I was reading about Apple’s frivolous sewage (aka lawsuits) recently and as a techie and having read through a number of these so-called patents I realized that whoever was approving these patents surely did not understand the techno babble they were reading. Here are a few examples, I’ll spare you the details:

Patent #7,383,453: Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor … Approved in 2008. WHAT? Devices have been doing this for over a decade and Macs were some of the latest adopters of this technology!

Patent #7,633,076: Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices … Approved in 2009. Um, can I say HAL9000? “Hello, Dave.” Oh, I guess Steve wants us to believe it’s a new invention when it happens in a Portable Device? Well, since HAL9000 was in a spaceship that would certainly qualify as a portable device now wouldn’t it? I mean portable toilets certainly don’t fit in your pocket do they?

Patent #7,657,849: Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image … Approved 2010. Not sure how many gestures he invented, but it seems to me that the “slide to unlock” is what they are referring to. Except that that was invented in 1987 by none-other than Predator! Gestures have been around for years on PCs for all kinds of things, most recently window “tossing”. Did you notice the scene from Minority Report using pinch zooming? Picking one, implementing it on a mobile device, and claiming it an invention is really a stretch. Honestly clicking/tapping is as much a gesture as sliding is.

So before you defend Steve Jobs’ right to his own intellectual property we need to consider certain legal factors. First of all what exactly can legitimately be patented? Well this is not really rocket science, and is left for the legal system to hash out. Specifically, as I understand it, “any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof” can be patented. Thereafter the patented object would be considered an “invention”. In the world of software there’s a very interesting dynamic that occurs. You see software is just that, soft. It runs on hardware, that is tactile, and hard. It has screens, and sensors, and bells, and whistles. There is not a lot of trouble with patenting hardware inventions or “useful improvements thereof” the problem comes when someone tries to patent software methods of using the hardware, because, well, the fact that the hardware is capable of doing what the software asks it to do is testimony of it’s pre-existing ability to do that thing. Since the pieces of hardware that do the “thing” that the software does are all patented and clearly inventions, then the software represents a “use” of a pre-existing invention.

This is the gray area that Mr. Jobs along with most companies play in. For instance, Palm was one of the first portable producers of touch screen style mobile devices, however, when Apple decided to enter the market they had no qualms about producing their own touch screen oriented software. Not only does Palm have patents, but they were also very obviously ripped off by Jobs using the same reasoning that Apple is using to attack HTC.

Software is a soft world where ideas are distributed and multiplied infinite times. Just the name of a menu item, or a certain creative use of mouse motions, could conceivably be considered an invention. However, these micro ideas do not really represent patent worthy inventions IMO. Not so much because they aren’t often clever, but because they are uses of an existing invention.

I could try to patent the use of ones finger for the removal of dried mucous from the nasal passages, maybe say my special way requires a certain twist at the end, however, that would be as absurd an abuse of our legal system as Apple’s claims have been. There is something amiss at Apple and this is only the beginning of the can of worms that is about to be unleashed.

Die hard Apple fans will undoubtedly cry foul whether they understand the techno babble or not. Who invented icons, windows, the mouse, all have answers and all have different explanations. None of them are as simple as Steve Jobs would like the world to believe:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it…” – Steve Jobs

It’s again like playing pickup basketball with someone who only calls the fouls of folks on the other team, and throws a tantrum if anyone tries to call a foul on them. There’s a lot of fouling going on in a good game of basketball, both ways. If the referee has never seen basketball it’s like playing with no ref at all.

So before you get your sticks ready to beat Steve’s opponents into submission, listen carefully, HTC has a boatload of its own patents and will certainly be pulling out a list of things that Apple has not paid them for the right to use. Now watch out for Adobe, Google, and maybe even Microsoft to get tired of Apple proclaiming their monopoly on all software innovation. Apple is making enemies hand over fist these days and theirs is not likely a righteous battle.

What does this have to do with WWJD? Well, next up some thoughts on the internet in general. Specifically, internet content. An area full of techno babble with the word “free speech” mixed in, and resulting in a perverse and by many physical accounts illegal underworld where jurisdiction is virtually non-existent. Even if the naughty servers are right next door to the White House. Signs of the times.