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I see my comment has stirred up some controversy.

Payed is actually an alternative, but archaic spelling of paid.In terms of copyright and patent reform? I strongly agree the Pirate Party on this.
1. Copyrights will last for five years only.
2. Patents will be eliminated.
3. Decriminalization of things such as file sharing.Once again, yes I can jail break it. But then I could get worms, which I don't want, and it's too much of a hassle. I should have full control of the device right when I buy it.When did I not have the right to choose what I want to do with my own money? When did Apple have the right to patent the way something looks?
Perhaps you are correct, but Apple has made it rather difficult to install Mac OS X on any non-Mac machines.I like Apple's products, I just don't like how they control what we do with them after we buy them.

By the way, I used to make a Firefox theme, but not for a living.

All exactly what I would expect from an Alter Bridge fan.

I'm sure there will be lots of high ticket R&D once people can't patent their ideas and everyone can just free ride.
 
I'd loooove to see Microsoft patent the OLED screen in an MP3 player (Zune HD) so Apple can't use it for their next-gen iPod Touch. Then we'll see agreeable Apple is.

Always a one-way street of "artistic license" borrowing when it comes to Apple. :rolleyes:

Seems Apple patents all the good stuff. First.

If only MS did this. If only MS did that, etc. etc. But they didn't, and aren't. Funny how Apple is consistently the one to come out with the most desirable, most coveted, most imitated products.
 
All exactly what I would expect from an Alter Bridge fan.

I'm sure there will be lots of high ticket R&D once people can't patent their ideas and everyone can just free ride.
All exactly what I would expect from an Apple fanboi.

R&D is good. If people can share ideas, it creates competition, which is good. You may think I'm dumb, but the Pirate Party is the 3rd largest party in Sweden. Over 20% of people ages 18-29 in Sweden agree with me.
 
All exactly what I would expect from an Apple fanboi.

R&D is good. If people can share ideas, it creates competition, which is good. You may think I'm dumb, but the Pirate Party is the 3rd largest party in Sweden. Over 20% of people ages 18-29 in Sweden agree with me.

Lol. Sweden. I'm a patent attorney, not a fanboy. And if you think anyone is going to spend a billion dollars researching the cure to a disease when they can't patent it, your understanding of the way the world works is as poor as your taste in music.

Ps: there's a reason sweden is not a powerhouse of technical innovation. Though their meatballs are nice.
 
Lol. Sweden. I'm a patent attorney, not a fanboy. And if you think anyone is going to spend a billion dollars researching the cure to a disease when they can't patent it, your understanding of the way the world works is as poor as your taste in music.

Ps: there's a reason sweden is not a powerhouse of technical innovation. Though their meatballs are nice.
Yes, because money is more important than people, right on! And if you think my taste in music is poor just because I like Alter Bridge, then your taste in music is as poor as your understanding of the way the world works.
 
R&D is good.

what an insight!

If people can share ideas, it creates competition, which is good.

sharing ideas creates competition? how exactly? most competitions i see don't have a high degree of sharing :) it's not the nature of competition.


You may think I'm dumb,

didn't say you are dumb, just don't think you have ever had to pay your way with the fruits of you creation. i'm not defending apple as glorious and innocent corporation - they have enough money. i am questioning your philosophy that people should create something (an OS, a brand, music, whatever), and then give it away and watch others make money from it. this is fine when you are a philanthropist millionaire, or a radiohead millionaire who can afford these 'gestures', but for most creators, especially those starting to invent, design, compose, that is not daily reality. though if i remember correctly, sweden is the country where the state pays for your costs, while you sit at home and develop playful firefox themes.

the Pirate Party is the 3rd largest party in Sweden. Over 20% of people ages 18-29 in Sweden agree with me.

what was that slogan again? "eat sh*t - 60 billion flies can't be wrong!"
 
Yes, because money is more important than people, right on! And if you think my taste in music is poor just because I like Alter Bridge, then your taste in music is as poor as your understanding of the way the world works.

Oh I see. The companies should do the r&d without any possibility of recouping the expenses. Makes sense. Oh, wait - then they'd run out of money and not have any left to pay the scientists working on those cures. But I'm sure the scientists will work for free. And the scientists' landlords won't ask for rent, and neighborhood restaurants will feed them for free so they can work on those cures. And the restaurants' suppliers will give them free meat and produce, and the chefs will work for free, all so that the pharmaceutical companies can find those cures and not have to patent them in order to recoup a massive r&d expense.

Because that's how it works in Sweden, where there are so many inventions.
 
A maglock patent?

The referenced patent seems to have nothing to do with Maglock. Instead the patent is for the "ornamental design" of the adaptor.

See: http://www.google.com/patents?id=h7...rce=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Companies get "ornamental design" patents all the time. They protect the look and feel of the design, which after all is as much an identifiable and unique result of engineering investment as technologies such as Maglock are.

Apple is going after knock-offs, and it has a right to in the U.S.
 
Looks like somebody is working for apple. This guy is no better than a M$ troll. Just ignore him. These knockoffs are why apple replaces my power adapter every time my dog chews them up.

If you'll notice, Berio registered that name with MacRumors just today, for the apparent reason of merely being a twaz.
 
If you'll notice, Berio registered that name with MacRumors just today, for the apparent reason of merely being a twaz.

i registered today, because it was the first time i felt like replying to some posts here.
i did not set out to be a twaz, whatever that is, but to reply to some of the posts claiming that apple should have no right to protect their creations and IP, blathering on about magsafe, when the suit does not seem to be concerned in any way with the magsafe, etc etc.

the emotional reply is that i "must be working for apple", instead of addressing facts.
 
Seems Apple patents all the good stuff. First.

If only MS did this. If only MS did that, etc. etc. But they didn't, and aren't. Funny how Apple is consistently the one to come out with the most desirable, most coveted, most imitated products.

Top 10 Features That Apple Stole From Microsoft:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/top-10-features-apple-stole-windows-966#

And just to show you I'm a fair guy here (unlike some of you hypocritical fanboys):

Top 10 Features Microsoft Stole From Mac OSX:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mac/top-10-features-microsoft-stole-mac-os-x-971?source=fssr

Just imagine how "productive" our computer-using worlds would be if each company rabidly protected their concepts and sued others for using it.
 

I guess Apple stole all the good ones.

Over the past decade in the consumer market . . .

MS:

Vista (failure)
Xbox (successful)
Zune (failure)
Zune HD (not sure yet - but it isn't looking too promising, and is in a market Apple chewed up and spat out two years ago)
Windows Mobile devices (failure)
Pure and Turtle (WTF?)
Windows 7 (finally)
XP (was alright - for a dog of an OS - back in 2001. But still?? LOL)

MS can barely get their software right. But Excel is great!

Apple:

iPod + itunes (unbeatable to this day)
iPod Classic (what started it all)
iPod Nano - video (already making waves)
iPod Touch + App Store (revolutionary)
iPod Shuffle (meh, hot and cold)

Macs

Macbooks
Macbook Pros
iMacs
(leaders in customer satisfaction; dominate the Premium end of the market)
Macbook Air (not a sales leader, but imitated relentlessly)

iPhone + OS X + App Store (revolutionary, currently unsurpassed)

And I'm not even including software here, aside from OS X.

And of course, we move on to the much imitated interfaces that go with these great Apple products . . .


http://thenextweb.com/2009/11/11/microsoft-admit-copied-apple/

http://www.osnews.com/story/22480/Microsoft_Manager_We_Copied_the_Mac_OS_X_Look-and-Feel

http://www.pcworld.com/article/182080/windows_7_inspired_by_mac_heres_the_guy_who_said_so.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/12/simon-aldous-windows-7-in_n_355043.html


And all from a company a fraction of MS' size and manpower, with a fraction of MS' R&D spending.
 
Sanctimony: a show or expression of feelings or beliefs one does not actually hold or possess

How can sanctimony be uninformed?

Protecting IP is not necessarily SOP for many US based corporations, many put their IP in the public domain (look at any open movement: standards, OSS, patent donations, etc). Many corporations apply FRAND licensing principles in order to have the technology contained within their patents widely adopted.

These actions are not in breach of any fiduciary duties. The risk of licensing fees due to prior patents is irrelevant in this specific context.

The USPTO does not apply any laws in cases of patent infringement, Federal courts do. It applies laws in the way it reviews and grants patents. "The role of the USPTO is to grant patents for the protection of inventions and to register trademarks."

Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

Do you even know what FRAND means? My comment was about PATENT PROSECUTION, not LICENSING STANDARDS. Get it? BTW, check Merriam-Webster. "Sanctimony: affected or hypocritical holiness." Sanctimonious or not, you are definitely uninformed.
 
I guess Apple stole all the good ones.

Over the past decade in the consumer market . . .

MS:

Vista (failure)
Xbox (successful)
Zune (failure)
Zune HD (not sure yet - but it isn't looking too promising, and is in a market Apple chewed up and spat out two years ago)
Windows Mobile devices (failure)
Pure and Turtle (WTF?)
Windows 7 (finally)
XP (was alright - for a dog of an OS - back in 2001. But still?? LOL)

MS can barely get their software right. But Excel is great!

Apple:

iPod + itunes (unbeatable to this day)
iPod Classic (what started it all)
iPod Nano - video (already making waves)
iPod Touch + App Store (revolutionary)
iPod Shuffle (meh, hot and cold)

Macs

Macbooks
Macbook Pros
iMacs
(leaders in customer satisfaction; dominate the Premium end of the market)
Macbook Air (not a sales leader, but imitated relentlessly)

iPhone + OS X + App Store (revolutionary, currently unsurpassed)

And I'm not even including software here, aside from OS X.

And of course, we move on to the much imitated interfaces that go with these great Apple products . . .


http://thenextweb.com/2009/11/11/microsoft-admit-copied-apple/

http://www.osnews.com/story/22480/Microsoft_Manager_We_Copied_the_Mac_OS_X_Look-and-Feel

http://www.pcworld.com/article/182080/windows_7_inspired_by_mac_heres_the_guy_who_said_so.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/12/simon-aldous-windows-7-in_n_355043.html


And all from a company a fraction of MS' size and manpower, with a fraction of MS' R&D spending.

*sigh* Once again, I'm forced to do your dirty work for you. lol ;):p

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/top_10_apple_products_which_flopped.php

Microsoft surely isn't alone in hit and miss products there, bub. :D
 
Really? It's a power adapter for God's sake... Pretty soon people are going to start suing Dixon Ticonderoga for making pencils that look "too similar"...

If the Apple power adapter is not a unique, readily identifiable design, you will be able to post at least one picture of a similar looking adapter from another manufacturer for something besides an Apple product. Go ahead. Try to find one. If you can't, then you're wrong.

Your pencil analogy is ridiculous. There is a natural design for a pencil because it needs to fit in your hand in a fairly specific way to provide the necessary degree of control. Until Apple started manufacturing their laptop power adapters, no one else had created one with a similar design (at least not similar enough to possibly be mistaken for an Apple adapter).

The issue it hand is simple. The manufacturer in question intentionally and obviously copied the physical, visual design of an Apple product. Because Apple is not a charity, freely giving away their designs to competitors, they are enforcing a patent that covers the physical design of this power adapter.

The amount of whining over this whole thing is truly pathetic.
 
*sigh* Once again, I'm forced to do your dirty work for you. lol ;):p

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/top_10_apple_products_which_flopped.php

Microsoft surely isn't alone in hit and miss products there, bub. :D

That's it??? That's all you can come up with? Notice what all those products have in common? You've either never heard of them or, in the case of the Lisa, they were essentially a prototype. The Newton is only thing on that list that Apple actually spent some money on and tried to sell for a while, and it's now regarded as a product that was way ahead of its time.

That list is proof of one Apple's key strengths: they understand the nature of sunk costs. They kill obvious failures immediately, with very few exceptions. This is in stark contrast to most companies, notably Microsoft who just keeps pouring money into failed products even when they are loudly rejected by consumers year after year after year (e.g. Zune).
 
How does this...
60WMAG.jpg

not infringe on this?
P1020604.jpg


That's the worst design copying I've seen in ages. Anyone defending this third party company is a complete douche bag.

It's already being discussed that this copy crap is confusing customers. They look identical minus the apple logo.

It really isn't that hard to change the design, maybe even the color to at least show some type of innovation.

Hilarious. You would think that posting these pictures side by side would put an end to the discussion immediately. The 3rd party adapter is obviously a blatant, illegal knock-off of an Apple product. Normally, there wouldn't even be a question about legality or ethics in a case like this. All I can do at this point is laugh and thank you for a brief moment of sanity.
 
you agreed to a license when you bought the os, if you didn't agree you should not have bought and installed it

Nearly unrelated, but this gets me.

1. I buy an iPhone. I want the device, but not the extra obligations their lawyers tucked in with it. If I get a $50 discount on the iphone, I just paid for a portion of the package. Show me that I didn't receive a portion of the package. Specifically, the parts that appealed to me in the first place. The hardware, the software, but didn't pay for, and didn't get the legal ball and chain.

2. I find a macbook in a landfill. I sign nothing, and pay nothing. How then am I entering into a license? By standing near it?

3. I paid for OSX. I am bound by its license. A friend comes over though, to whom it is not licensed, uninstalls it from the dead imacs HD it resided on, and installs it on some piece of junk beige box instead. If I had not been a party to this happening, who doth the gossamer diamond tether bind?

4. Is software still software if its not installed on anything & running? Or is it just potential software? If the software isn't the disc, but the pattern of the information on it, what then of a pattern containing the same information, but in a different order? It's all ones & zeros, just arranged in different orders. How different til a license doesn't cover it?

Honestly, as a creator and as one who started out my career as a victim of a $36mil IP theft, I sincerely understand people protecting what they worked for. But when someone pays for one of my works and possesses it, it's theirs to do with as they please. I don't like it when they buy my products and clone them, but the reality is, as the originator of any design, I get about 3 months to capitalize before the knockoffs flood the market. It's what drives me to keep on creating original works. Otherwise, I'd sit on my ass and collect a royalty check from my first contribution, and our sport, and our industry, would not have made the progress it has. For every negative, there is an equal & opposite positive...
 
I had the beginnings of one of those too, with meltdown and smoke as I typed.

What really gripes me is that there would be no market for knock-off adaptors if APPLE made theirs correctly!!

That's total BS. There's nothing wrong with the current power adapters. Apple had a design problem with the first ones, admitted it, and replaced them at no charge.

I've used the replacement adapter for three years. Used it HARD and have not had a problem. There is no problems with the currently shipped adapters other then people wanting to buy off-brand for a lower cost.

On the dark-side I used the same adaptor for 4 and a half years with my Dell. My APPLE adaptor showed signs of weakness after only 6 months!!

...and how well did the replacement work? I'll wager it has worked well and is still working. I'd also wager Dell would switch to a magsafe adapter in a heartbeat if it weren't for the patent.
 
Top 10 Features That Apple Stole From Microsoft:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/top-10-features-apple-stole-windows-966#

And just to show you I'm a fair guy here (unlike some of you hypocritical fanboys):

Top 10 Features Microsoft Stole From Mac OSX:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mac/top-10-features-microsoft-stole-mac-os-x-971?source=fssr

Just imagine how "productive" our computer-using worlds would be if each company rabidly protected their concepts and sued others for using it.

You've obviously never used NeXTStep or Openstep, let alone betas of both that had countless numbers of features both Apple and Microsoft stole from NeXT.
 
The challenger will lose.

With all due respect, this is a baseless statement.

Magnetic plugs have been around for a while, so unless Apple has contributed something unique and integral, it is not clear that it will survive a challange.

But Apple relies on the fact, that this is probably not worth the cost of litigation to anyone, so nobody has bothered to do it.

I love Apple's designs, but Apple is a terror to smaller companies. And that's not so good for innovation.

If Xerox was as litigation-happy, and had filed a suit against Apple for ripping off its Star interface immediately, before the statute of limitation ran out, there is a good chance, that there wouldn't be Apple today, and the face of personal computing may be rather different. We all would have lost.
 
I don't know what some people here are getting steamed about. As far as I'm concerned, Apple is doing it's customers a favor by patenting the Magsafe and making sure other companies don't make knock offs. I, for one, don't want any 3rd party knock off Magsafe connected to my Macbook Pro. When it comes to my equipment, I'm just not a cheapskate and I don't want any power adaptors damaging my Mac. If something happens with Apple's Magsafe, what happens? We go to Apple. If something happens with the 3rd party Magsafe and it screws up my Mac what happens? Most likely the 3rd party won't help you and Apple won't cover it.

Absolutely 100% agreed with this.
 
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