The Day After iPhone Was Introduced By Steve Jobs, Google Scrapped Android To Copy Apple.

[joshcryer]

67. The concepts are not particularly innovative.

It's more that technological development has become smaller and smaller and faster and faster to a point where we're kind of shocked with where it has landed. In 2002 Palms were clunky devices, nice screens, extremely expensive, crappy 640 pixel cameras.

The problem is corporations deciding that interfaces like damn swiping or some bit of visual flair like the edges of an icon are patentable. It is preposterous, ridiculous, downright insulting to anyone with rational sense.

Fact is Touch Pads have existed in scifi for decades, we all know how Star Trek popularized them. The Tricorder is our cell phone (all in one device capable of sending and receiving data and taking pictures and whatnot). The tablets used on Star Trek are our tablets. It's not a huge deal for some company to come out and make such systems. It really isn't.

The sad fact is that Apple and Microsoft have been paten trolling over smartphones since their inception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_wars

The worst part is that the judicial system is allowing it to continue and the juries in these cases are hardly equipped to actually determine whether a given patent is legitimate. We need jury nullification for software patents.