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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 14 2013 @ 07:49 PM EST |
"PJ could have used any other example of the asserted Apple patents in this
case, to the same effect. They are all just as absurd as the 'rectangles with
rounded corners' missive you objected to."
No, I don't think so. That's really the heart of my objection, and I apologize
if I
didn't explain it clearly enough. Legal concepts require precision, even when
they don't necessarily make sense at first. If a person gets hurt on another
person's property, any lawyer will want to know (as a first question) *who the
property owner was, and the "status" of the person injured*. Not
because of
the potential recovery (although, *cough*, that might be an issue) but because
of the legal distinctions. Licensee/Invitee/Trespasser (and the state- not all
jurisdictions follow these distinctions). Was it a child (attractive nuisance)
and
so on. Or if a person is fired, they just know that they were fired and it was
wrong. A lawyer needs to know (inter alia) if they were fired for an
impermissible reason (defined by statute) or there was state action (was the
employer the government).
Same here. The design patent wasn't for "rounded rectangles". Both of
us
know that. Design patents require a bit more precision than that. Moreover,
no one seems to bring up the related trade dress claims. And these are very
different than utility claims.
People might argue that there are only "so many ways" in which to make
a
bottle- and there are only so many ways! Most bottles (even in silhouette) are
rather minimalist. And yet... bottles are protected (by design patents, trade
dress, and/or trademark). If you doubt this matters in the law, you are
welcome to do you own independent research; google scholar is a great and
free resource for finding cases.
But that goes to the main points; the conflation of various types of patents
and causes of action doesn't help. Precision really matters. I would 100%
agree that a person can't "patent rounded rectangles". But a company
can get
a design patent to protect their design; perhaps you think Apple's minimalist
designs don't deserve protection or aren't a unique identifier of their brand
(that's a factual question, beyond my scope), perhaps you think Samsung
didn't infringe on their design patents and/or trade dress (that's opinion, and
I don't know), and perhaps you don't like design patents, or just don't like
them in tech. Which is fair, but that's normative- not descriptive, and
unhelpful.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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