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Comment by Duff | Hacker News Reader

I'm really torn by this debate.

On the one hand, for an idea so obvious, Apple was first for both phones and tablets -- and they were "first" very late in the game. Microsoft OEMs made tablets for a decade, but NONE of them (even the slate tablets) really compared to the iPad.

On the other, I don't see how this is a patent. It feels more like a trademark, although the design of the iPad is probably too general to trademark.

My question is: How did the auto industry resolve this? Early cars looked like horse carriages and steered like boats or trolleys. How did the development of the timeless car design patterns (sedan, coupe, wagon, van, pickup, etc) get to the present state?

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"How did the auto industry resolve this?"

Perhaps the auto industry's period of innovation and establishment happened during a more rational patent regime.

The early automobile and airplane industries were full of all out patent wars. The airplane patents problem were only settled quickly by World War I and an act of Congress.

Early 20th century patents only lasted, I believe, 17 years, so all those particular basic fights are long in the past. We're just living through the opening rounds of this battle.

Not really.

Google "George Selden patent"

Interesting. Then according to this result, http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsseldona.htm , one rational response to patent trolls (established and loved, or merely trollish) is to not pay, to fight.

You imply that Apple's design itself is innovative. That is exactly what the article disputes with a picture from July 2008. A simple tablet with just one button.

Anyone except Microsoft would have come up with just that.

It is innovative by definition, because nobody did it before.

If it's so simple, why didn't Samsung do it?

Paperclips seem like a obvious design that involves no innovation. Yet paperclips similar to what we use now weren't around until 1867, and the "modern" paperclip was patented in 1899 -- 30 years later.

It doesn't matter if Samsung did it. It just matters if someone did it. The article clearly shows prior art for Apple's design patent.

I would argue the prior art for that is the iPod Touch which was out a year earlier, and probably conceived earlier than that. When I heard "iPad" rumors in 2009 the first thing I thought was "a big ipod touch." So what's to say these guys didn't see the pod touch and say "Yeah. That. But big"

That's fine any dandy, but I believe Apple is claiming a design patent specifically on the iPad. If we take the iPod touch as prior art, it still invalidates the iPad patent.

Not if the iPad patent was filed in 2004.

Fair enough. The patent actually shows a tablet that looks less like an iPad than it does a generic Tablet PC that one might have bought from Dell in 2004, though.

If it's so simple, why didn't Samsung do it?

Because nobody wanted a tablet until Apple told them they did. When there's no market for a device, you don't make and sell one simply because you can. Unless you're Steve Jobs, that is.

There were tablet PCs earlier. Were they usable? No. The point is, minor usability improvements aren't worthy of a patent. Just look at how bad the patent situation is, and how much of that is due to ridiculously silly patents.

the auto industry never got into this mess because car companies weren't quite so evil, and patent judges at the time weren't quite so stupid. yes, apple is at fault here for pursuing their patents, but the real problem is that the patent courts are actually granting design patents for rectangles. if you want an analogy to the car industry, it equivalent to patenting the a round wheel, and saying that other cars should try different shapes for their wheels if they don't want to infringe. this was never an issue, because the system wasn't so broken back then.

I'm glad you brought up Microsoft tablets! It's an excellent point because in all this talk about how the design of a tablet is obvious no one seems to get that it could have and has been done differently in the past. I think a lot of why it's obvious now is because the iPad is the point of reference. If the iPad didn't exist we may have a different view of what's obvious. Even if you take industrial design practices into account that doesn't mean manufacturers would have followed them like many imply.

I feel like there's too much talk about patents. I want to avoid talk of patents, trademarks, and the whole debate surrounding them. Instead, if you first focus on what's really going on here you see things differently. You'll see a tablet that came out first then another competing tablet that looks almost identical. Patents and trademarks aside its pretty hard to miss the similarity and if you consider that MS tablets and other previous attempts weren't designed that way then the whole "obvious" argument goes out the window.

It's normal for competing products to have the same features and many other similarities but there's a point where the competition stops making a competitive product and comes out with something that's a rip off. Patents and trademarks are things we should discuss and are important topics but in this case they're just a tool Apple is using to stop getting ripped off. I know they're abused but I think it's justified in this case. Look at the Samsing tablet next to an iPad. If you don't see the outright plagiarism then youre trying not to see it. I think this is a pretty clearcut case that's getting convoluted by people who are trying to tip toe around the plagiarism by making this about the merits of the patent/trademark system and laws.

Plagiarism? ROFL. Astroturf much? Small, thin, black, touch-screen devices with centered buttons. There's not a lot of room to vary, and no reason to disappoint consumers and make it thicker than need be, etc. Next you'll be telling us Star Trek infringes on Master and Commander because a ship full of people explore and fight.

As for the merits of patents, they exist solely as a tax-funded subsidy for lawyers and lobbyists. They're useless verging on incredibly damaging for industry and thus consumers.

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