Creativity And The Patent Wars
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-09-18/creativity-and-patent-wars
Last month, Apple won a landmark patent case against Samsung that sent shock waves through the market for mobile devices. But it's just the first round in an intellectual property fight that will determine how companies design and manufacture products to compete with Apple. We consider the effect of the ruling and what it means for the future of the mobile market.
Guests
Ben Bederson
Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland-College Park; and Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Zumobi
Laura Sydell
Digital Culture Correspondent, NPR
Jorge Contreras
Associate Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University
Comments
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Industrial design is the place where function and form merge, crash and blend.
And the law melts into chaos:
Copyrights cover expression but not function.
Most Patents cover function but not design.
Design patents cover ornamentation but not function.
And confusion covers most of us.
Please, have the experts speak to the tests used to distinguish between art and utility.
The law has built an array of confusing filters to supposedly parse and toss material into the appropriate genre of protection.
Then please discuss the design patent standards.
This stuff is not apparently complex but the concepts to be applied are actually very cool.
We are literally asking how to cleave a line between that which gives us function/utility and that which imparts joy/pleasure.
On things like coffee makers and phones....
And I believe the Samsung jury was wrong in so many ways but mostly by being hijacked by a pseudo 'expert' juror.
I hope Samsung appeals that decision because these were invalid patents that should not have been upheld.
And Apple made a big mistake changing their plug... though I understand why they did it. The problem is, that it does not matter how many adapters you have... that $100.00 speaker dock you were using with your old devices will need to be fully replaced otherwise the entire weight of the phone will rest on the adapter instead of the support structure of the dock. People will have to just buy a new one. So sad... unless you were one of the companies that made the docking speaker systems and were hoping for an artificially created second wave market! Yeah for you!