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

So they did it?

[DorkusMasterus]

Apple patented porn?

Re:So they did it?

[LiquidCoooled]

Not quite, but they did manage to get a patent on the clickable touch sensitive nipple interface.

Re:So they did it?

[agent dero]

what about it?

Re:So they did it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Squeeze the sides to launch exposé and more"

Press Releases

[The Zon]

"Apple Attorney Secures Patent For Film, Phones, Computers" If somebody had actually pulled this off, putting out a press release seems almost humble.

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".

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?

The Simpsons already did it.

[FunkeyMonk]

Did Apple patent the Billion Dollar Bill?

Not getting it

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Not getting it

[ZachPruckowski]

A lot of digg users bury Roughly Drafted stories on site. There's no algorithym change involved in his claims of being censored. Digg users just think he stories are very biased pro-Apple, and also are annoyed because he has dozens of digging sockpuppets.

Re:Not getting it

[VGPowerlord]

Digg users just think he stories are very biased pro-Apple

That's probably his stories are very biased pro-Apple. It took me one look at the Roughly Drafted Magazine page a few weeks ago when his site hosted the Leopard vs. Vista article (linked to here on /.) to realize that. I didn't even have to read the aforementioned comparison, because I could already tell what it was going to say. The sad part is, I navigated to the RDM page to find Page 1 of the Leopard vs. Vista review thinking that maybe someone actually did a useful comparison of the two.

, and also are annoyed because he has dozens of digging sockpuppets.

I'd think that would be against the Digg rules, but since I've never liked Digg (because its "Digg this" links promote karma-whoring), I wouldn't know.

Re:Not getting it

[DECS]

Hi - Thanks for the A. I described patent law and Apple's disasterous pit of litigation in 1988-1994 to answer the claim that Apple will, as the patent attorney says, convert from a hardware company to a patent lawsuit machine.

The www.roughlydrafteded.com site is censored by Digg, not because stories are ranked poorly, but because the system automatically bars URL submissions from sites that have had a given number of submitted articles buried.

The anonymous poster of your link (ba01162.googlepages) is "Lackawack," a Digg user who announced he would set up a "vigalante army" of fake accounts on Digg and take down any articles that had been submitted from RoughlyDrafted. That was in response to unflattering reviews and general taunting of the Zune.

That resulted in Lackawack getting his user banned on Digg, but he immediately resurfaced as lackawack2 and started buring old articles that had been on the front page. He also attacked everyone digging any RDM articles. He started keeping a McCarthy list of "suspicious Digg users" who digg RDM articles, which is the page you advertise in your post.

Of course, if any of those users were fake, lackawack2 could have just submitted them to Digg and the site would ban them. Since he couldn't do that, he just raised a FUD screen of "sounds suspicious!!!" and kept working to bury old stories until enough articles on Digg had been sequentially banned so that Digg blocked further submissions.

That mechanism is designed to prevent domains from dumping a bunch of junk into Digg, but it is entirely worthless, as plenty of spam anonyblog domains caputure Digg's front page. All the "top 10 lists of stuff you already know" that link to anonymous googlepages full of Adsense, or domains all run by the same group of pay for say astroturfers (some of which have been outted on RDM) happily consume much of Digg's bandwidth.

The thing is, if you need to repress someone else's speech with your own noise, you're probably lying. I try to contribute original, worthwhile writing on subjects to balance the sensationalist and often poorly thought out press release regurgiations that are much easier and profitable to do. If you don't like my stuff, you can ignore it, but presenting a liar's troll campaign as a credable attack is just lame.

The vast majority of comments on RDM articles on Digg were very positive. It is only the miniority of anonymous trolls there who want to censor opinions that fail to hail everythign from Microsoft with effusive kowtowing. Digg just has systems in place that allows that type of abuse. That's making it increasingly less interesting to use Digg.

NewsFactor looks interesting.

Re:Not getting it

[Sj0]

With all due respect, you lose a lot of credibility by dedicating article space to this minor personal spat, and even more by participating in this red herring of a conversation.

it's interesting that they say apple isn't...

[jimstapleton]

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.

Re:it's interesting that they say apple isn't...

[gandreas]

Apple never sued FreeType - see FreeType's own account about this myth
The patents Apple has in TrueType also have to do with grid-fitting of curves, and not antialiasing - basically a way to provide hints to adjust control points for curves on limited resolution contexts, effectively so that you don't have to do any antialiasing (which on a B&W device is impossible).

Re:it's interesting that they say apple isn't...

[jimstapleton]

I never said they did, I said they /threatened too/, this was a couple of years ago, when the bytecode interperater wasn't turned off. Now they ship it with that functionality turned off to prevent such litigations.

apple patent

[inKubus]

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."

Submited by Daniel Eran, the spammer

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you don't know, this article was submited by Daniel Eran who was caught spamming Digg with his useless articles...

Check out how he was caught:
http://ba01162.googlepages.com/RoughlyDraftedBUSTE D.html

Thay Did It! (sic)

[MrSquishy]

phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer

Hmm... phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer.
It also doesnt exist in "Prior Art".

My god, they have found 3) ????:
3) Patent the letter "E"
4) Profit!

Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games

[DarkManaX]

Wow, you're a bright one aren't you? Take a look at Mac hardware... it's practically IDENTICAL to PC hardware, including that of graphics processors. The problem isn't hardware, it's software companies not willing to port games on mac. And from what I've seen since I bought my MacBook, any games that are on here run so damn well that it's not funny.

Incentive Misconception

[ThosLives]

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.

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).

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).

Re:Eli Whitney cared

[Anonymous Coward]

The cotton gin is the perfect example. After all, it was invented? So the system did not make him rich. BFD. Had he NOT spent his time trying to collect royalties (rent seeking), and instead produced value, then maybe he would have faired better. Back then, the big guys took his shit and ran with it. Add 200 years of reform and what happens: the big guys just take shit and run with it. No matter how clever your patent, if you try to sell something using it, other aspects of your device may be covered by one thousand other patents in the hands of big business. I.e., good luck.

Article doesn't identify the patent. Here it is.

[Animats]

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.

Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games

[be-fan]

Practically identical to PC hardware but much more costly, which is exactly why I stick to PCs, especially now that you can run OSX on just about any PC.The reason most software companies don't port games to mac is because the audience is so much smaller it's just not worth their time and money. Have you looked at Mac prices since the Intel transition? All across the lines, the machines are extremely price-competitive. The iMac and Macbook are within 10% of a comparable PC, and the PowerMac severely undercuts a comparable PC (even if you build it yourself!). Just about the only machine that still carries a premium is the Macbook Pro.

Cheaper To Fight It

[DrKyle]

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.

Re:Developing Drugs Costs Big $$$

[GigsVT]

Necessity for drugs is not going to drive development. Money is.

Exactly, and there's no reason patents are needed. Other industries still make products there is demand for, without ever registering a single patent.

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.

They spend more on advertising than they do on research. The FDA thing is another government created problem that can be done away with as easily as the patent system. The risk of lawsuits is so great that the phrama companies will still be plenty careful about what they release. If anything the FDA gives them permission to be sloppy as it stands now. They only have to do the minimum required for approval, nothing more. A private branding mark of quality, similar to UL, can be used instead of FDA approval.

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

Wah. Every other industry deals with knockoffs. There's nothing special about pharmacueticals. Most of them are not trivial to synthesize.

without investing a single cent of their own in research. Which isn't exactly fair.

Plenty of markets exist without ever involving patents. Those markets are generally very successful at providing the service.

medicine has the potential to improve the quality of life of tons of people

It does, which is why it's so much more important to eliminate patents here than anywhere else. I don't know why you want to support corporate handouts so badly.

Since we're on a patent rant today...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Science Friday had a good episode last week covering some of the more absurd patents and the culture at the USPTO.

Re:Article doesn't identify the patent. Here it is

[blhack]

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.

Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games

[VGPowerlord]

Wow, you're a bright one aren't you? Take a look at Mac hardware... it's practically IDENTICAL to PC hardware, including that of graphics processors. The problem isn't hardware, it's software companies not willing to port games on mac. And from what I've seen since I bought my MacBook, any games that are on here run so damn well that it's not funny.

It's also been that way for all of a year now?

Then again, software these days rarely, if ever, interact directly with the hardware. APIs are what matters now, and unfortunately APIs are something Microsoft has in spades.

Microsoft pushes for developers on Windows to use DirectX so that the game they create aren't portable. If they were to use OpenGL, or even worse for Microsoft, SDL, they could build portable games. Do you really think Microsoft wants that?