This again.
They did not patent 'the rectangle'; they fought on the trademark look and feel of the iPad, which is more than just the shape.
US Design Patent 504889. That is the "Rectangle with rounded corners" patent. They lost that particular claim against the Galaxy Tab, which is what they had the injunction granted on earlier this year.
US Design Patent 618677 would be considered the same "Rectangle with rounded corners" patent but as it applies to the iPhone. A few Samsung handsets were found in infringement of this patent in the decision.
Read the entire claims and verdicts next time before you tell people what is and isn't "patented" by Apple.
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I guess what I'm really saying is that Lodsys is probably entirely in the wrong to go after developers using IAP in iOS App Store apps, because whether they realized it or not, they already granted that license.
Exhaustion seems to be quite the popular argument with Apple patent lawyers. They used it against a few FRAND patents by Motorola and Samsung (saying that simply buying the chips from Qualcomm/Broadcom covered them) and in this Lodsys business. I'm starting to wonder if they even read their licensing agreements.
No one here can claim with certainty that the license Apple holds really covers anyone but Apple, as we don't have access to the licensing contract that both entities signed.
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We should have a simple "use it or lose it" patent system to stop patent trolls like this. You have 12 months to bring your product to market from when you file the patent or you lose all rights to it. No selling patents, no assignments, etc.
No, we should simply stop allowing software concepts to be patented. Software concepts are a dime a dozen and usually quite obvious once you run into the actual problem the concept solves and you try to solve it.
Put 30 programmers in a room, ask them all to solve a problem with software and most of the solutions will be the same, even if you prevent these guys from talking to each other.
Software is already protected by things like Copyright and Trademarks. Coming up with the concept or method to solve a problem is the easy part of software. Writing the code, testing it, implementing it in a solution and bringing it to market are the hard parts that actually take time and patents don't protect these.