Apple Trying To Run All Content Sales Through Its Own Sales System

from the that-might-not-go-over-so-well dept

Apple continues to make the iPhone/iPad app platform as obsessively controlled as possible. The latest are reports that Apple is starting to block other apps that sell content within their apps -- i.e., no more Kindle purchases on your iPad. The story is that Apple now wants all such purchases to go through Apple's cash register, so it gets a cut. Of course, that just seems like another opportunity for folks to seek out alternative solutions, such as via web apps, which Apple can't block. This seems like the sort of move that could backfire on Apple. It's no secret that the company likes to control such things, and to force everything through its own gateway and payment systems (where it gets to take a cut), but if it keeps doing things like that it's going to piss off an awful lot of potentially useful partners.

Filed Under: apps, content, ipad, iphone, itunes, point of sales
Companies: apple

IBM Patents 'Paper Or Plastic'?

from the patent-examiners-apparently-don't-shop-much dept

Slashdot points us to the latest absurd patent to get approval from the USPTO. IBM has been granted a patent on the concept of storing your packaging preference information on your customer card. Yes, basically, the act of storing whether or not you like paper or plastic bags on your customer loyalty card is considered such an original idea that it deserves a monopoly.

We've been having some debates over the last few days in the comments on the question of "obviousness." This patent hopefully demonstrates the point that many of us are trying to make. The defenders of the patent system will claim that this is a perfectly reasonable patent because no one has done it before (where's the prior art, etc?). But that doesn't get into whether or not this is actually obvious. Customer cards store all sorts of information. Should we give someone a patent on each and every one? The implementation isn't hard at all. If you were to ask your average (or, even below average) techie, how they would go about storing and retrieving such information, they would do so in an instant. It simply makes no sense to award a long-term monopoly on adding just another bit of info to your customer card. And, yet, that's the system we have these days.

Filed Under: obviousness, paper, patents, plastic, point of sales
Companies: ibm