I'm not on Facebook, you insensitive clod.

It's really just part of the broken patent system. All these big corporations sue each other all the time over trivial and/or obvious patents. Then they kiss and make up and share their patents (and some money, etc). Then they sue all over again. In the mean time, consumers are the big losers. And this is all because the USPTO does not check patents for appropriateness with regard to the original purpose of patents (to encourage innovation of things that could not be created by someone else knowledgeable in the current science and art involved). They just let anything go through, and 99% of what is issued in the past few years is junk we either do not need, or someone would still do it anyway without a patent system.

Apple's behavior is just a symptom of the problem.

OTOH, any aspect of how to make it actually work, that is not obvious (a point the USPTO fails to check), should be patentable.

This is not a hate of Apple (there are some reasons to hate Apple, but this isn't it). Instead, it's a case of Apple doing what many other companies do because of a broken patent system.

People have wanted these small mobile devices for years before the iPhone. And Apple would even have made them earlier if the CPU capability were around earlier. Steve Jobs had a very good insight into what the market wanted. But he wasn't the only one who has that insight. In other companies, the many insights Steve Jobs had might not all be in one person, and so those companies react slower. Apple had the advantage by having the top guy also having insights into the market. But this is NOT unique innovation. Steve Jobs did not personally oversee every detail. He just made sure there was a framework for others to put the ideas in. But that's the kind of thing that can happen at any company.

The patent system's purpose is NOT to create monopoly, specifically. Instead, it's purpose is to create innovation that would not have happened, otherwise. The monopoly of reward is the means of the patent system to encourage innovation that would not have happened.

99% of the patented "innovations" in smart phones, whether done by Apple or others, is not something the patent system was made for. These are things many dozens of engineers or programmers could have made, very often trivially. Patent lawyers won't recognize that because they are not paid to. If the company boss says "patent everything we can get away with", those lawyers will. The real tests need to be applied by the patent office. But they have a fundamental problem: they need more, and better, patent examiners, but that would also mean less money coming in. So in the end, we get junk patents. And in this day and age of 99% of technology being trivial, we get 99% junk patents. In the 19th century that might have been around 50%, given that the vast majority of the population was entirely out of tune with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Today, we have so many more people (millions) into STEM. Very very little of technology today is "something we would not have but for that one inventor making it" that the patent system was made for.

I do not agree that these are blatant knockoffs. They are designs that work well. We would have these designs whether Apple did it first or not, because the design is so obvious to hundreds of UX engineers. Notice that the tablet is so obvious it's design even existed in the 1960's (which you would have seen had you watched Star Trek). Had you asked me to design a phone that is also a personal mobile computer, I could have come up with the design we see as an iPhone or a Nexus as early as the mid 1970's. The finer points of the styling might be special to Apple, but the basic bar design and most of the technology in it is just obvious.

I'm outraged over the stupid corporate monopoly-oriented attitude about this. Where would we be without a patent system today? Would Steve Jobs have just said "screw it, I'm not going to make anything cool because I won't get to be the only supplier of it"? I think not.

I'm not opposed to the patent system concept. I think it still has a place. And there may well be some technology in smart phones which we would lack without a patent system. But not much. I'd bet more people would be willing to jump in and start creating even more if they didn't have the FUD caused by the risk that some company with lots of lawyers might come along and take it all away just because that company managed to trick an incompetent patent process into issuing patents for little things.

When patents are actually based on the "No one would have made the effort to invent this without a patent system being in place" test.

It seems to me he posted the article because he is not so narrow minded and blinded as to prevent him from seeing what is going on with big corporate businesses stacked with lawyers, both for suing, and for churning out worthless patents on every tiny bit of technology they are making in-house where patents are not the incentive to make it in the first place.

A kitten is tortured to death every time a big corporation gets a patent on anything obvious to the world of geek culture.

Not only that, it also violates my patent on slimy business practices.

What about when visiting New York Times? Or is that just an innocent paywall they put up on the linked article?

Don't quit your job ... just yet. And don't start your side project, yet, either.

Do start the hunt for a new job. Investigate the laws of various states you would be willing to move to, to see what kind of negotiating power you might have with potential employers in those states. Only after you have acquired a new job should you resign from your old job.

Whether to tell them this is the reason, or not, is up to you. They MAY want to counter offer. If they do, suggest to them that in addition to matching salary, you want them to replace their IP policy to one that protects employees rights to do things on their own, not on company time, not with company resources, unrelated to company interests as known to the employee, as belonging exclusively to the employee. Also ask for side projects that are related to the company interest to be shared between company and employee 50/50, and that if the company does not exploit the idea in 4 years (this being the test if it really has company interest), it reverts to exclusively owned by the employee.

Or just move on to the better company. If your idea does relate to your previous employer, or is something they are interested in, or competes with them, they will likely have issues with this and could sue your IP infringement (e.g. you knew their technology, etc).