iPhone SDK NDA Remains in Place for Patent Reasons?

[MacRumors]

One DaringFireball.net reader speculates that the reason that Apple is maintaining the Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for the iPhone SDK is due to patent reasons.

We know Apple’s been building up a patent strategy around multi-touch; maybe their lawyers believe there are patentable inventions described in the iPhone SDK and they are telling Apple to keep everything under NDA until they know provisional patents can be filed within a reasonable amount of time

By keeping it under NDA, the information is supposedly still considered non-published.

Article Link

 

[applefan69]

thats actually kinda possible actually makes sense

Since the future is inevitably leading to multi-touch technology... like possibility of EVERY electronic using it.

Now if apple has the BEST multi-touch SDK (cocoa touch) developers will want to use apples SDK to for all development of multi-touch which in change makes apple #1 for the future.

Soo its possible apple wants to make sure everything is in THEIR name, and they dont gotta deal with any crap from microsoft or something.

 

[sebastianlewis]

Or they could become the Qualcomm of Multi-touch which would be annoying.

Sebastian

 

[GroundLoop]

Or they could just be waiting for the SDK to stabilize. That way there aren't millions of books publised that will be out of date within weeks of going on sale. How many people are on waiting lists to get iPhone development books? How many of those developers would be pissed off to find out that their purchase is already out-of-date.

We all know that there are additional featers being implemented in the SDK as we speak (push notification services).

Hickman

 

[BornAgainMac]

Multi-thought interface will be the next thing after Multi-voice. Microsoft had everyone use Multi-Kick interface I mean Multi-Boot back in the 90's.

 

[studiomusic]

Hickman

Whoa! You have the same name as my cousin who does patents for Apple (and many others)... so I was kind of shocked to see 'him' posting details...

 

[Night Spring]

By keeping it under NDA, the information is supposedly still considered non-published.

I thought that the only people who signed the NDA are those who paid to get into the developer program? And even if everyone who downloaded the free SDK did sign an NDA, arguing that something that's been distributed to tens of thousands of people hasn't been "published" is pure nonsense, and should be laughed out of any court.

 

[The Phazer]

I thought that the only people who signed the NDA are those who paid to get into the developer program? And even if everyone who downloaded the free SDK did sign an NDA, arguing that something that's been distributed to tens of thousands of people hasn't been "published" is pure nonsense, and should be laughed out of any court.

Indeed. If it wasn't published it wouldn't get copyright protection.

But it is. So it does.

Phazer

 

[kdarling]

Huh.

Must be an incredibly slow news day, to take someone's wild speculation and make it stick out like this.

Multi-touch has been around for years. Anything related to it that was actually patentable, would be so specific that others would simply do it slightly differently.

The NDA thing is totally ridiculous. Since almost anyone can get access to the information, what's the point?