Legal Lunacy: Apple Seeks Patent for iBag
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By Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar
LTB
Tuesday, Oct 11, 2016
On March 17, Apple filed U.S. Pat. App. 2016/0264304 A1, for now entitled simply “BAG,” but presumably it will one day be called “iBag” or maybe “Apple Bag.” I assume the precise details and features of iBag will be a closely guarded secret until Tim Cook dramatically unveils it at some future Special Event, but the application offers some tantalizing hints.
Of course Apple doesn’t want to give away too much at this point, but reading between the lines, it looks like Apple sees iBag as occupying a place near the end of the retail supply chain:
The description that follows (in the DETAILED DESCRIPTION) section is more detailed, in a sense, but somehow doesn’t seem to offer any more actual details:
A couple of pages follow, along the same lines, but I should leave the detailed analysis up to bag experts.
So far as I can tell, the main thing that would distinguish iBag from previous bags is that it would be made of up to 60% “post-consumer content.” The application suggests that this is a lot, or at least more than in existing bags, but the most important point to make here is that whoever came up with the phrase “post-consumer content” needs a good beating. If there’s a difference between that and “recycled,” I might semi-apologize, but I doubt there is. Okay, there is, so this should be only a light beating. Please make a note of it.] Isn’t “post-consumer content” something that was once inside a consumer but no longer is?
Actually, if Apple has figured out a way to make a bag out of that, maybe it does deserve a patent. And maybe the true genius of it is that nobody would want to use this Post-Consumer Bag, and so consumers would bring their own bags to the Apple Store or just not use a bag at all, which would have a significant environmental impact. Will iBag save the planet? Only time will tell.
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