( CNN ) -- Imagine that we were just developing spoken language for the first time . And someone came up with a new word to describe an action , thought or feeling -- like `` magnify '' or `` dreadful . '' But in this strange world , the person who came up with the word demanded that anyone else who used it pay him a dollar every time the word was uttered . That would make it pretty difficult for us to negotiate our way to a society that communicated through speech . That 's the way the patent wars on smartphone and tablet advances are beginning to feel to me . As a human being , I do not particularly care about Apple 's recent victory in the U.S. version of its patent lawsuit against Samsung for copying its iPhone 's and iPad 's form and features . Now that Apple is demanding that Samsung pull eight of its products off the shelf , my only personal interest is whether the Samsung products , once banned , will become collectors ' items . Will I one day want to show my grandchild the phone that dared to mimic the iPhone ? News : Samsung to fight court ruling in Apple patent dispute . But while the details of legalities , and the impact to share prices , and even consumer choice , do n't keep me or any of my friends up at night , there is nonetheless something creepy about Apple 's suit . It 's not so much that Apple -- the biggest company in the world -- has turned into a competitive monster ; it 's the territory that Apple 's fighting over . It feels as if the technology innovation wars are no longer over one piece of technology or another , but over us humans . It 's one thing for Apple to defend the look and feel of its phone -- things like the little button on the bottom , which seem obvious but are actually the result of a lengthy and painstaking design process . They may deserve a few years ' exclusive on stuff like that . But when it comes to gestures , such as the now ubiquitous `` pinch and zoom '' technology through which users stretch or shrink pictures and text -- well , that no longer feels quite the same . ( Apple , of course , has argued in its court case that they are the same ; the company spent time and money on both sorts of research , it says , and does n't believe the results should be copied by others . ) They are gestures that may have begun on the device , but now have become internalized , human movements . When my daughter was 3 , I used to watch her attempt to enact those same swipes and stretches on the television screen -- a phenomenon so prevalent that many television dealers now keep a bottle of glass cleaner handy , to clean their giant flat screens of children 's fingerprints on a regular basis . CNN Money : What the Apple-Samsung verdict means for your smartphone . That 's because these gestures are not simply technological innovations , but the language through which we humans are coming to navigate our way through the emerging digital landscape . We take to gestures and movements that grow out of the ones we use here in the real world . To translate them into the digital realm well requires skill , but the gestures themselves are not the typical territories -- like land masses -- over which corporations have traditionally fought . They 're inside us . Usually , advancements of this sort are developed through consortia of companies . The HTML standards through which the Web is rendered are not owned by a single company , but developed together and used by everyone . Imagine if one musical instrument company owned the patent on the piano keyboard , and another on the tuning of a violin . Or what if every typewriter company had to develop its own layout of letters ? What if blowing one 's nose into soft disposable paper were owned by Kleenex ? While Apple deserves to be rewarded for the innovations it comes up with , there 's a limit to how far into our learned behaviors the company should be awarded protection from competitors . Our transition toward a digitally functioning society is no less momentous than the shift from grunters to speakers , or from speakers to readers and writers . As such , it will require an equally cooperative spirit from the people and companies who take us there . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff .
Douglas Rushkoff : Smartphone patent wars seem about human behavior , not just phones . He says Apple defending its home button makes sense ; it 's so distinctive . But things like pinch and zoom technology may have made leap into collective consciousness . Rushkoff : When Apple 's innovations become our learned behavior , they 're fair game .