The Bad Apple (TM)

Not all is sweetness a light in Steve Jobs orchard right now, Kodak are the latest company to have taken Apple to court over infringements of patents.

Not only that put Kodak are asking the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to stop the company shipping iPhones and Blackberries as these are the products that are using Kodak's patented technologies without financial recompense. Kodak have already reached agreement with Sun Microsystems over the Java programming technology. There is also a claim against Samsung which the ITC ruled last year did infringe Kodak's patent.

The rotten Apple cart does not end with Kodak however. In October Nokia also sued the corporation for infringing ten of its "fundamental patents", Apple counter sued only for Nokia to up the ante that "virtually all" Apple products infringed its patents. The ITC are due to decide on the Nokia case against Apple by the end of this month.

So has the Apple fallen? Not as a result of gravity, but into the game of industrial espionage to copy technologies without paying for licence to do so. Technology is advancing but it also appears that it is advancing along similar tracks building on what others have laid out before isn't fundamentally a wrong thing, but acknowledging that you are a doing so.