Actually car companies are starting to patent vehicle control interfaces, (for e.g. Teslas patents for Sunroof control interface [1], Audio Control interface [2

Actually car companies are starting to patent vehicle control interfaces, (for e.g. Teslas patents for Sunroof control interface [1], Audio Control interface [2], etc) If the current craze of IP-as-offensive-weapon were the trend back in the days where basic vehicular controls were being defined, I think we would have seen some similar behavior from car companies - (and in my opinion, their case would be more defensible than Oracle's software API copyright protection). [1] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140095029.php [2] http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20140403ptan20140096003.php Edit: typo