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."
This system is highly illogical. (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of patenting an idea, material or process in this day and age makes no sense to me. /rant
All these things are built on 10.000 generations of improving upon others inventions, and the changes are incremental. What hubris to claim an idea or process as your own? Marketing an idea et al. for profit needs no such protection (see the fashion industry). It is a cowing to profit beyond the interests of society as a whole. And this is even ignoring the fact that due to the principles of discovery many idea's, materials and processes can be discovered near-simultaneosly.
Meta - as in Data (Score:2, Interesting)
More metadata for the NSA to harvest!