From Joe Schembrie to Jeffrey Tucker to me, a quote from the autobiography of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer and designer of the Apple I and II computers.

"It's funny, I think back on it now -- the Apple II would turn out to be one of the most successful products of all time. But we had no copyrights or patents at all back then. No secrets. We were just showing it to everybody." (p.195)

Do we want people to make products or engage in legal shenanigans? Although who knows...maybe the legal minds invested in patent law would be out running Ponzi games if they weren't so busy figuring out how to steal other people's inventions.

Ah, how memory is short. Apple Computer filed a patent application days before the Apple II was released. That application became US patent 4,136,359 and shows the layout of the Apple II and names Steve Wozniak as the inventor. Apple Computer was patenting regularly in the early 80's (when they were supposedly in their first peak of invention and innovation), and now holds more than 2,500 patents. No copyrights? Perhaps so. That is tougher to prove. No patents? The facts prove otherwise.

I'm guessing that days before the Apple II was released is at least months after they built it and showed it to everyone in sight. Of course it takes time to prepare a patent application too. If someone has the book - maybe he says something more about this.

David:

The patent for the Apple II was filed 11 April 1977. The graph near the bottom of Apple II history (link below) indicates that the Apple II dates from April 1977. There is an article by Steve Wozniak in the May 1977 issue of Byte magazine where he describes his new computer. Some of the images in that article look very similar to the patent figures. The link for that article is below also.

http://apple2history.org/history/ah02.html

http://oldcomputers.net/byteappleII.html

Lastly, according to the ever-popular Wikipedia, Apple II was introduced to the world 16-17 April 1977.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple#The_Apple_II

There is another reference on the link below to hiring someone to make the case for the Apple II nine weeks before the show mentioned at the link above. Essentially, other than people making parts for the Apple II, the Apple II patent appears to have been filed before it was offered for sale to the world.

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/apple2.html