ok people use your heads. Patents are granted for specific implementation of an idea.
No. Copyrights are granted for specific implementations, patents are granted for specific concepts and methods.
Patents are abstracts, they have nothing to do with concrete implementations of products. That is what makes them such a powerful weapon when you have enough money to pay the lawyers. And that is why only large companies benefit from them.
Anyway. Everybody who has been watching Sci-Fi movies in the last 40 years has seen more than one version of a tablet computer. Star Trek Next Generation is full of them. There's hardly a captain's cabin scene in which Picard is NOT reading from a tablet and that series is already twenty years older than the iPad.
I think that it is very valid to refer to movies or novels as prior art. After all, this is where most of the actual product ideas come from anyway. Just because somebody implemented a working product doesn't magically make it "the original". When you build the first working space elevator, you will still "only" have implemented Arthur C. Clarke's basic idea.
By the way, everybody who has read "Revolution in the valley" should know from where Steve Jobs stole the idea of "rounded corners". Hint: Just take a closer look at the next traffic sign that you see. So much for the originality of the iPad's rounded corners.
Apple's current campaign of lawsuits is only about this: They know that they cannot win, but they need to delay the competition for as long as possible.
The iPhone 5 is late and will probably have not much new to show when compared to current high-end Android phones. Apple have lost their advantage and they know it. In fact, most major features of iOS 5 and the iCloud are basically Android and Google rip-offs.
The situation in the tablet market is also about to change, and not in the favor of Apple. Android 3 has finally arrived and there are now even tablets out there that can compete over the price and software is being written for and ported to tablet Android in masses. No software developer will or can ignore the Android market. Apple is no longer the only serious player in the field.
Remember the Lisa, the original Mac and then this ugly abomination called Windows on PCs? I think we all know how this ended for Apple. What makes anybody in their right mind believe that Apple with its closed, proprietary platform and Walled Garden is going to dominate the tablet and smartphone market forever?
Licensing iOS would have been the ONLY move to ensure market domination, and that is, as we all know, the one move that Steve Jobs would never make. Instead of following the old "divide and rule" tactic he rather watches somebody else level the field and take the lead. Apple never played well with others and as long as Steve runs the company, they never will. For some strange reason, he seems to believe that he can turn back the time in the IT industry to the 1950s/1960s, where one company alone owned and controlled the entire market: IBM. His arrogance will eventually be Apple's downfall.
But it will all be over anyway on the day that he checks out from Apple. There is no successor, he made sure of that. Just as if he had used the old Highlander mantra: "There can only be one." He might be like "a good King of France" in the worst sense, but he has vision and drive and today's Apple is an incarnation of that vision. He's the artist and the company is his canvas. But none of his lieutenants will be able to walk in his steps. They can only institutionalize his achievements, but nobody at Apple could build on them. When Steve leaves, Apple will cease to create and innovate. By that time, they'll be just another IBM or Microsoft, only with a Douglas perfume image around them.
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