The Wireless iPod Is Patentable?

from the not-this-again dept

There's a bit of buzz this evening over the revelation that Apple has filed a patent on a wireless version of the iPod. That Apple is at least thinking about a wireless iPod isn't all that newsworthy, but what no one seems to be addressing is the question of why simply adding a wireless connection to the iPod makes it patentable. A patent should be non-obvious, and plenty of people have been discussing the idea of a wireless iPod for years. It seems that companies now try to patent every new product they have, whether or not it's really a non-obvious idea or not.
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  • identicon
    Boilerbob, 15 Nov 2004 @ 7:54am

    Is the idea non-obvious or the solution?

    I'm not a patent expert, so I could be wrong but isn't the solution supposed to be non-obvious not the idea. A fuel-efficent car is a dream of many people but if I invented a car that gets 500 mpg I should be able to patent that.

    Even with that said, I agree that is sounds like Apple doesn't have a non-obvious solution either.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mark, 15 Nov 2004 @ 2:06pm

    No Subject Given

    The patent request was filed in 2003, so it's not much of an indication of what Apple's thinking about now, but more of what they were thinking about some time ago.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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