News - Apple patent MacBook Air shape and metallic style

[007]

Hopefully, Intel looses patient shortly and will no longer be interested in supplying Apple. Let them be really creative and R&D focused . I Used to just dislike Apple, now I hate them.

[abaxas]

Hopefully, Intel looses patient shortly and will no longer be interested in supplying Apple. Let them be really creative and R&D focused . I Used to just dislike Apple, now I hate them.

So who do you prefer?

Monopolies?
Nerdy semi finished software?

The new apple kit is nice. Expensive but nice, I'll wait for the next refresh and a refurb store bargain.

[007]

Please, do not try to tell me that apple didn't have a monopoly on mind whilst going for the ridiculous patenting war.

Sure, Apple products are 'nice' but far from perfect, software not that much better than alternatives but with plenty of limitations and their reliability record ,especially while considering lack of low end, is not impressive at all.

[DR]

Why can't a company patent a design?

[kopite]

Why can't a company patent a design?

I think the problem here is the design was something already out there.

IMO most of apples design patents are on obvious things that other companies are doing already...

[DR]

I think the problem here is the design was something already out there.

IMO most of apples design patents are on obvious things that other companies are doing already...

Who said it was already out there? it can take years for a Patent to be granted.

[3dcandy]

to be completely precise there were very similar designs out way before the Air was launched...that is the issue many are having, and it is also a pretty generic shape for a laptop...

[kopite]

The x505 was out in 2004 and has a design very similar to the Air.

It might have been in the pipeline for a while but over 8 years for a patent to be granted?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Prior art though - it just shows how crap the US patent office is IMHO. However,since Sony is Japanese,why do they care??

The X505 had a wedge shape in 2004.



Having said that some,of the thin and light laptops look like MacBook Air clones. They should try and least be original IMHO.

[aidanjt]

Why can't a company patent a design?

Because a design isn't an inventive, useful, piece of intellectual effort, it's squiggles on a page which merely house a particular class of device. The only thing design patents deliver on is providing broad sweeping anticompetitive lawsuit cannons.

[kopite]

Because a design isn't an inventive, useful, piece of intellectual effort, it's squiggles on a page which merely house a particular class of device. The only thing design patents deliver on is providing broad sweeping anticompetitive lawsuit cannons.

Which in Turn seem to stifle innovation.