At a 2006 meeting, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told people that the company was going to "patent it all" when it came to the iPhone, according to a former Apple executive reached by the New York Times. The decision was reportedly inspired by previous losses in intellectual property cases, mostly notably to Creative, which it ended up paying $100 million in order to settle a dispute over a "portable music playback device" patent. Following the meeting, Apple engineers are said to have been brought into monthly "invention disclosure sessions" where just about any idea was treated as patentable
