iPhone patents

“Wil Shipley on Apple’s decision”:wilshipley.com/blog/2010… to be aggressive on their iPhone patents:

"But when you sue someone for doing something you do yourself, you become one of the bad guys. Can you name a company _you_ admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac?"

And “my tweet on this”:twitter.com/manton/st… from yesterday:

"This iPhone preemptive patent war is going to backfire. You're losing the battle for our hearts and minds, Apple."

Whether Apple wins this patent lawsuit or not doesn’t even matter; the old Apple many of us fell in love with is dead and maybe never coming back. I still want to think of Apple as the company that fights the good fight, innovating and putting user experience first. But you have the App Store exclusivity and rejections, and now you have the patents.

It’s a shame they’ve gone so far off course. Regardless of market share and billions in revenue, I’ll always hold Apple to a higher standard than every other mega corp, and hope not just for better products but also for leadership and doing what’s right.

Manton Reece @manton