Just when you thought the patent system couldn’t get any more absurd, the US Patent and Trademark office goes out and does the unthinkable: granting Apple a patent for the original iPad design, including a nice looking rectangle with rounded corners. Wait, what?
“This design patent gives Apple no new advantage, because no one is out there trying to market an iPad lookalike,” said Lea Shaver, Associate Professor with Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law. “It’s not a game changer. It’s just a little bit of positive news in an otherwise bad week for Apple, between the Wisconsin dismissal and the mishandling of the UK apology.”
We’re not sure what kind of drugs Shaver is on, but we’re pretty sure most tablets on the market these days look exactly like iPads. I know, you’re crying fanboi and bias, but it’s a simple reality, just take a look at tablets before and after the iPad. It’s pretty obvious what the game-changer was over time.
The new patent (D670,286) was filed a couple months after the original iPad was announced. Now that Apple has another patent behind its lawsuits against Samsung and other cloners on the market, you can be assured that Apple’s about to assert its rights any moment now.
Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel, for another edition of how the patent-lawsuit turns…
