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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

How did this patent get awarded? ZX Spectrum... C64... Atari ST... and countless other 8 bit computers were exactly this.

How does anyone at apple even dare to patent this?

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Because there are, as far as I know, no actual penalties for filing complete horseshit patents, and sometimes they even get granted.

It wasn't awarded. It was just filed by Apple (in August). It's likely in the review process now. It might be awarded, but patent applications get rejected every single day so this one might as well.

Read the claims. Did any of those have internal power supplies (battery?), a touchpad, active cooling, and a single Type C port?

None of that is innovative in a way not obvious to any engineer in the field. It's basically a laptop without a screen. Being the first to combine a specific list of features is not necessarily patentable by itself. The combination would have to, paraphrasing various patent laws, surprise an expert in the relevant art with its originality or non-obviousness.

I'm not a lawyer, only someone who has a few utility patents. My opinion so far is that my patents are not particularly innovative, but I assume there's a numbers game to it for corp attorneys which encourages them to file these.

Also, afaik the more specific the patent (must have battery, screen, and connect A and B with wires), the less useful it is. So if the independent claims at the end of the patent come with a lot of caveats, they are less and less easy to find targets for enforcement.

Are any of those things the least bit non-obvious?

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