Re:The Chilling Effect of No Patents (Score 1)

There are several flaws to this argument. First, the assumption is that it's a single guy who makes the iPod. It's not, it's an entire company who pours in a lot of R&D. So it's not exactly like other companies could hire away all that. Second, Apples DOES have a patent on parts of the iPOD and they enforce them AGRESSIVELY. There are other MP3 players, but none with the dial control the iPod has... because APPLE invented it and others couldn't violate the patent to rip it off. Still, they compete elsewhere, coming up with OTHER innovations to compete, as they should! If Apple couldn't have defended generation I iPod's from identical clones, odds are Apple never would have had anything left to invest in a generation II iPod. And we certainly never would have gotten our Gen 5 iPods.