It&#x27;s frustrating that sales of a <i>product</i> can somehow be up for grabs over disputes in a mere <i>component</i> of that product.<p>No matter how good your idea or, ahem, sorry, &quot;intellectual property&quot; is, if you don&#x27;t know HOW to turn it into a multi-billion dollar product or you don&#x27;t have the means to do so, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money when somebody else becomes successful?  If anything, years of inaction on your &quot;idea&quot; proves that the idea has NOT been worth all that much to you.<p>Meanwhile, there could be literally thousands of unique components in an iPad, the products of tens of thousands of brilliant minds, many of whom get virtually nothing.  Heck, I give more credit to the tertiary industries such as the people delivering the iPhone packages to my door, than I do to any owner of a patent for a product that they didn&#x27;t build.