world. Steve Jobs would LOVE to dictate the course of computing, and don't you believe otherwise. Granted, Jobs has incredibly good taste and maybe it would be a good thing for consumers if he did dictate that course, but still . . .
I'm tired of the Microsoft vs. Apple schtick. It'll take about 5 seconds after I post this for some Bozo to declare that I'm in Bill Gate's pocket or some such nonsense. Nevermind that I've never owned a Windows machine - used them many times, of course, but never owned one. Never mind that I'm IT for a News Room full of Macs and have been for a decade. Never mind that I think OS X is indeed superior to WinXP. That I don't believe Jobs is the second coming of Christ will be enough for some to label me "in the Windows camp." Snore . . .

Oh, stop whinning!

God. Just the sound of your voice makes me want to slit my throat.

I'll bet people in your office work with totally thrashed computers, just because they prefer that to having to ask you to come anywhere near them for tech support.

Oooh, you are so counter.

MS is the reason for all these dirty tactics. Look at the $#!% they have already pulled with the iPod & iTunes.

Cheers! Happy New Year!

Quote

Guest wrote:
Just the sound of your voice makes me want to slit my throat.

Patent claims start more broadly. They layering makes them more narrow. So claim 1 stands on its own. Apple could SUE you for violating claim 1, if it were granted. So using your example, you could sue someone for using the internet because you own it and the patent office granted it. You dont need all 27 claims. The dependant claims (the claims that "layer" on earlier claims) totally depend on the earlier claims (duh?), but each claim may be individually violated. Including claim 1.

Quote

Guest wrote:
Patent claims are designed a certain way.

If you put all the details into one enormous claim, then the patent guys could find one niggly problem and there goes the whole thing.

So they layer it. A typical patent application might look something like this (converted to plainer speak).

1. WE OWN THE INTERNET!

2. Like 1, but not. Only when playing games. WE OWN ONLINE GAMES!

3. ...

27. Like 26, but not. Only when your gaming client automatically scans the users hard drive and issues topical insults after you've 0wned their character in World of Warcraft.


If all you show is claim 1, of course it looks silly. Hell, on that basis I own the concept of code generation. But the guts of my codegen-related parent don't get interesting till about claim 11.