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Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
- aresant 17y agoDon't miss the video of Steve saying "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas . . . " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
- staunch 17y agoPlaying devil's advocate. He could be saying that they're shameless in stealing ideas from different fields, like the examples he gives: music, art, zoology, history. Copying the sleek lines of a panther's eyes for your icons is one thing, blatantly cloning a competitor's UI is another. This may be why he can reconcile suing HTC while practicing the "great artists steal" mantra.
- aresant 17y agoThat's a good point. On the other hand, the legend that Steve lifted the Xerox PARC UI persists -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_i... and
- marilyn 17y agoThe movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley does a pretty good job of telling this story.
- bad_user 17y agoProject Looking Glass, while certainly inspired by current UIs, it was definitely not a clone ... pretty innovative actually, although it wasn't usable yet. You can take a look at a demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g
- rick_2047 17y agoI don't get this idea of sueing just for the sake of it, most of the times they just fall on there faces. Not a good tool to cut down competition. Its like pricking someone with a pin, you certainly annoy them but never actually accomplish anything.
- chubbard 17y agoAt most I thought it was just a distraction technique or see if you can scare them. While you threaten the company with your lawyers and patents the top brass will have to dedicated some amount of time to fight it with their lawyers, figuring out which patents your infringing on, or what they can say to get rid of you. If you're lucky you might get a settlement out of it. Otherwise you've slowed them down a little while they were distracted fighting your lawsuit.
- glhaynes 17y agoOr it can influence your competitors toward a direction that you think is less harmful to yourself: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/apple-talks-tough-to-handset-makers/ http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/apple...
- makeramen 17y agolove it. to quote steve again from his famous commencement speech: for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. I wonder if he's proud of suing HTC over those silly software patents like "Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image" I'm not sure what to be more appalled at, the fact that the patent office actually issued that, or that apple is seriously suing over it.
- mrduncan 17y agoThat's always been one of my favorite speeches. I highly recommend it to anyone who's never heard (or seen) it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
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- GHFigs 17y agoIs there something specific about that patent that you find silly or do you find the whole notion that the specific way that an interface element works to be silly? It seems to me that if such things can't be copyrighted, or trademarked, aren't covered by design patents, and shouldn't covered by utility patents, then choosing to implement something in software rather than hardware would be a losing proposition for anyone trying to differentiate or innovate.
- smackfu 17y agoI think it's a bit silly that you can take a $0.05 component, implement it in software, and get a patent on it.
- GHFigs 17y agoI don't understand. What component? We're talking about software here. Just because an interface object behaves in a way reminiscent of a physical object does not mean it is that object. It has an entirely different mechanism. What you're saying is that one kind of mechanism should be patentable while another should not, but it's not clear why there is a distinction.
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- Nwallins 17y agoSomehow the link to the (awesome!) patent troll patent got hosed up -- http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080270152%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080270152&RS=DN/20080270152 http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...
- delano 17y agoI really enjoyed reading Jonathan's blog at Sun. I'm not sure if he was the first, but he was certainly one of the first large company CEOs to blog and blog candidly (within the constraints of his position). There were a few posts that stuck with me. I remember this one in particular, from 2005, about reducing their customer survey to a single question: would you recommend Sun? http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/defining_quality http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/defining_quality I'm glad he's back at it with this new blog.
- joao 17y agoHere's a photo of Steve Jobs using Concurrence when he returned to Apple, in the late 90s: http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/life/5-1995-1999/08-preboston/lightbox.html#10 http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/pics/life/5-1995-1999/08-pr... Notice that even if he was at a keynote, selling to the world Mac OS 9 and new iMacs, he personally used a PC laptop running a version of NeXT/OpenStep and the software that was sold to Sun. They eventually hired the same developers to build Keynote.
- ovi256 17y agoThe biography on that site is great reading : http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/long/01.html http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/long/01.html I just found a quote from Steve that could be one of my favourites quotes ever: "I started to realize that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Kairolie Baba put together."
- freetard 17y agoRespect for Jonathan, the guy who successfully got Steve Jobs to shut up and back up.
- sabat 17y agoSorry, but I have a helluva lot more respect for Steve Jobs than I do for Jonathan. Steve has legit bragging rights. What can Jonathan brag about? Taking $12 million in severance from Sun while his employees got two months of pay at most?
- runT1ME 17y agoI thought Jonathan's vision of Open Source was pretty interesting. He may not have had time to implement his vision, and he was handed a brilliant but broken company to work with. I've followed his blog closely for the last few years, and I would say he comes off as one of the most in-touch CEO's out there.
- jayair 17y agoWhether or not we respect him for what he has done in Sun, through this post he gave us a window into a world that for most of us is completely hidden. He also showed that it takes balls to stand up to the likes of Apple, MS etc. And just for that he has my respect.
- jonknee 17y agoAnd I have a helluva lot more respect for Bill Gates than either of them. He's done something worthwhile with the riches.
- jacquesm 17y agoHe's done something worthwhile with a fairly small portion of the riches and is using that as a very successful propaganda machine to counter his negative image. Please keep in mind that this was the CEO under which a number of very questionable actions (anti-trust, SCO) were effected.
- mattmaroon 17y ago"Having watched this movie play out many times, suing a competitor typically makes them more relevant, not less. " I don't think that's exactly true. I think suing people has largely no effect on relevance, but you tend to sue competitors whose relevance is on the upswing. Nobody is going to sue Myspace right now for IP infringement, for instance, they're going to sue Facebook.
- Periodic 17y agoIt also seems like the suits that people hear about are the ones involving the hot new companies, which happen to be those who are gaining relevance but haven't yet established their position and thus are still interesting. So we have patent trolling targeting interesting companies on the rise, and the media selecting for stories about interesting companies on the rise. It could definitely be causality in the other direction.
- btilly 17y agoIt is definitely not always true. Some history is illuminating. The first important lawsuit that Apple filed was against the Franklin Ace. This was in the early 80s. Heard about the Franklin Ace recently? No matter how many times people tell Steve Jobs otherwise, he's been here before. And the very first time he did it, he won an important victory.
- jbyers 17y agoRead all the way, it's got a good punchline.
- sutro 17y agoYeah, Jonathan's the big stud who faced down Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Those guys got nothing on him! Except the ability to run profitable companies.
- bad_user 17y agoIn terms of IP, Sun had pretty big cojones ... while the number of patents they got was certainly smaller than Microsoft's, their arsenal touched practically anything you can think of in our field. So yeah, he's the big stud who "faced down Steve Jobs and Bill Gates". If you want to critique something, disagree with what he's saying, since ad hominems add nothing of value and are insipid / rude / a waist of time for everybody reading.
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoI wish someone would point out to me a software patent which he thinks justifies the patentability of software/business processes. I haven't seen any yet which makes me think that software patentability results in an economy more optimal than if it was not protectable under patent (as opposed to copyright) law.
- dschobel 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research MSR regularly does amazing stuff, of which a lot gets patented: http://www.google.com/search?q=MS+Research+patents http://www.google.com/search?q=MS+Research+patents I'd say hiring lots of bright guys and girls and investing heavily in R&D ($9.5B according to 1) constitutes positive economic activity. [1] http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3214217&* http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3214217&...
- Jim72 17y ago"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" - Albert Einstein. Obviously Apple, MS, Google, and others need to do a better job of it.
- Groxx 17y agoThe secret to hiding is to not be the biggest elephant in the stampede.
- wallflower 17y ago$100M+ for infringing on Kodak (Wang's) patents with Java Remote Method Invocation. I wonder why they didn't go after CORBA? (IBM too big?) > Lo and behold, the local jury decided Sun should pay Kodak more than a hundred million dollars. > Groups with no business focus other than litigating patent suits are affectionately known as trolls – pure litigation entities. Patent #5,206,951: Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types http://www.google.com/patents?id=3KUXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=3KUXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Patent #5,421,012: Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types http://www.google.com/patents?id=M44eAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=M44eAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Patent #5,226,161: Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types http://www.google.com/patents?id=wbkXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://www.google.com/patents?id=wbkXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... Patent list: http://java.sys-con.com/node/46599 http://java.sys-con.com/node/46599
- smackfu 17y ago"IBM today announced that it received 4,914 U.S. patents in 2009, marking the 17th consecutive year it has topped the list of the world's most inventive companies."
- wallflower 17y agoThe IP arms race
- yters 17y agoI may be alone in thinking this, but it's odd when people I'd consider pretty rich have blogs with ads.
- yungchin 17y agoHe's probably not even aware of it; it's the default on WordPress. To get rid of the ads, you'd first have to be aware that there are any at all (and you won't normally be served ads when you're logged-in as an author), and then pay for the no-ads upgrade. http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/go-ad-free/ http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/go-ad-free/
- kloncks 17y agoThe fact that Jonathan had the courage to say that is just amazing...
- Gupie 17y agoGood article but scary. If you've a start up without a wad of defensive patents what can you so if a large company gives you a "stepping all over our IP" threat?
- wallflower 17y agoIt is not ironic that Jerome H. Lemelson, arguably the most successful individual U.S. inventor ever [Sony paid him royalties for magnetic tape drive used in tens of millions of Sony Walkman], equated financial success as an inventor with protracted litigation. "The American dream is that if the average American invents something novel and worthy of patenting, he'll find someone to license it. However, for most contemporary inventors , it hasn't worked out that way. The independent inventor today still has an extremely difficult time convincing corporations that he has a product which deserves to be on the market. Most companies have a tremendous resistance to ideas and technology developed on the outside." "You cannot develop a reputation for somebody who gives up. You have to be known as a fighter for your rights. Otherwise, you'll never license anything...Even Thomas Edison had a tough time supporting and protecting his patents. He spent about $1.4 million [to defend his inventions], and this was around the turn of the century, when beer was a nickel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson