Apple's Billion Dollar Patent & Other Stories From Patentland

DECS writes "It has been widely reported that Apple secured a patent worth a "billion dollars." According to a patent attorney involved in the issue, Apple will be "after every phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer to pay royalties." The good news is that all the news reports were based on misleading hyperbole. " Don't let the title fool you; the essay is a good background on patents, the horror stories of some of them but also why companies feel compelled to seek patents as a business "safety" precaution.

Comments

In my opinion

[El Lobo]

In my maybe subjective opinion, if there is one company I would fear in the patent and legal feald, this is not MS, nor Sun nor IBM , but Apple. Apple's legal hounds are legendary by their actions going after even individual users for such small things like "making a MacOS theme for Windows XP", or such things. What could they do for such things like a billion dollar patent... I'm scared.

Re:In my opinion

[bperkins]

Hey mods, just because you don't agree doesn't make it flamebait.

Apple has shown some very litigious behavior for many years, I think it's a valid point if a bit overblown (and not really relevant if you RTFA, but heck this _is_ slashdot).

If you think it's not a valid point, why not refute it?

Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games

[DarkManaX]

First of all, any use of OSX on a PC platform is a royal pain in the ass because it requires you to do so many workarounds... why even bother. If you're a person who actually needs OSX (designers, videographers, etc) then you will buy the hardware because you know its worth it. If you don't have a need to use one, yeah, you don't get one... and porting games isn't as big of a deal as people think... there are at least a few companies still dedicated to not screwing over mac users (read BLIZZARD).

Re:Press Releases

[MECC]

Actually from here 'Starkweather wrote the patent in 1996 for a Vermont inventor who originally didn't show interest in patenting the idea or understand its value. The concept consisted of a desktop computer holding multiple songs with an interface allowing a hotel guest to select three songs and play them on an electric grand piano. Starkweather saw the broader value and broke the patent into three elements; remote music storage, selection of music to download and playing music on a music device. Starkweather realized that downloading movies was an obvious variation to downloading music. It was data manipulated in the same way. "Sometimes it's easy to break an invention down to its key components," Starkweather says. "That's why patent writing is an art, not a science, and requires creativity."'

I would correct Starkweather's last statement to be "That's why patent writing is a dark art, and requires the surrender of all ethical bounds checking".

Eli Whitney cared

[kansas1051]

That, and laziness: if I can invent a cotton gin so I don't have to spend hours and hours picking seeds out of cotton by hand, what do I care if I don't have a patent on it?

Eli Whitney, and the U.S Congress certainly cared. Although Whitney was able to patent his cotton gin, the U.S. patent laws at the time (under the first Patent Act of 1790) were so weak he was unable to enforce his patent and nearly went bankrupt. Whitney himself sold few cotton gins as large manufacturers could undercut his prices due to their established distribution chains. The next two patent acts (1810 and 1836) were drafted with Whitney's story in mind and provided greater protection for inventors (Abraham Lincoln's famous "patents are the fuel for the fire of innovation" quote was referring to the 1836 act).

So, out of all the examples you could pick as to why patents don't matter, Whitney's cotton gin isn't one of them (it is probably the worst possible example).