If the resulting synthesis is something new, why wouldn't we want to protect it legally? To make a literary analogy, any book written in an established genre necessarily synthesizes work that went before it… are these new works less worthy of legal protection because the ideas and tropes (and in the case of works synthesized from the Commons characters, setting, etc.) are things we've already seen? In the technology fields, it is common to base new innovation on that which came before. So long as the prior art is referenced in the claim for protection, aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation, even in the case of innovations synthesized of prior development?
aren't the useful arts strengthened by legal protection in exchange for continued disclosure of innovation
No, they're not, at least not in software. Nobody reads software patents, for two reasons. First, the majority are either non-novel or written in a way that they are not useful to others. Second, by reading patents you increase the damages in a possible infringement suit since at that point you knowingly infringed.
I'm afraid you misunderstood my point, as I never mentioned software patents at all. The iPhone is a synthesis of prior research that (in 2007) encompasses advances in both hardware and software. That is the synthesis that I think advances the useful arts, and it's beneficial to society for us to provide a legal framework to protect it.
I think what I said about software patents applies to hardware patents as well, if less so. There is this idea that patents are a compromise: I file a patent, and I get a temporary monopoly on the idea. In exchange, the world gets full disclosure of my idea.
The point I'm making is that the full disclosure is worse than useless. Nobody ever says I wonder how I should implement this? Let's go check some patent filings to see if someone else has figured it out...
The book written establishes a copyright, not a patent.
Bringing this back to technology with an example: Palm synthesized the smart phone and color LCD screen in ~2004. I'm pretty glad all smartphones have color screens today.
I did say I was making an analogy, not establishing a direct link between patents and copyright. Patents protect a specific method of implementing an idea, so Palm synthesizing a smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by a stylus) does not prevent Apple from protecting the synthesis of smart phone with a color LCD (controlled by fingertips). If there was no innovation in bringing multi-touch to smart phones, why wasn't everyone doing it in 2007 when the iPhone was first released?
Patents are time-limited not eternal. The first company to build a laptop most certainly obtained a patent on it, as did the creator of the first flat-screen.
Patents last for 20 years in the US. To give you an idea of how rapidly the personal computing/internet boom has progressed, Mosaic is not 20 years old yet, Mosaic being the browser that marked the start of the www era.
If Netscape had been smart (and evil) enough to patent the hell out of their browser and then stick all those patents on a shelf for a while... they'd probably be more valuable than Apple is today.
