, Columnist
Apple Has Designs on Stifling Innovation
Apple's legal victory over Samsung based on century-old principles could help trolls and hurt the rest of us.
Hands off my smartphone.
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Change can sneak up on lawmakers and judges, rendering old laws obsolete. Often, that’s harmless. (When was the last time you ran afoul of Reno’s ban on benches in streets or Wyoming’s prohibition on fishing with firearms?) But sometimes, laws that once served a good purpose can get in the way of progress.
That’s what’s going on now in the world of design patents, where the U.S. Supreme Court has suddenly been forced to confront the fact that century-old laws governing ownership of shapes, contours and curlicues are far out of step with modern life. Unless modernized quickly, these outmoded rules could empower a wave of opportunistic lawsuits that would suppress innovation.