I originally posted this to the G+ app on the tablet, but have rewritten large parts of it here.

I was reading an article linked below on the tablet when I clicked a little “sharing” icon in my browser which passed the link to another application (G+). According to a recent ruling, you won’t be able to buy an HTC android device that can do that after April, 2012 (unless HTC figures out another way to do it) because Apple says they patented the technique in 1996. Apple was making Newtons and Power PCs running MacOS in 1996. The patent diagram even includes a floppy drive!. How ludicrous is it to try to apply a technique developed for an operating system long since abandoned (in favor of a open source unix OS) to shut down the use of a “similar” technique in an open source unix OS (android) developed 15 years later? Ironic because you have one company (Apple) which has built its last 10 years of success on top of an open source OS (OSX from BSD Unix) and is claiming another company can’t use some little piece of open source code because its similar to something they got rid of because it sucked?

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If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813