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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.
Now they will go after any hardware that can't play games or any type of media that isn't a game as infringing.
Apple patented porn?
It's worth one MILLION billion dollars!
"Apple Attorney Secures Patent For Film, Phones, Computers" If somebody had actually pulled this off, putting out a press release seems almost humble.
Some attitudes replaced or by cgi optimizes
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.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Did Apple patent the Billion Dollar Bill?
The story contains some great facts for people who are unaware, but the author doesn't seem to be going anywhere with it. First he talks about the "billion dollar patent" then goes off on a tangent about IP without ever explaining how any of it ties back into the original issue.
I'd give it an A for research, but a C- for usefulness.
Also, what is up with the "we're being censored by Digg" bit at the end? Following his Digg links, it seems like everything is working fine. The only thing I found on the subject was this accusation claiming that Roughly Drafted is trying to game digg. The only thing I can figure is that some of the new algorithms (which favor users who have gotten stories to the front page) killed the stories from getting to the front page. Whether someone is gaming the system or not, he needs more established users in order to get his stories to the front page.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
IP lawyers will be the first against the wall.
interested in initiating lawsuits except in self defense from other lawsuits.
Guess the author never heard of the "FreeType" library, I believe Apple threatened to sue them for the parts of their text rendering engine, that allowed them to effectively do things like antialiasing. Apple also, as mentioned in the article, tried to sue Microsoft for various violations.
He also never mentioned what the actual patent was about did he?
The article seems to have very little to do with the title, and the evidence is lackluster for the case, at best.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
This is a novel method of storing data on light and color intensities of a frame of reference, captured with a lens system and matrix of light sensitive transistors. The resulting data is stored in a file called an "Image".
OR worse
This is a novel method of representing nothing. In the past, nothing was always something. We propose a special character that represents nothing (the lack of something) to be used in communication purposes. We shall call this character the "zero."
Cool! Amazing Toys.
In case you don't know, this article was submited by Daniel Eran who was caught spamming Digg with his useless articles...
E D.html
Check out how he was caught:
http://ba01162.googlepages.com/RoughlyDraftedBUST
How can this be possible?
I mean, this makes no sense at all.
This actualy scares me.
Rui
It also doesnt exist in "Prior Art".
My god, they have found 3) ????:
3) Patent the letter "E"
4) Profit!
Some info on the patent itself is at: http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2275 From the article: "The initial concept consisted of a desktop computer holding multiple songs with an interface that allowed a hotel guest to select three songs and play them on an electric grand piano."
A link within TFA showed:
v =80
"A recent out-of-court settlement between Apple Computer and the owner of the patent that covers the downloading of music and video with the ability to play music and video on a device (technology essential to the iPod and other music and video technology)"
That's pretty major.
Here's the link:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061130/lath054.html?.
My favorite is the line in the article about how without patents there would be no incentive for pharmas to, say, develop a new treatment.
Innovation will always be driven by necessity, not by profit. 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? My life is still simpler. What about drugs? If enough people are getting sick, then people will pool together their resources and develop a treatment. Sure, it might not happen in the same way we know things today, but I think that patents are a form of competition, and I'm beginning to think that cooperation is a more powerful force in economics than competition, despite the prevalent thinking.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
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).
Microsoft beat them to the zeros (and the ones) in 1988.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So we have an press release about a supposed Apple patent. The article doesn't identify the patent or give the patent number. Then we have a blog entry about the press release about the supposed patent. That doesn't identify the patent. Then we have the Slashdot article about the blog entry about the press release. Which doesn't identify the patent either. The end result is a clueless Slashdot article.
The actual patent is US# 5,864,868 (Contois, January 26, 1999), "Computer control system and user interface for media playing devices". The main claim is:
1. A computer user interface menu selection process for allowing the user to select music to be played on a music device controlled by a computer, comprising the steps of:
a) simultaneously displaying on a display device, at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs;
b) selecting at least one item from at least one of the data fields;
c) in response to step b), redisplaying all data fields not having an item selected therefrom with data related only to the at least one item selected in step b), and simultaneously maintaining all items originally displayed in the data fields with at lest one item selected therefrom;
d) selecting an item in the songs data field in response to step c), and
e) playing the selected song item from step d) on the computer responsive music device.
So it's an interface for a specific format of playlist interaction. Some players might have to change their interfaces a bit. Big deal.
If I was one of the corporations that Apple tried to extort by buying this patent I would just form a nice alliance of lawyers with the other "infringers" and fight the thing tooth and nail. There is probably a better chance of spending 100 million getting the patent voided than giving Apple a billion and bending over.
to even get a patent when there is so much obvious prior art already in exisitence?
Are the patent office asleep?
More to the point, why can apple think they stand a chance in court?
Surely everyone apple attempts to sue can easily get out of it by proving they had prior art?
..."AN" press release...
Dumbass!
As it's worded, it could cover virtually EVERY portable device that plays music. That's not just a slight change to their interfaces, that's a major overhaul and millions of dollars lost to update them all.
Necessity for drugs is not going to drive development. Money is. Do you think that a group of just plain nice people . . . are going to get together . . . and decide, "Hey! Let's invent the next drug to cure $someDisease?" That hasn't happened yet, and I don't think it's likely to in the near future either.
Here's why it's not going to happen, and here's also the argument for why pharma companies need strong patent protection:
Pharma research costs big money, because 1) paying your PHDs to do the research, and maintaining research facilities, costs quite a lot, and 2) the FDA approval process is costly and takes years.
If a pharma company pays big money to develop a drug, and then pays big money to go through the FDA tests, and then, on the day they start selling the drug, a generic manufacturer sells the same thing and cuts them on price--it's going to be very hard for them to recoup their investment and work on their next drug.
The generic manufacture would have received the benefit of the original pharma company's research, without investing a single cent of their own in research. Which isn't exactly fair.
(Pharma is a funny industry because on the one hand, medicine has the potential to improve the quality of life of tons of people . . . and on the other hand, pharma companies are businesses, just like an investment bank or department store. Arguably, we should think about businesses which manufacture things that affect the public welfare in a different way than we think about other businesses. But that's another different interesting issue.)
my Royalties for my patent on ludicrous press releases.
...at the total inability of digg to scale. 60 users can control the entire site?
If Apple follows through on a "good" patent and pisses off a lot of people, it might just be the spark to get the current patenting overturned and software patents outlawed.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
G3n3sis
Chapt3r 1
1:1 In th3 b3ginning God cr3at3d th3 h3av3n and th3 3arth.
1:2 And th3 3arth was without form, and void; and darkn3ss was upon th3 fac3 of th3 d33p. And th3 Spirit of God mov3d upon th3 fac3 of th3 wat3rs.
1:3 And God said, L3t th3r3 b3 light: and th3r3 was light.
Science Friday had a good episode last week covering some of the more absurd patents and the culture at the USPTO.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Step right up, kid!
Corporate malfeasance information repository
that is a big deal. This is apple taking what is more or less the standard way of interfacing with a media device, patenting it, and then taking people to court if they don't want to change. Lets say i start a laptop manufacturer. My laptops are okay, but still don't really sell very much. Well lets say that I use the money that i have made to hire a bunch of lawyers. We find out that it has not been patented to power a laptop with a portable source of power. So we patent it, then sue everybody who doesn't stop using batteries. What apple has patented is just the logical way of doing it. I guess that is a business tactic. Its just a very slimy one, and a very good example of how patents can be very very bad.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
everyday...We recent Sys Admin the goodwill Pooper./ Nothing Trying to dissect when done playing Mr. Raymond's Th3re's no sales and so on, direct orders, or
Maybe Apple isn't just getting this patent to create an offensive, but rather as a defense.
Companies are attempting to overcome their lack of creativity/ingenuity by litigating a profit.
Thanks to the patent office's less-than-picky gratning process, there are a LOT of seemingly obvious and redundant patents floating out there.
I think that more situations will come up as companies attempt to assault Apple's #1 iPod/Music Store slot and incresingly their other software and hardware ventures.
What I'm talking about is the Creative situation - Creative gets mad that they're getting their ass handed to them by Apple and they can't pull together a decent product - so they look in their patent portfolio and find something to beat Apple with and shut them down legally . . .
Except that Apple turned around with a stack of way scarier patents to shove in Creative's face and said "Ok, we were playing nice and just plain out-smarting you but you've made us mad and we're going to match your 'play dirty' scheme"
Creative didn't really stand a chance.
A patent like this, and probably many others that Apple has, means that Apple can defend off OTHER company's offensive patent challenges.
welcome our new billion dollar patent weilding overlords
"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."'
The only things this sentence misses are the stage directions, which should have him sitting in a high-backed leather chair, petting a cat, and subsequent maniacal laughter...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is just another grokdot patents are evil I know because I pulled anecdotal evidence out of my $%^$%^ argument.
The argument is POINTLESS and INNANE due to the fact that people have spent great effort (multitudes greater than what is on face here) researching hard data in attempts to determine the effects of patent policy on innovation. The conclusions that the overwhelming majority reach fall somewhere in between 'patents are worthless' and 'patents are perfect'. Without even attepting to build on this body of work in fashioning an argument is hilariously unpersuasive.
You fucking idiot. You do know that a patent can be overturned if there's prior art, don't you?
Oh wait, my bad. You just don't know what you're talking about.
Anyone sued for violating the patent can argue that displaying the artist, title, and/or track is a necessary or essential part of an MP3 player and therefore not patentable.
If this patent were so valuable, why haven't they started enforcing it?
Sent from my iPhone
Nothing screams legitimacy like some random googlepages screed in all caps.
You should have pointed to your Digg posting, similarly burried, which ranted about my "GAMING DIGG!!!! PROOF!!!" or the handful of snotty comments you post on digg because I criticized Microsoft's business strategies and marketing of the Zune.
Perhaps you need to find something more useful to do with your life than anonymously hang on my coattails, Lackawack2. You're not that fun to hang out with and you have nothing interesting to say.
That's a better definition for "spam" than some RDM articles you find threatening to your world view or the companies you idolize.
Nobody forces you to agree, so why do you try so hard to censor ideas you don't like? Do you hate freedom?
If the site allows wars like this to go on, apparently they need to rework their moderation engine. Still I'm very glad Digg is existing, as slashdot became a lot more useable. It's very nice that the noisy people found their medium and soulmates there.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Staring at a white background [on a computer screen] while you read is like staring at a light bulb — Maddox
Apple Insider (no, I am not affiliated with them) has a better summary here.
'The best thing about deadlines is the wonderful WHOOSHing sound they make as they go by.' - Douglas Adams
"Some players might have to change their interfaces a bit. Big deal."
Well, that and the cost of damages for prior infringement over the last ten years, attorney fees, and any additional punitive damages for willful infringement or inequitable conduct before the US PTO. Of course, changing the interfaces to get around this patent may render a portable audio player uncompetitive. Other than that, not a big deal.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/