msobkow's Journal: Apple Does Make Some Good Points

During the course of the day, I read an article about some of the lawsuits Apple is involved in. There's one key point they've made in their arguments that I agree with.

If a manufacturer licenses patents, their products are covered by those patent agreements. Consumers of those licensed products should NOT be subject to double-dipping by the patent holders. What would be the point of licensing a patent if all your customers were subject to infringement lawsuits?

Patents licenses are not transferable unless the agreement specifically says so. So in order to be protected by Apple's software-related patent agreements with other companies, they'd have to stick with Apple's APIs. If they implement their own variant on the technology, they'd have to deal with the patent holder seperately from Apple's agreement.

Patents are not software products. Copyright is used to protect software products.

In the case of a specific product, integrating that product with yours does not give you distribution rights on the integrated product unless explicitly so granted. Supporting a database does not mean you're granting a license for that database.