I think if we lived in a world without patents, many of the anti-IP people would be advocating for a requirement that companies like Apple publish the nature of

I think if we lived in a world without patents, many of the anti-IP people would be advocating for a requirement that companies like Apple publish the nature of their inventions. It need not be one or the other. In the specific patents under discussion, I hardly think competitors could not figure out how to implement multi-finger touching, or pinch-to-zoom. An idea that is easy to re-implement (or has a means of implementation obvious to industry workers) once made public simply shouldn't be protected by patent. By and large, companies can work around patented implementations, but not when they are so broad as to essentially encompass the whole idea (e.g. unified search, or multi-touch sensing). In the first place, patents are granted for specific implementations, not ideas. It's clear to me that the standards and enforcement of the obviousness principle need to be raised.