Apple was one of several manufacturers bringing hardware innovations happening in the industry to smartphones: Large, colourful LCD screens, mobile processors,

Apple was one of several manufacturers bringing hardware innovations happening in the industry to smartphones: Large, colourful LCD screens, mobile processors, GPUs, and wireless technologies. None of that was pioneered by Apple (paradoxically a lot of it was courtesy of Samsung). A lot follows from what is made possible by the new hardware. Imagine that tomorrow someone -- say Apple -- makes a device that can read your thoughts. Nokia rushes a thought-reading smartphone to the market just before everyone else gets their own thought-reading smartphones on the market. Does Nokia suddenly have a worldwide exclusive right to it? This is all very similar to the countless "on a computer" patents.