Wait a minute... they keep saying, over and over again, "Windows 1 changes everything," "Windows 1 changes everything," "Windows 1 changes everything"? I would think that they would at least want to start pitching their new version every once in a while. ;-)

Technically, what you're saying is true. But the requirement of "a physical implementation" is little more than a magic phrase necessary to recite to achieve patentability. Take for example, the following IBM patent on arithmatic coding: http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4122440. The claims recite over and over "an apparatus" to do X, an "apparatus" to do Y... etc... Of course, apparatus is not defined; they give some diagrams, but presumably a software implementation on a general purpose CPU is also an "apparatus." So at this point, the idea that "a physical implementation" is being claimed is meaningless.

Also, they do not make any claim that it has a useful purpose. The original -- to my knowledge only -- Supreme Court case directly on point to software patents upheld the patentability of an automated rubber-curing and -molding system, of which software to compute the Arrhenius equation was a part. Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981). In that case, there was a real physical input transformed into a physical output. The claims state specifically "a rubber-molding system." Therefore, one could use the same basic software to cure or mold something else, and it would not infringe. By contrast, that IBM patent does not have an actual utility for a specific application; it covers anything that could ever use arithmetic coding.

This is a minor point, but Shakespeare and the King James Bible aren't Middle English; they're Early Modern English from the early 1600's. They are almost completely recognizable to a speaker of modern English, especially once the "thou/you" distinction is explained, and with the occasional vocabulary word. For an example of Middle English, the best known example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (late 1300's), http://www.librarius.com/cantales/genpro.htm. That's significantly more difficult to understand, though if you sound it out, and read about the rules of grammar, it doesn't take too much practice before you can read it without trouble.

But you're right, the big change was from Old English, which was a Germanic language that is far more intelligible to modern German speakers than modern English speakers. Our current language is highly influenced by the importation of French and Latin words after the Norman invasion of 1066.

I agree with the toxicity of software patents, but "abuse" is not the only reason for building a patent portfolio -- defensive patents may be even more significant. When companies face lawsuit from patent holders, one of the first responses is to see if they can retaliate by invoking one of their own patents against the plaintiff's products. Obviously if the plaintiff is merely a troll, this has limited utility (although there might be a possibility that one of their patents is a blocking patent against one of the troll's patent, and thus could retaliate by demanding a share of their licensing revenue).

Even before reaching the litigation stage, companies can often get favorable licensing terms for other companies' patents by cross-licensing to reduce (or instead of) a monetary royalty. Therefore, even if a company had the best intentions, and never planned to invoke their patents offensively, by giving up their patents they make themselves extremely vulnerable, and put themselves in a much worse competitive position.

In effect, we have an arms race scenario, in which players cannot take the risk of unilateral disarmament because that exposes them to the danger that others will not follow the lead of their altruism. It can only be resolved by coordinated effort to scale back the arms race, hopefully by legislative action (or the Supreme Court more tightly policing the Federal Circuit, which is generally very patent-holder friendly).

It would help to have a bit of trademark law primer to understand the issue here. A "trademark" is a "mark" (a name or graphic, etc.) that is used in commerce to identify the source of a product. There are five types of marks: fanciful, arbitrary, suggestive, descriptive, and generic.

A fanciful mark is one that has no prior meaning, and thus usually is a made-up word. (e.g. Kodak, Verizon, Slashdot)

An arbitrary mark is a word with existing meaning but is arbitrarily connected to the product which it labels. So therefore "Apple" is arbitrary when it is used to describe a manufacturer of computers, but not when used to describe an apple farmer.

A suggestive mark is one that *suggests* a quality or feature of the product, but does not describe it directly. Courts usually describe such a mark as requiring a "step of imagination" to get from the mark to the product. Examples include "Coppertone" for suntanning lotion, or "Playboy," or "Home Depot," or "SourceForge."

A descriptive mark is one that directly describes a quality or feature of the product: "International Business Machines," "American Telephone and Telegraph"

Finally, generic marks are those that merely describe the general class of which the product is a member: "corn flakes," "raisin bran," etc.

Fanciful, arbitrary and suggestive marks are considered "inherently distinctive." They can be registered as-is (subject to minor restrictions, like being used in commerce), and immediately grant their owner the right to prevent others from using that mark in commerce. (To be clear, it does not prevent other people from using it for non-commerce purposes, nor does it prevent "nominative" use, where the other party is using it to describe the trademark owner's actual product -- as in, "our service is better than Verizon's")

On the opposite extreme, generic marks are never protected. The middle ground is for descriptive marks, which have to have acquired "secondary meaning" before they can be protected. This means that, despite its lack of inherent distinctiveness, the public must have come to associate that mark with the source. For example, when someone sees "IBM" on a computer they have a very specific idea of the company that produced that product.

The question, it would seem, is whether "App Store" is descriptive or generic, and if descriptive, has it acquired secondary meaning? It seems to me that it is *not* suggestive -- one does not need a leap of imagination to realize that an "App Store" is a store where one buys apps. Personally, I'm inclined to say that it is generic -- an "App Store" is a class of stores, of which "Apple App Store" is one member (the latter is protected as an arbitrary mark, btw).

This contrasts with "Windows," which is either suggestive or descriptive with acquired secondary meaning. Arguably, one needs imagination to jump from the mark "Windows" to "an operating system with graphical user interface." One could claim that "Windows" merely describes one aspect of that operating system, namely that it displays windows, but the counter argument would be that the term "window" itself, as used for a collection of pixels on the screen that displays the output of a computer program, is itself a suggestive term (i.e., it bears little resemblance to the traditional definition of Windows). Furthermore, even if descriptive, "Windows" has acquired secondary meaning, as it is universally understood to refer to the Microsoft product. Whoever first coined that term might have had the right to prevent Microsoft's use at some point, assuming that they used it in commerce, but that right has lapsed by failure to maintain it.

Anyways, that's what they taught me in IP class in law school. Hopefully that is helpful.