15 Jan 2007 1356H

Apple iPhone being infringed upon already

says Apple’s IP (intellectual property) protection team. It’s being reported in the press that user interface builders have hijacked the iconography of the iPhone from last week’s talk and created a theme or a skin from them on Windows-enabled smartphones.

In my mind, good for Apple. It’s validation that their risk and research into the user experience have paid off by instant adoption, and they’re right to go after what really is their IP, that is, all the time and effort spent trying to figure out what are the rules that facilitate user tasks and behaviors on the mobile communications platform. It’s not being done by anyone else, so, they should really reap the rewards that come from making the investment in design and taking a certain risk towards that. After all, when technology such as that of cell phones is commoditized, that is, indistinguishable from cheaply-manufactured knockoffs, the value comes down to user experience and brand, which are kind of intangible qualities, but they are nonetheless real.

So would I sue over the particular implementation of the iconography? Well, the look and feel is Apple’s, so, I tend to think maybe so. But the real IP is in the interaction design patterns, not the look and feel: that is fungible. If people nakedly copied the interaction design, that is, how users interact with the application, how they actually make a call, or the way that people look up addresses, access music and videos in the user interface . . . I’m not an IP attorney, but I think that would be actionable.

On a complete aside, readers, I’m seeing some really interesting results from Mint, my stats package for this blog. I see we even have a visitor from Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the first architects to win the MacArthur Prize, the so-called “genius grant.” I’m honored by your presence.

I’d like to know more about my readers! Feel free to drop me a line here, if only to say hi, but maybe a little about what you do and things you’d like to read about.

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