For the people who have really good inventions and they're poor people. Then patents are generally a good thing. But, when like apple comes along and does something like patenting the ipod user interface, then i guess it gets sort of dumb. Patenting a user interface? What if someone else in the world makes a blender with the ipod interface not even knowing that ipods exist? You could like use the touch sensitive wheel to change the speed and whatever, etc (might actually make a really fun and easy to use blender that would really hit off with ipod owners).
How many manufacturers of media player devices use the ipod interface, but with some slight differences so that it becomes an ipod like media player interface. I know sansa has for sure, the only difference for them is that they have an outer wheel you need to physically turn to raise or lower the volume (better in my mind because touch interfaces at many times can suck). My meizu m6 even has an ipod like interface, it looks different, but really works on the same principles. When there's dumb patents, people will continue to baby sidestep issues so they don't get a lawsuit. Unfortunately, ipods are really popular, which also makes their interface really popular too, which also means that every mp3 player brand needs to try to replicate the ipod interface differently every time. I personally really preferred my old cowon iaudio g3 interface to my meizu m6 interface (it had tactile buttons that were positioned great that even a blind person could use the player, if they just replaced that tiny joystick with 4 separate directional buttons instead i'd still have my old player). The ipod like interface i'm still getting used too (i like my buttons). Now a good deal of everyone who buys mp3 players may suffer the bad fate of the evil ipod interface. You can bet that when people make something like a user control interface for a device that their going to accidentally rip on another device that has a similar interface regardless of whether they like it or not (there's thousands of devices out there, there's going to be 100% exact similarities sometimes).
Which reminds me. Has someone patented general voice activation technology (another part of some other interfaces like ms sync or hand free car cellular systems)?
