How do you know it wouldn't have occurred to someone else working in the same field? I find the assumption of the patent system that the patented innovations wouldn't have happened without being patentable to be fundamentally flawed. That may be true for fields with huge R&D cost, like medicine, but in fields with near-zero R&D cost like software I find it hard to argue for the necessity of any sort of patent protection.
And yet, repeatedly in its history, Apple has come out with major new inventions, while its competitors seem to just ship the same old stuff.
The primary improvement for most PCs has always been the work of Microsoft or Intel, not Dell, HP, et al. Yet Apple has worked to actually improve the design and technology of the PC itself.
The truth is, genuine innovation is exceedingly rare. Nobody was working to revolutionize the cellphone industry except Apple. Apple was the only one who cared, and that's why they caught everyone flat footed.
Anyway, patents don't require that nobody else be working on the same thing you are, quite the opposite: patents are designed to get everyone working on this new invention, by publishing it.
Two people who happen to come up with the same method at the same time is so rare I cannot think of a single example... and if they did, there would still likely be differences that result in both getting patents (even if one of them gets the patent on part of the solution because he files first.)
If samsung had been doing the fundamental research that would allow them to release an iPhone type device in 2008, Apple being to the patent office first would not have been a problem for them--- because the phone they produce in 2008 would have been so different because they would have had 5-7 years of working in isolation with the priorities of a korean company and sensibility of korean culture.
They would have produced very different solutions to these same problems if they had been working on them.
Instead Samsung was not working on a touch UI, not even trying to do novel work, and simply decided to copy apple thinking the litigation risk was worth it.
Anyway, patents don't require that nobody else be working on the same thing you are, quite the opposite: patents are designed to get everyone working on this new invention, by publishing it.
They seem extremely poorly designed for this goal.
Edit: Just as an example. Our company had one of the lawyers come in and talk about patents in our office for a couple hours one day. They wanted to encourage us to file them for any work we might be doing. One of the first things he told us was to not ever search through existing patents for any reason whatsoever.
Has anyone ever tried reading through patents for implementation details? They are so vague (it's like technical writing translated by lawyers to be purposely vague) that it's completely useless.
The vast majority of times, there is nothing in the patent that can't be learned from just interacting with the patented object.
Especially given that the term of patent is 20 years. In the case of software, it's often the case that technology will have moved so far in 20 years that the invention will no longer be particularly useful.
1. It's not apple that put a PC on every desk, but microsoft. It's not apple that put a smartphone in every pocket, but google.
2. If genuine innovation is exceedingly rare, why is there almost one patent granted per US citizen per year?
3. Nobody working in software looks at patents. The whole idea that software patents are published to spread ideas is absolutely laughable to a programmer.
4. Two people arriving at the same idea independently and then arguing over who stole whose idea is a constant throughout history. Many inventions are misattributed. See newton v leibniz, edison v tesla, bell v gray, and many incidents along the same vein.
5. Samsung has always spent more than apple on R&D. That's why the iphone is filled with samsung hardware. Much of what the iphone is wouldn't have been possible without businesses like samsung ensuring the hardware existed in the first place.
But yeah, samsung did rip off the icons and bezel, and for that you're right to blame them. I don't consider that issue related though to apple's heavy-handed claim on multitouch utility patents. Apple isn't just going after samsung, they're going after everyone. They started with samsung to get a precedent.
