There is a deep hypocrisy in much of intellectual property thinking. People want their own work protected, but can only function if they are free to copy everything from the past and much of what is from the present.
Totally agree. The entire system of IP (patents, copyright, etc) has become a perversion of the original intent.
Originally conceived to ensure inventors saw fair return on their work, it's now used by corporations as a tool to suppress competition and innovation.
The original patent term under the 1790 Patent Act was decided individually for each patent, but "not exceeding fourteen years"
The first federal copyright act, the Copyright Act of 1790 granted copyright for a term of "fourteen years from the time of recording the title thereof", with a right of renewal for another fourteen years if the author survived to the end of the first term.
Both have since been extended over and over, to absurd durations. Copyright in particular keeps being extended, at the urging (bribery) of the large movie and printed works corporations. If they have their way, no content will ever go 'copyright expired' ever again. Companies acquire 'patent portfolios' that cover enough that they could sue and ruin any small manufacturer for doing almost anything. And they do, when any startup looks like potentially becoming serious competition. With many of the patents being ridiculous rubbish that wouldn't stand up in court, but no individual could afford the legal fees. Meanwhile the large companies all mostly leave each other alone, in a kind of Mexican standoff between their portfolios.
About the Apple case - we have no way of knowing if the charges are truth or lies. The part about PCB layout and schematics doesn't make sense, since that would never be any big secret. As soon as they sell a product, someone's going to open it up and reverse engineer, so what?
When parts of a news story are senseless, it usually means someone is making stuff up, to obscure the real story.
I wonder if he was trying to leak information about something Apple is designing, that the public would consider unethical? Would not surprise me at all.