Perhaps the auto industry's period of innovation and establishment happened during a more rational patent regime.
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.
Google "George Selden patent"
Anyone except Microsoft would have come up with just that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?