According to MacWorld magazine, it’s taken 9 years, but Apple finally got the patent on OS X’s application launcher know to all as the Dock. The legaleze reads:
To provide greater access and consolidation to frequently used items in the graphical user interface, a user bar is extablished which includes a plurality of item representations.
As suggested by the article’s writer, Derik Delong, it seems that includes any application lauching utility. Now that I think about it, there are several Dock look alike apps for Linux, does this basically mean that those can no longer be used? Honestly I found that these dock clones didn’t work all that well but still the freedom for programmers to create one should be a given right.
This brings up another case with apple. Apple sued the City of New York for using the Apple Logo, which I don’t think was “identical” to apple’s logo. Well Apple won the suit. How is that even possible? How can anyone patent or trademark the likeness of a piece of fruit? Was new york city called the “Big Apple” before apple was apple?
What are your comments?