&gt; Your patent did not inspire anyone at Square<p>question is how do we distinguish between patents that &quot;inspired&quot; and those which did not?<p>Or does inspiring even matter - anyone can see the &quot;inspiration&quot; on Android from the release of the 1st iPhone  (e.g. before and after designs) - yet this fact plus all of Apple&#x27;s $billions were unable to stop&#x2F;prevent Android from their clearly inspired copying.