Is Apple stealing ideas from iPhone developers? No.

iPhone Atlas is running an article asking if Apple stealing ideas from iPhone developers. The Atlas article, in turn, is based primarily on accusations being made by Jonathan Zdziarski, best known for the iPhone 2.0 "emergency call" passcode hack.

Fundamentally, Jonathan accuses Apple of attempting to patent a home screen idea previously used by an application called Intelliscreen.

He writes, "At the worst, this is an attempt to steal a concept. At the very best, it's an attempt to patent something that was so obvious, a competitor figured it out long before Apple did."

So is it true? Is the big Apple ripping off some poor defenseless developer?

Quick answer: No. Apple did not rip off Intelliscreen.

Intelliscreen, however, could have ripped off Apple. Keep on reading for the proof.

According to an Apple Insider article describing the patent in question, "the first filing, made in December [2007] by members of Apple's iPhone software development team, proposes a new global preference pane."

The article then states that a "second filing, made a few months earlier, discusses improvements to the iPhone's notification dialog that informs users of missed calls, text messages, and voicemails when they're away from their phone or the phone is locked."

That would place the original date of the "Intelliscreen" patent application somewhere in or around October, 2007.

Now, the earliest mention of Intelliscreen on the internet was May 13th, 2008. And even then, various articles and reviews dated around that time state that it should still be considered to be a "beta" product. Backups were advised.

As a second check, most screenshots of the product show a date of Wednesday, June 4th. And June 4th, 2008 was indeed a Wednesday.

So.

Since the patent application had to be written well before the date of submission, "months" before December, the R&D on which Apple's patent is based had to have existed eight to nine months before Intelliscreen was developed and released to the public.

Let me repeat that. Apple's tech existed in 2007. The patent was filed in mid-to-late 2007. Intelliscreen was released in mid-2008.

In fact, with those dates in mind, it's entirely possible that Intelliscreen was based on information gathered from a copy of Apple's patent, and not, as claimed by Jonathan, the other way around.

But there's no reason to say that anyone ripped off anyone. Intelliscreen could well have been an independent effort, perhaps an extension of concepts updated and borrowed from the Windows Mobile home screen.

Regardless, the timeline pretty much puts to rest any idea of Apple "ripping off" some poor, frightened little developer.

Which means that both iPhone Atlas and Jonathan Zdziarski failed to do their research on this one. Atlas, at least, hedged their bets by phrasing the whole thing as a question. Zdziarski, on the other hand, apparently leaped from concept to accusation in a single bound, with nary a fact check along the way.

Which isn't going to stop either one of them from reaping the publicity and page views generated from their fake controversy.

Back to Jonathan, "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is a clear rip-off of the commercial Intelliscreen product."

But it does, apparently, take a rocket scientist to do a few Google searches and figure out that 2007 came before 2008.

Bad Jonathan. Bad.

[via iPhone Atlas]

Comments

[Jared]

Nice reporting.