Apple vs Samsung w/ History Lesson.

Companies do not care about 'right', only what is 'legal'.

 

Think Apple is bad, try Xerox back in the day. My father could tell you stories about Xerox and how they defended their photostatic copier patents with great gusto and vigor.

As for the mouse, a little patent research shows such devices were around a long time ago. Before the mouse, we had a trackball. Not sure how that impacted Engelbart or not.

If Apple must pay, so should Microsoft. Microsoft sells vast numbers, types and styles of pointing devices.

It is very hard sometimes to determine who actually invented what. Sometimes, an invention is put together from many other devices of the day and most patents reference these prior works. And sometimes, the inventor is left out of the history books and the company that actually made the device gets the credit.

 

Some do, some do not. Depends on the company.

 

Did you read the link article?

From the link:

"Did Jobs steal the idea of the mouse from Xerox? Not exactly. Xerox never owned the idea of the mouse. The researchers at the PARC had actually gotten the idea for the mouse from Douglas Engelbart a Stanford Research Institute researcher."

'"Engelbart dreamed up the idea of moving the cursor around the screen with a stand-alone mechanical "animal" back in the mid- nineteen-sixties. His mouse was a bulky, rectangular affair, with what looked like steel roller-skate wheels. If you lined up Engelbart's mouse, Xerox's mouse, and Apple's mouse, you would not see the serial reproduction of an object. You would see the evolution of a concept"

Perhaps one should not blame Jobs.

I often tell students about the invention of the electric guitar. Who do you think invented it? Les Paul, Elvis, Gibson's factory designers?

Actually, it was invented in the mid 1930's by a German. Who do you think gets the credit?

I think invention is more of a matter of rediscovery. Some inventions require a brilliant mind to look past the apparent and see what is possible. The German guitar was a clumsy thing redefined by someone with brilliance and an eye for possibilities.