[CrackBerry Question]

Just read this article about new features of Whatsapp and noticed that most of them are straight away copied from BBM. Is it not possible to patent features in apps?

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Depends... are you sure BBM didn't copy them in the first place? Messaging "applications" have been around long before "smartphones"....

Most patents are more about the how a "thing" is done and not about the "thing".

[glwerry]

Over the last couple of decades there has been quite a dogfight in the courts over software patents.
I have not followed it closely, but the centre of the arguments against software patents is that they really shouldn't truly be patents because they're more ideas than actual products.

Features in apps would be even less enforcable.

If we were patenting things so that we couldn't copy software features, then what would happen to industries like the automotive industry? Some bright wag would patent "4 wheels and an internal combustion engine" and then all of the other makers would be hooped.

[eshropshire]

Just read this article about new features of Whatsapp and noticed that most of them are straight away copied from BBM. Is it not possible to patent features in apps?

I Have worked on many software patents. Patents are on implementation of a feature, not the feature itself. I can give you a hardware example, years ago a company sued Compaq computer for their first laptop because of the hinged case design. All Compaq had to do was come up with a new hing design to get around the patent. The original patent was kind of stupid - just a simple hing, but they got a patent on it. They could not patent the concept of a hinged computer screen that came up and down over a keyboard. Just they way they implemented the feature.