iEvil

February 1, 2009 11:34 PM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)

In Apple May Use 'Nuclear Arsenal' to Delay Palm's IPhone Rival, Bloombert reports: "Apple Inc., usually on the defensive when it comes to intellectual-property lawsuits, is threatening to use its hoard of patents to quash iPhone competitors." This follows up from Veksler's post on the same issue.

For shame, Apple, for shame. They appear to be suffering from the delusion pointed out by Boldrin & Levine, as noted by Tucker in Seen and Unseen Costs of Patents:

It is the most common thing in the world for a businessperson who use every market-oriented skill to get a product to market: a good product at a good price that becomes the market leader. At this point, and for some odd reason, the businessperson gets confused. He thinks that it his IP that is the key to his success and ends up fighting for it with all his might, even at his own expense.

Here is the statement by Boldrine and Levine: " "Being a monopolist" is, apparently, akin to going on drugs or joining some strange religious sect. It seems to lead to a complete loss of any sense of what profitable opportunities are and of how free markets function. Monopolists, apparently, can conceive of only one way of making money, that is bullying consumers and competitors to put up or shut up. Furthermore, it also appears to mean that past mistakes have to be repeated at a larger, and ever more egregious, scale."