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.

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.

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: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).

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).

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.