It’s easy to find examples of patent abuse but its not often to find a company that uses patents that stifle a whole industry. Such may be the case with the Apple iPhone.
I purchased an iPhone shortly after it came out, because I recognized that it was a revolutionary device. It was not a case of superior specifications, as many devices have better hardware. It didn’t even run on the latest 3G network until the second generation. Rather, it was a superior design, which featured an intuitive user interface that did not try to compete on the number of features but on usability. Apple fully deserves the billions of dollars it has made and will go on to make from its device.
Yet something curious has happened. When Apple introduced the iPhone, those who recognized its revolutionary potential expected the innovations and design concepts it introduced to percolate to the rest of the industry. To an extent, that is happening, but key iPhone technologies -a capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch, a 3-axis accelerometer, proximity sensors, graphics acceleration integrated into the UI, and a number of other key innovations have not been found in competing products. Part of the reason for this has to do with the particular culture and expertise found at Apple, but its indisputable than the 200+ patents covering the iPhone have gone a long way to discouraging competitors, who offer alternatives lacking key features – until now.
Palm, the company who created the first popular PDA is coming out with the Palm Pre, the first device to brazenly infringe many of the key iPhone patents. Apple is already making threatening gestures, so an apocalyptic legal battle is almost certain. Palm is the first company to go against Apple head on because its status as the one-time leader in the PDA and mobile phone market makes it the only company capable of challenging Apple’s leadership. While the Palm Pre clearly borrows ideas from the iPhone, the iPhone itself uses many of the innovations first patented by Palm as early as 1996. Today Palm is a marginalized has-been for whom the Pre is a desperate gamble to save to company, but it still has the patent portfolio of a market leader.
The question of who is the bigger infringer in this battle is besides the point. The issue is that the patent system is limiting innovation to large companies who have established sufficiently large patent portfolios to pose a credible threat of retaliatory patent lawsuits. The best that new competitors can hope for in this environment is to be aquired by the giants or to establish their own patent portfolios – rather than create products than people want to use.
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7 Responses
Excellent and revealing post, David. It provides an example of how one has to look beneath the surface in order to understand the reason for the shape of things in our world. I was just yesterday at the Verizon shop trying to find a new phone to replace my antique. I tried them all but they all seemed like 2-year old technology. Nothing in the store had anything like the features of an iPhone. I left discouraged and still stuck. I would get an iPhone but my own experience is that when I speak to people on that network, the reception is not very good and is unreliable relative to Verizon’s network, so I really want to stay with Verizon (and my extended contract rewards me for that). someone will probably post a workaround, but in the end, it is rather strange that innovations could be so firm-specific and not industry wide.
Many things make me worry for the future: the monetary system, government debt levels, taxes, etc, but I think we have to add the patent thicket to the list. It has become a real enemy of progress, and a major factor in the cartelization of business and its long-run stagnation. It is also deeply troubling to see how globalized the system has become. Very scary.
If I remember correctly, Apple has even patented the dock that they have in Mac OS X. They have sued into oblivion anyone who tries to make hardware capable of running their operating system. The funny thing is their hardware is pretty much commodity, save for EFI instead of a BIOS. The clone PCs even bought their operating system, as in the case of Pystar.
jeffrey: have you looked at the Neo FreeRunner? Open-source phones, that’s the ticket!
“I purchased an iPhone shortly after it came out,”
Congratulations, you have just kissed Apple’s and Steve Job’s asses.
I would never buy an iPhone loaded with usage restrictions and carrier restrictions and anti-tempering restrictions.
As far as I’m concerned, iPhone is a piece of junk.
Personally, I think that NOTHING will ever stifle innovation and that new inventions which circumvents patents will always be possible.
Like a voice interface instead of a touch screen etc.
I think that in the end, those who cling to their patents instead of inventing will lose.
Invention is like the market, it’s a force too big to be regulated into oblivion by the government.
Apple has just declared war to the entire world and I placed my bet that Apple will lose against the entire world.
History has repeatedly proven that nobody can conquer the world, not even Apple.
Apple will be out-invented by competitors and will become obsolete even with truck-loads of patents.
After-all, the film camera is patented, that doesn’t stop the fact that today’s digital cameras out-compete film cameras.
Well, Apple with it’s patents will be “filmed” out by competitor’s innovation.
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