Oh, anonymous chicken, the hideously broken US patent system is hardly Apple's fault - all US corps face the same problem and it is now seen as an unpleasant cost of business.

Of course, if Creative had worried more about making a decent product and less about patenting the screamingly obvious it might still be relevant in the media player business.

Oh.

Look up "pyrrhic victory".

12, you are just making yourself look a bit of an ass now,

You should probably stop while you still have some dignity.

They've spent millions patenting and then copying others

This sentence makes no sense at all.

Only found out about 3 hours ago from the little tribute at the bottom of Google.

R.I.P Steve Jobs!

In reply to a post by ian_c:

Exactly what innovations have been stifled?

Hackintosh.

In what way is a hackintosh an innovation?

In what way are they stifled?

In reply to a post by ian_c:

In what way is a hackintosh an innovation?

So you can run Mac software on a PC.

In what way are they stifled?

Apple took the manufacturers to court and stopped them.

So you can run Mac software on a PC.

Macintoshes are PCs

Apple took the manufacturers to court and stopped them.

That didn't stifle innovation, it prevented copying.

In reply to a post by ian_c:

So you can run Mac software on a PC.

Macintoshes are PCs

lol

Apple took the manufacturers to court and stopped them.

That didn't stifle innovation, it prevented copying.

Nonsense - things can still be copied.

Nonsense - things can still be copied.

Things can also still be stolen. That's not legal either.

In reply to a post by ian_c:

This sentence makes no sense at all.

That shows how little you know of the patent system. Patents can be filled before there is a working prototype, and you if you are the first to patent an idea (even if another company invented it) you get rights to it. So apple spend their time patenting other peoples ideas (often taken from OSS), then stealing them, then suing everyone else for doing the same.