Apple Files Patent For Digital Wallet and Virtual Currency 84
another random user writes "Apple has applied for a patent on a combined virtual currency and digital wallet technology that would allow you to store money in the cloud, make payments with your iPhone, and maybe communicate with point-of-sale terminals via NFC. The patent application, published [Thursday] by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Organization, details how iPhone users could walk into a store, pay for goods with their phone, and walk out with their merchandise. Though Apple is late to the virtual wallet game, that doesn't seem to stop them trying to patent the process. There does not appear to be anything in the patent application which describes something that can't already be done."
Re:Slashdot misunderstands value of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
You fundamentally misunderstand the "double-irish" corporate structure. See (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement)
Apple does not avoid any USA taxes for profits from sales or patent royalties in the USA. This type of corporate structure avoids having bring profits back from other countries and get taxed again in the USA.
I'm a liberal, and it seems completely reasonable in a global marketplace, for companies to get taxed in each country of operation, not where the headquarters happen to be located.
This seems to be one of those memes like Al Gore said he "invented the internet", that everyone repeats, and knows to be true... but is completely false.
Re:No longer "on a computer". (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of this appears to already appears to happen on my android phone (NFC payment via Google Wallet). So apparently something you can already do is now novel if you do it "on an iPhone"?
When you say "most of this", are you going by the Slashdot summary, or the claims of the patent application? Because the former is going to be about as accurate a summary of the invention as you'd expect.