Thanks to the iPhone, Apple has become the largest publicly traded company in the world and stashed 100 billion dollars in the bank.

They did this without winning a big trial against Samsung, HTC or Google. I don't think Apple needs to win this or another patent trial to have the incentives to build top quality products. On the contrary, letting them secure a monopoly on all these good ideas might diminish the incentive for innovation. They already have ridiculous profit margins[1], which if anything indicates a lack of competition.

[1] over 50% gross margins: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-apple-margins-i...

Then it must also make you question your stance on recipe patents, fashion patents, and screenplay patents.

After all it would be so nice if Microsoft patented kernel low level algorithms and we would not be able to run these cheap Linux servers in the US.

Or if IBM patented them first in which case MS and Apple would not even exists, long live software patents.

Sorry for the sarcasm.

I would suggest we are not even talking about software patents but design and dress patents. I dont really think you can compare low level kernel algorithms to a visual design and dress patents. So to me thats an unfair comparison. In fact according to to other documents Ive seen, these are all dress patents being argued over.

Usability is technology. In every case in the document, it's, we got it wrong, the iphone got it right, let's fix it. Not, let's copy the look and feel of the iphone, it's purely a usability comparison not a style comparison.

In other words, you dont know what a design patent or a dress patent is. gotcha...