Is "the progress of science and useful arts" promoted by granting monopolies over such things? That is, would Apple have chosen not to create the iPhone without patents like this? I think not.
>That is, would Apple have chosen not to create the iPhone without patents like this? I think not.
If you take only one patent as an example, maybe not. But if Apple couldn't secure ANY patent on the iPhone, and any competitor was free to copy it as he liked, well, not only the might have not produced it, but the very industry might not even exist and have the scope it has today.
Aren't the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S3 functionally equivalent? For the sake of argument, haven't competitors succeeded in "copying" the iPhone to their hearts' content? Note that trade dress is a class of IP on its own that definitely has helped Apple, since competitors can't create products and try to pass them off as the iPhone itself.
The iPhone is a very successful product, and it owes very little of that success to patents.
There were few-to-no software patents until the 80s. In that period there was rapid progress, and many new industries; some say much faster progress than since.
It's true that when some areas offer artificial monopolies and others don't, investors like the former. But extending the domain of monopolies isn't the only way to debias that.
Apple makes the Mac Pro, the iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, which are all generic computers, which anyone can (and does) copy. Do you think they would not do it since they can't patent a laptop computer, that's rectangular? Or an all-in-one computer? Or a tower computer?
