Patents are a funny thing. Depending on how you view economic progress, they’re either essential for companies to even dare try to innovate, or lethal because they hold back any and all experimentation. I fall into the latter camp, and one of the latest patents out of Apple really take the cake. The California company has filed a patent for using the space behind their logo to house an antenna. What’s essentially happened is that now any other company who even thinks about putting wireless antennas behind their brand name can be sued for violating Apple’s intellectual property. Do you understand how insane that is?
Now of course that’s not how patents work. Most, if not all of the time, they’re used as a means of negotiations. Companies trade patents like teenage boys trade Pokémon cards. Company A goes to company B and says “I’ve got 1,000+ patents and I want to build a product, but I’m going to need to use a few hundred of your patents to do it”. Company B responds by saying “feel free to use our patents, but we also want the rights to use patents X, Y, and Z”. Both companies come to agreement, sign a contract that was carved onto the belly of a virgin using a dagger that killed the antichrist during the last millennia, and then you get to go to your local BestBuy and pickup a gadget that’s slightly faster, lighter, and cheaper than the one you already happily own.
The Apple patent in question mentions both the iPhone/iPod touch and notebook computers, so it’s likely that we’ll see both product families get this feature shortly. Patently Apple, the guys who discovered this new patent, say it’s the third patent Apple has filed during the second half of 2010 that relates to antennas. Looks like the company doesn’t want a repeat of the iPhone 4 PR nightmare.
[Via: The Unofficial Apple Weblog]