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Apple Sues HTC For 20 Patent Violations In Phones
eldavojohn writes "Taiwanese HTC is being sued by Apple for 20 patents regarding the many phones HTC manufactures. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, 'We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.' Apple has similar patent litigation with Nokia and may be trying to scare the rest of the industry into licensing patents similar to the Microsoft-Novell and Microsoft-Amazon deals regarding patents covering Linux functionality."
Maybe Apple should pay Nokia's patent royalties first before they go bullying others? (you know, the company that spend billions for mobile technology R&D and who's technology it's almost all based on?)
Apple is just like a little kid trying to yell at the parents here. Too bad the mobile phone industry is a small one, everyone of the existing players cross-license between each one and ass behaving Apple is in serious trouble if the other companies stop licensing their technology.
Apparently, it seems to think so. From the complaint:
"The '381 Patent, entitled "List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And
Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display," was duly and legally issued on December 23, 2008 by
the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the '381 Patent is attached hereto as
Exhibit D.
40. Apple is the exclusive and current owner of all rights, title, and interest in the
'381 Patent, including the right to bring this suit for injunctive relief and damages."
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
Without diving into the specifics, I don't see a problem here. The iPhone was hugely innovative, and there was a lot there that was genuinely new. While in general I'm not a big fan of patents (often the 'innovations' covered are trivial), in this case I think that Apple sort of deserves to profit from their R&D. Clearly, some of the HTC phones are knockoffs.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The lawsuit is not "similar to Microsoft's" patents over Linux functionality. They're over a competitor using patented technology. The post immediately denigrates the validity of the litigation by linking it to something that it is not. Why editorialize? Why can't the lawsuit just be about patent infringement instead of "scaring the industry"??
Here's the software patent info I've gathered on these topics so far:
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
At first I wanted to laugh at this coming from Steve Jobs. Then I realized, I think that not drinking soda-pop is healthy *looks at all the cans of pop on his desk, including the opened and half drunk Coke*
OK. Yeah, we don't always do the healthy thing, even if we know what it is. I guess I can't criticize jobs here.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
We only learned of Apple's actions based on your stories and Apple's press release. We have not been served yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.
Apparently some 700 pages were just filed and they aren't all in the court's record system yet. In addition some of the patents are pretty questionable. Crazy.
My work here is dung.
It would be funny if Steve Jobs died of cancer.
First there's a patent that prevents the USPTO from rotating applications 180, and now they can't even turn their screen to read stuff?
Life in the thing-rotation space is getting pretty tight.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Remember this day. This day marks the beginning of Apple's decline.
Seriously?
If anyone else here is a software developer, you know how crazy this is.
If this patent simply gives Apple the rights to the abstract idea of object-oriented graphic systems, that is INSANE. This is basically the equivalent of Apple suing the creator of C++. Almost every single graphic system is object-oriented. I don't know if it is even possible to not have an object-oriented graphics system.
"Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods"
Apple should sue the creators of Java as well for implementing action listeners.
[sarcasm] Seriously, I am scared to use object oriented programming because I might get sued by Apple. Time to uninstall g++. [end sarcasm]
Fuck you Steve Jobs.
They have a copy of the filing with patent numbers and short descriptions
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100302/apples-suits-against-htc-both-documents/
Not a huge fan of patents especially on software.
Apple did spend years and years getting the keyboardless touchscreen phone developed. It was not a sure hit, especially without the keyboard. Now the iphone form factor is ubiquitous and as Apple also noted when it was released that they had a ton of patents on the device, so to maximize profits (as is required by corporations), they sue....
Ultimately these big companies usually end up with some cross licensing patent agreement and life goes own.
Maybe Apple should pay Nokia's patent royalties first
I think Apple would be happy to do so. The only problem is, unlike with every other company Nokia will not except ONLY money in the case of Apple - they also demand cross-licencing of patents (presumably similar to the ones in question).
Why do you think it's fair that Nokia can demand different terms from licensers of a technology, when Nokia supposedly set forth the licenses under the RAND construct? That stands for "reasonable and non-discriminatory". How is demanding specific patents from Apple non-discriminatory?
Apple has a lawsuit going there, demanding they be able to pay Nokia as per normal terms.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google does not build devices and is therefore harder to attack than a manufacturer/importer, who builds android devices. Google on the other hand might feel compelled to help HTC, if this is actually about Android.
Might be interesting to see how this plays out.
I was at a ski resort the other week, and I heard two people talking about iPhone vs. other smartphones. One person had an iPhone. The iPhone owner said something to the effect of "Does Android have pinch to zoom? If so, I will go check it out". The UI of the iPhone is Apple's invention and gives it a competitive advantage. Why is it wrong for them to defend that?
I guess Steve Jobs has had a change of heart on one his most used phrases? (See Steve Jobs "artists steal" quote)
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
Let's see you pick on RIM or Palm, Apple.
Go ahead. Then watch your ass being handed to you afterwards.
Some of these things they claim to 'invent' I have seen long before they got patents on them.
Considering Apple is a new player on the field they should really keep their mouth shut... they are fooling with companies that have 10,15 and 20 years on the playing field.
Now I have to hear the apple drones tell me that I am holding a 'stolen' invention (my Nexus one)
I did wonder why Google enabled the multi-touch thing (I don't use it)
Is it because they know the patent is bunk and were hoping to get sued?
"similar to the Microsoft-Novell and Microsoft-Amazon deals regarding patents covering Linux functionality."
MS: You might be infringing on one or more unspecified patents.
Apple: You are infringing on these specific patents listed in the suit.
Not really all that similar. One is an empty threat, the other is serious legal action.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
The difference is, that hardware patents can usually be worked around, as long as you can keep the user interface stable. Changing the user interface on the other hand means that the enduser must adapt, which he usually is reluctant to do. It is a form of monopoly.
Imagine, for comparison, that Alfred Vacheron had patented the steering wheel in 1894 and had been unwilling to license it to competitors. The outcome could have been that dozens of different ways to steer a car would have been invented and users would have troubles switching between manufactures. A serious hindrance to a competitive market.
Do I click on to read the story? I have no damn clue. I guess I will hover each and every one and see what it points to. /. is f'n annoying when it comes to this, like one of those js link generator that adds 'news search' to ever noun in a web page. Who posts this garbage?
Let's see you pick on RIM or Palm, Apple.
Go ahead. Then watch your ass being handed to you, afterward.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Wow. I mean: wow.
Maybe I can get the patent for "sending an email by performing gestures on a Send Email Image." If that one is already taken, maybe I can get the patent for "Emptying a trashcan by performing gestures on a Trashcan Image."
Sorry, but this so ludicrous that whoever issues the patent ought to be fired. Once you have event messages coming in, every fucking practitioner in the art, will use them. Not only is it not novel to use it, but it's obviously not novel.
Almost all those patents seem a weak (some I don't quite get...). Patenting a "lock switch" because you decided to put it on a screen more than a little suspect...Entering into the "Crazy!" area.
Patent reform can't come soon enough...
There's a patent for screen rotation and scaling? That's nuts.
Patented inventions are supposed to be novel and require some genuine inspiration, not something that's obvious. The idea that you can use orientation sensors and linear transforms to make a picture that's always right-side-up and that's different sizes is laughable -- as soon as you decide you want to do it, the way to do it is obvious. Just because someone hasn't done it before doesn't mean that it required any patent-worthy cleverness to do it.
Patents are supposed to encourage invention and innovation by giving people who invent clever novel things a way to profit from them, not a way for some business to lock out competition. The screen-pinch-to-scale thing? Again, pretty obvious. (My eeepc has that on the touchpad, actually.)
As an example, suppose you wanted to make a mouse that could sense rotation/twist as well as translation. Any idiot would realize that an easy way to do this is to put two optical sensors (or balls) on it, one on each side, and do some simple math. Something like this shouldn't be patentable.
One rather ridiculous example is the Four Thirds imaging system. Olympus decided they'd like to use a different size CCD than other camera makers to make a digital SLR, and they actually patented it! They decided what size sensor, what size lens mount, what register distance, etc. to use, and then patented these engineering choices. There's nothing inherently different about the Four Thirds SLR's than any other digital SLR -- they work in the ordinary bog-standard way. (Patent absurdity aside, mine does take nice pictures.)
Patents need to be restricted to real inventions, not simple choices that anybody with a bachelor's degree could have come up with when faced by a problem. Fix this and you fix a lot of the problems with patent trolling.
Steve Jobs is a dick and the people who hang onto him are nuts.
This patent BS is a joke. Did HTC hack, steal or corrupt Apple's trade secrets? Not at all and nobody believes that. It is one thing if a company steals your stuff, it is completely different if they come up with a similar idea/process independent of you.
The part that makes this so laughable is that Apple is using the iPad name when two other companies already have claims to it. It is amazing to me that a company that bullies and takes from others with one hand has the balls to wave a finger at other companies (Especially ones that behavior better).
I love the iPad propaganda that says "you just do".
Really?
How do you "do" two apps at the same time? Who doesn't multi-task these days?
How do I "do" Java and Flash? I mean if it is the best way to browse the web, then I assume it supports key web technologies.
How "do" I drag and drop music and documents onto my iPhone/iPad from Linux and Windows? Am I free to not use iTunes?
How "do" I tether my laptop to my iPhone or ipad for internet access? Android has a wifi-tether app, is there an app for that on the iPhone?
How "do" people who don't have an Intel based Mac write apps? I can write Android and Blackberry apps without needed specific hardware.
How "do" I release iPhone apps, without giving away my intellectual property and source code? Does Apple allow me to protect my trade secrets like it does?
How "do" I not pay so much and have my choice of carrier? AT&T's network is cheap while the plans are expensive.
Respect the Constitution
"Good artists COPY.. Great artists STEAL"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Tr0syhIIo
Guess you forgot about the good'ol times don't you steve?
The OP should have RTFA lol It's in the update with the complaint.
[quote]
certain mobile communication devices including cellular phones and smart phones, including at least phones incorporating the
Android Operating System (collectively, “the Accused Products”)
[/quote]
Apple is just a bit irritable and bloated, must be time to get out the iPad. As they say, when a company stops innovating, they start litigating. Apple is throwing stones while living in a glass house.
So sayeth the man who stole so much from Xerox Parc.
First we kill all the lawyers...
Captcha: boxers
Because that's how everyone works in the mobile phone industry - they cross-license their patents.
Not in the case of the Nokia patents in question. They whole reason GSM is a standard across the industry is because the patent holders involved all agreed to license the patents under RAND - that is to say, that everyone gets to license them under the same terms. Oh wait, except for Apple, who must ALSO allow Nokia unlimited use of whatever patents they demand, otherwise you can't be a GSM phone. That's a shakedown no matter how you look at it and is bullshit in the world of standards based on patents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look, HTC builds H/W, they stick anything Linux or WinMo underneath and then slap a modular UI ontop (SenseUI)-- the UI is very portable and can mimic a lot. It's a great design-concept IMHO.
It's also becoming the best UI out there and seriously threatening Apple's bread-n-butter: its heavily advertised, "innovative" UI design (for the ipXXX's).
For one, this is a great marketing ploy by Apple to put a stick in the ground that they practically invented the mobile device UI (which it's "mainstream" customers like as it's branding and makes them 'feel' good buying an Apple product). And two, as SenseUI evolves, its design and Android's dev model allow it to evolve much faster than the iPhone UI. And we all know 2 independent dev teams will likely converge/create similar features overtime (think Gnome vs. KDE), since the user cases are the same! Hence, one can conclude HTC/SenseUI can claim [similar] newer UI features since they can release faster. Basically, Apple can't keep up. Hence suing will slow HTC down so Apple can release UI features before HTC does and claim it's a Apple "innovation".
Let's face it, patents aren't for protection anymore, they're tools for marketing strategy and engineering time-to-market, i.e. in other words, market control.
I wonder if RIM, Motorola and Palm would join the fray. File amicus curae (or something of the sort). I think it would make sense for them to take preemptive action, in case Apple goes after them next. I think it would be a good idea. In another sense, I think this suit is good because it demonstrates how Software Patents are such a bad idea, and instead of increasing competition, they are allowing one manufacturer (Apple) to stifle competition.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
With this lawsuit, Apple just admitted that they can't compete on the quality of their product. They're trying to hamstring their opponent rather than actually making something better.
Does he actually want us to believe he means that?
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/business/most-of-xerox-s-suit-against-apple-barred.html?pagewanted=1
Xerox sued Apple in December, seeking more than $150 million in damages. It asserted that the screen display of Apple's Macintosh computer unlawfully used copyrighted technology that Xerox had developed and incorporated in a computer called the Star, which was introduced in 1981, three years before the Macintosh...
G. Gervaise Davis, a copyright lawyer in Monterey, Calif., said the decision in the case ''is not a bit surprising.'' He said Xerox had waited too long to file a copyright infringement case and had to resort to a weaker charge of unfair competition. ''I think it's unfortunate,'' he added, ''because Apple is running around persecuting Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard over things that they borrowed from Xerox.''
But hey, your anecdote was great!
"competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours"
He is within his rights to do this, I am not fighting that. But I just find this really funny considering his entire product is something he took from Berkeley. Yes, Unix isn't patented, but Jobs just loves the legal battles it seems. ;/
Here is Tom Cruise demonstrating pinch and zoom in 2002. HERE
Software patents are going to be the death of Western success. Okay... maybe not the death but we are so going to catch a nasty cold from them.
Actually Apple did offer to license the patents from Nokia but Nokia tried to get Apple to give them all of the family jewels instead of the reasonable licensing they offered the other smart phone makers. Apple offered to give them access to the patents that Nokia is being sued for violating but that wasn't enough for Nokia. Apple was sitting there taking it for a while but now that they are the target of all the other smart phone makers it's time to take off the gloves and get back in the game!
You're typing that from a coffee shop, from your macbook, aren't you?
I'm thinking about writing an app to wipe my a$$. I better apply for a patent for using my a$$ to interact with a touch screen device before Apple patents that too. It blows my mind that a patent can be granted for something as obvious as using one's fingers to interact with a device. Seems that prior art for this was established when we climbed out of the primordial soup.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
'We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.'
Mr. Jobs, I have Xerox holding on line 1 for you. They say they'd like to talk to you about some kind of mouse.
Anybody want my mod points?
... and by that I mean the high street, not certain high streets in US towns and cities, not certain self selecting demographics (/. readership), but actual high streets in other countries in the world...
I live in a city with 2,000+ years of history (Exeter, UK)
I live in a city with 50 mbit cable for approx 50 bucks a month.
I live in a city which is a big university town, and which also is home to the UK Met Office (I mention that because it is basically a tech institution)
You know how many iphones I have seen in the flesh?
NONE
NOT ONE
ZIP
ZERO
Nope, not a single one.
Flipside, I am one of the few people I know who does not own a fully featured smartphone less than 12 months old, I own a very old and very basic samsung phone.
iphone is available here, and competitive price wise, plus we have the ability here to just stick a sim card in and use any carrier you like, and the iphone was marketed harder than any other smartphone, so there really aren't ANY barriers to entry here for users.
except one.
they choose / prefer to buy a different make / model phone.
Apple (iphone) suing HTC over phone tech patents is like Apple (ipod) suing Sony over walkman tech patents.
The analogy is as the ipod is insignificant in the field of hi-fi hardware, the iphone is insignificant in the field of comms hardware.
Apple is a busted flush, suing instead of innovating.
No news here unless you are an Apple shareholder, if you are then this is news, a heads up to sell Apple stock asap and get into something else.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Is not it the type we abolish this patent abuse? It hampers innovation and economy. It no longer does what it was meant to do -- to provide the means for the inventors to keep inventing. A patent holder is now on average a patent holding troll company who do nothing but buy intellectual property or submit troll patents for absolutely obvious things then sue the real inventors somewhere in Eastern Texas where the judges just grant injunctions for no reasons! Agrr, this makes me so frustrated!
HTC is based in Taiwan. If Taiwan has no patent treaty or agreement with the US, would HTC or the Taiwan government even recognize Apple's patents? How does that work? Is it really patent infringement, for a foreign company to do business in the same country where a patent is held? Even when that patent has no legal standing in the home country of the alleged infringing company?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
And given Apple's lawsuit against HTC, I'd say Nokia's decision to demand a license to Apple's patents is pretty damn prescient, don't you think?
Nokia agreed, when handing over the patents to the GSM standard, to license them in a certain manner to everyone. That's what RAND means (see link below).
Apple never agreed to license Apple patents to anyone, under any terms.
I am not quite sure why the relation of patents to standard bodies is so hard for otherwise intelligent people on Slashdot to understand. When a standard is created that uses patents, the patent holders agree to let all companies use the same terms to make use of the standards. Otherwise the standard would never work, if each company that wanted to implement the standard had to negotiate with each patent holder new terms no-one would adopt it.
I honestly don't know how it can be put any more simply than that; hopefully you and others will be able to follow along. Perhaps you and others need a trip to the RAND definition?
The normal case is that when joining the standardisation body, companies agree that if they receive any patents on technologies which become essential to the standard then they agree to allow other groups attempting to implement the standard to use those patents and they agree that the charges for those patents shall be reasonable
Again, Apple never put its patents under and RAND terms. Nokia did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think this is a really stupid move. If Nokia, Samsung, Palm, RIM and Google pool their patents and fight back Apple will be nothing but smoking rubble when this is over with. Even Microsoft has interest in this since their Win Mob 7 phone tries to be like iPhone so much it gotta hurt.
The patents in themselves looks laughable and obvious so Apple could very well wind up loosing them in the process while being left defending themselves with the avalanche of patents the others has.
HTTP/1.1 400
849 "Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image" (Feb 2 2010)
WTF how is any technology company expected to innovate, exist or otherwise do anything of value when companies are allowed to file such rank nonsense and hold it against their competitors forcing them to expend millions to fight it? Patents were meant to promote innovation not totally destroy entire industries. There have been several FREE unscreen unlock utilities available for WM for at least 5 years now... how does anyone get awarded patents on such nonsense?
381 "list scrolling, document translation, scaling rotation on touch screen display" Dec 23 2008.
How do people get away with aggregating existing tired old technology onto a new (in this case old) platform and then get awarded a patent for it. Its like the old RIM voice mail over VOIP nonsense. The patents on voice mail expired a long time ago but that didn't stop someone from successfully re-patenting the same crap on different mediums. Rediculous.
453 "Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction processing portion of a processor" June 3 2008... A patent on voltage scaling? If so it wouldn't surprise me that the patent office would award it regardless of many years of prior art.
599, 354 ... OO UIs, OO event systems... 2002,1995. Prior art: IBM AIX, OS/2 workplace shell.. How can anyone hit up a mobile phone interface for an OO event system when the technology is everywhere? All web browsers have OO event systems.
To even come close to doing its job the patent system needs to be overhauled and much of the existing patent awards need to be revoked.
Software patents shouldn't be patentable in the first place anyhow. It's just math.
You skipped a few parts, which I've highlighted below, but you miss the point entirely: Xerox thought it was a dead end. Then, Apple used the Xerox technology and made it successful, and then started suing other companies for infringement. Xerox, as the legitimate inventor of the technology, tried to license it to other companies, and they all said, "You don't own that technology. Apple does." So, it was a dick move to take over intellectual property that they didn't develop.
When Apple sues FreeBSD for having a GUI interface on top of a POSIX compliant kernel that has shiny blue buttons, then maybe you'll get the point.
The tawdry little features of their phone are nothing compared to the foundation of graphical user interfaces that were "borrowed" from Xerox. If Xerox hadn't let Apple in the building, the Mac would not have happened. If Apple wasn't claiming someone else's innovation as their own and suing people for using it, I wouldn't care. And if we were having this conversation about Microsoft, you wouldn't care either.
Xerox had sought to have Apple's Macintosh screen copyrights declared invalid, contending that they were fraudulently obtained because Apple had failed to tell the Copyright Office about Xerox's prior work.
Xerox also accused Apple of unfair competition, saying that Apple's claim to Macintosh screen technology had made it difficult for Xerox to license its technology to other companies. ''Apple is using its copyrights to hold the computer industry hostage by its licensing and litigation practices,'' Xerox, which is based in Stamford, Conn., said in a motion filed in the case....
G. Gervaise Davis 3d, a copyright lawyer in Monterey, Calif., said the decision in the case ''is not a bit surprising.'' He said Xerox had waited too long to file a copyright infringement case and had to resort to a weaker charge of unfair competition. ''I think it's unfortunate,'' he added, ''because Apple is running around persecuting Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard over things that they borrowed from Xerox."
"...We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours." ...says the man whose entire empire is based on a stolen BSD kernel.
Of course... Charmin may already have a patent on this...
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
For decades big companies used patents to manufacture their products in a regime of monopoly, plus they also patent what could be the possible alternatives to their products and hold those patents in a drawer, just to prevent somebody else from manufacturing something alternative to their products. Of course, patents are affordable only by those big companies, because of patenting costs but most importatly because of R&D costs. Thus, patents destroy competition by preventing new companies from acquiring a considerable market share; patents perpetuate the predominance of big companies over the years. All this happens at te expenses of us consumers, and when I say "expenses" I mean real money. So it seems patents are against free market. Maybe the patent law should be changed in a manner that it allows the holder to get a share of the profits others do with his invention, but DOESN'T allow the holder to stop others from producing his invention. It could be a big boost to competition, which is good, expecially in these times of crisis. :-)
The iPhone doesn't just rotate the screen, it also uses translation and scale to focus the text on the screen to try to strike a balance between "make the text big" and "don't crop out the bit you're trying to look at".
I agree it's doing more than just rotating, but is that part even in the patent?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I sooooo misread this. On topic, tech patents need to last as long as it takes to recoup the cost of invention plus some profit. In IT it could be argued that many of those inventions costs are recouped within 18 months. In the cell phone industry? Phones are obsolete within 1 year for all intents and purposes.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
This is what gets me - I have a windows mobile device sitting here - its easily 10-11+ years old, has a crummy UI etc but - it can do most anything the iPhone can do just its really clunky and needs to be rebooted 3-4 times a day.
And yes it has a keyboard ui, and a touch screen. No it doesn't have an accelerometer to rotate the screen, but I can tap a button on it and it will rotate for me.
Apple didn't innovate - they took what smart phones already were - fixed all the bugs, streamlined the UI, and shipped that. The only thing I think they can claim is the look and feel of the UI, but we know that is a dead end.
dude, you're so full of it.
First, unless you're one of the lawyers on the case (which I doubt) you have precisely as little idea as anyone else about the exact details of what Apple offered and what Nokia demanded. They're not made public and all we have is some Apple PR about how they were 'treated unfairly'. Maybe you're one of the guys who take a second helping on everything Apple dishes out, but I for one am skeptical of PR in general.
Second, stop bloody brandishing RAND. Key to RAND is reasonable. Going back to the post above about one offering $10 stuff for the other's $20 stuff, Apple can claim a dirty sock would have been a reasonable payment if they like, but just saying it won't make it true. So unless you can point out
kindly stop trolling about this matter. Once it goes to court and we all get to see the numbers (if that happens and they're not sealed) then we can argue who was in the wrong. Until then pretty please with sugar on top STFU about it.
Filed between 1995 and 2005, thinkgs like oo graphics system oo event notification system etc...
Half of the stuff has been documented in the Gang of Four book ca 1992 and has prior art from Xerox Smalltalk etc... way into the 70s!
Sheesh I get more and more the feeling that Steve Jobs has lost his mind since he almost died.
If they sued they should pull off patents with a little bit more substance than toilet paper!
I am pretty sure since HTC is longer in the mobile phone game than Apple ever was they will countersue with something more substantial. Seems to me more like a suing to grab some patents off HTC than anything else.
Apple is jealously keeping those patents so only they could have UI advantage,and yet they released iphone without paying Nokia royalties (for hw patents).
With this move, it seems that they are starting to feel the market pressure from cheaper chinese phones, which apparently caught up in software (mostly thanks to Android, but there are others), while all of them anyway have same third party chipsets and most components. What Apple doesn't want is commodization of touch-smartphones, and that's what happens at the moment.
Once they sued Microsoft for UI patents but lost, I guess after trying to privatize computer market, now they are trying that with mobile market.
Any reasonable judge should throw those patents out of the window because they are mostly trivial software-patents like one-click.
Though Apple was clever to sue a Chinese company, not a giant like Google, maybe counting on causing anti-chinese bias that could help them win the case.
Technologically...
you start to sue...
Apple has reached an absolutely new low, well it has been there before when they sued left and right companies for technology they themselves copied from Xerox...
Instead of suing they should start to get the iPhone right, how about a decent JavaVM or Flash..
Engadget has a post about this. They list out some of the major/more ridiculous ones and give a quick summary. Well, as quick a summary as a non-patent lawer can give. Good to read if your'e curious about what Apple wants to sue over and don't want to read through patent abstracts. http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent-breakdown/
Just a few points:
RE: touch screens -- Fingerorks (owned by apple) just because you've seen it elsewhere doesn't mean Apple has no claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks
RE: NOKIA patents
Terms must be "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory." If they have pooled the patent, they need to offer the same terms to Apple as everyone else.
RE:
"Stolen BSD kernel"?
Get off drugs, scratchpaper!
-- My apologies if the above facts contain any opinions, or vice versa! --
If I had mod points, I'd give you all of them.
So many people fall into the same old predictable argument of "well clearly it wasn't obvious if no one else did it yet," and "sure it seems obvious after the fact." But you've illustrated exactly the problem with that line of thinking. These companies aren't patenting novel solutions to old problems; they're patenting the most obvious solutions to new problems. In our current patent system, the first person to encounter a new problem gets a patent. So if I'm making a portable music player and I ask myself, "What's the best way to scroll through my playlist with continuous motion, given limited space?" then I inevitably come to the conclusion that I need a circle. Unfortunately for me, Apple made iPods first, so if I want decent circular-motion-based controls, I'm dead in the water.
Just because you thought of a solution first does not mean that it wasn't obvious; in many cases it just means that you were the first one to encounter the problem.
Do you actually believe it becomes true if you say it enough times?
You should pop by the article you link to yourself and read what RAND is, by no means does it say that they are required to license GSM away for free or whatever terms Apple wishes, reasonable terms are a subjective matter and Nokia is saying to Apple, if you want in our terms are quid pro quo.
"The Tea Parties and the sudden effusion of pathological Apple haters has erupted at about the same time." Discuss.
There is an update:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/the-complaint-apples-patent-lawsuit-against-htc-is-all-about-android/
If every other cell phone manufacturer pooled resources against the lawsuit, Apple wouldn't have a prayer, particularly if they all counter sue with all of their patents aimed directly at Apple's infringements. Why let one guy fight the bully? Gang up on the rat and send him to the hospital so he won't ever try it again.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
— Thomas Jefferson
...but since Apple, HTC, Nokia and others are busy suing each other rather than improving their products, I think I'll wait further. Losing a patent suit can put out of the market a company, transforming your costly smartphone into a piece of junk with no more support at all. No thanks, I'll keep my old faithful 3-years old cellphone.
So wait - it's wrong that Nokia don't allow Apple to use Nokia's patents, but Nokia are "blackmailing" for wanting Apple's patents? If you say so.
How about this: Apple pay Nokia X money to use their patents. Then Nokia pay Apple X money to use their patents ... so either what you propose works out the same as what Nokia want, or you're endorsing a situation where Apple should be allowed to use Nokia's patents for money, but not the other way round!
So you're telling me that Microsoft was engaged in serious legal action?
What has that got to do with anything?
For every feature X, obviously there will be one phone company that does it best. Apple have only managed this with one feature. Most phone companies have managed this with large numbers of features. What's special about Apple here? Does every feature deserve a patent, because someone does it first?
Are you seriously arguing that because a company did it first, it must be non-obvious and hence patentable? (Hint, there will always be a first device to have any feature.)
I just love the way that Apple fans grasp at multitouch, just because it's the sole thing it did first. Even though that's old news now (what did the later Iphone models do first?) It would be like trying to argue the benefits of the N97, based on what Nokia did first 5 years ago.
Yet meanwhile, all the basic features that the original Iphone lacked were handwaved away as unnecessary. The fact of the matter is that if Apple released the first say, 3G phone, but then were years later with everyone else with multitouch, we'd be hearing no end of how 3G was such an amazing invention by Apple, but multitouch would be "Why would I want that?"
I don't know, a lot of those companies haven't been doing well lately, and have you looked at the amount of cash Apple has? They have a stupendously large amount of cash and highly liquid assets.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
The N1 has clearly touched a nerve at Apple. And for good reason: Objectively it's just a better device: Thinner, much better display, much faster, better camera, gps navigation, faster browser, not locked, not tied to AT&T's network, and so on. (Disclosure: I own both.) The Apple execs feel the threat, even though I'm sure Android isn't yet making much of a dent in their sales. It's about wanting to be perceived as the innovator. When you don't have the best product in the marketplace, you try to maintain the high ground by accusing the other guys of stealing from you.
Yawn. Haven't we all seen this before? These patent fights never work. Remember when Apple sued Microsoft over their Mac GUI patents? How did that turn out?
In principle patents offer protection and exclusivity, but in practice they do not for these large companies. The USPTO has been granting excessively broad patents for decades, the result being that every major company with a portfolio of (excessively broad) patents can legitimately sue any other for patent infringement. So all of the big companies decide to in effect declare a truce, and cross-license their patent portfolios so that someone can actually release a product. The real loser is the innovative small company, which can't foot the $xxM legal cost of counter-suing, etc. when a big company decides to go after them, or hasn't yet accumulated a portfolio of (excessively broad) patents with which to credibly counter-sue. I don't believe this is the outcome the authors of the Constitution had in mind for the US patent system.
Apple of course understands this reality. This is just marketing and PR.
And how is being a touchscreen relevant, to a auto-rotating screen?
Well I don't think it is (as I have stated twice now), but the patent seems to.
This is just the old "take existing feature, add an irrelevant difference, and get a patent" trolling.
Sure is. No argument here, I'm not sure why people just repeat the same points I am making.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Putting all the pieces together in a new configuration is just engineering, it isn't necessarily innovation and it isn't patent worthy.
This is what I have stated in every post (third time now).
Besides, there had been messaging phones that flipped the screen when you went into sms mode. Basing that on an accelerometer instead of a keyboard slide out is trivial, it's just using a different kind of switch.
Hmm... on that, I disagree since the switch is driven programmatically, not in response to physical changes by the user (device rotation). But again, the monitor example covers exactly that.
I think the whole reason Apple didn't go after Nokia is because their patents were on shaky ground to begin with.
Except that Apple DID file a countersuit, claiming Nokia violated some patents. And again, the patents Nokia was suing over were all related to the GSM standard which Nokia has agreed to license to anyone for a fee. But they didn't want just a fee from Apple, they wanted boundless access to some patents Apple owned.
Not that I'm trying to bash Apple, I appreciate what they did bringing smartphones to the consumer market, but I think they have a comeuppance coming for all the dirty tricks they like to pull (you should see what they do to their own employees!).
I don't think they have pulled very many dirty tricks - though I think this HTC suit is one of them.
The Nokia thing is simply Nokia trying to leverage patents they had supposedly put forth for a standard to shake down Apple, which is a lot dirtier than a straightforward "hey you are using my patents please stop" lawsuit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"There's a patent for that."
zosxavius photography
kindly stop trolling about this matter.
IOW we are supposed to blindly believe what the Nolia fanboys say. Hello fanboy.
Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
Those are big words coming from a man who has built his businesses by putting other people's inventions into pretty boxes and charging an arm and a leg for it.
This is an interesting lawsuit for a few different reasons. Firstly I am not sure if it was absolutely the first phone but it must have been pretty close to it but both Nokia and Sony Ericsson have had touch screen devices where you could move objects around and resize them etc using touch back before 2004. I believe that Nokias first touch screen was the 7710. Any sony had the p Series around the same time. On the Sony Ericsson side there was the P800 which was revolutionary at the time. In fact if you actually look at many of the elements of the P800/UIQ interface you can see that there is a major similarity between those of 2002 and the iphone of 2007. So I take it from that what apple actually has patents on is the thumb? I'm pretty sure there is prior art to that too.. depending if your a creationist or a evolutionist maybe the chimpanzee has some patents..
If we outline the patents what's explained in this patent 7,469,381 is something that you could do on the UIQ's back in 2002...
It's interesting that there are some more points relating to the Windows Mobile phones that they create as well...
I've read many Nexus One reviews, and while it's clearly good competition for the iPhone, saying that it's objectively better is just plain silly. There are still many areas where it's lacking. Better at some things for some people, yes, but that's not the same.
It's interesting to read the comments here in /.
Most are expecting the patents in question to be some technical gadgets being patented, and seem to be thinking UI is just BS. Hardware is where the beef is!
That is understandable, as most /. readers are geeks, and nerds do usually prefer the engineering side of the human aspect. And that is just fine. Without hardware there is no software, and without software there is no UI. But what most /.ers seem to be missing is what floats a product. Why iPhone is still selling well.
When iPhone came out, the only unique thing about it's hardware was the touch screen. And actually even that wasn't technically anything new, only the combining software made it something new. Everything else about the phone was just average. And still is. When the latest iPhone 3Gs came out, it didn't have anything we hadn't seen before. But it's not the hardware that sells the iPhone. It's not only the marketing either. While marketing will sell a product, it will not float it for three years. There is more to iPhone's success than marketing, and it certainly isn't the hardware.
The something is not the software (as features go) either. iPhone doesn't have anything that you couldn't get to any other smart phone either. Maybe there are more apps for it yes, but essentially they do not offer any killer app that you wouldn't be able to get (feature wise) for the competing products.
The only thing that set's iPhone apart from it's competitors is it's UI. The fact that there is no manual, and even a 1 year old knows how to use it. My now 18 months old son figured out how to unlock and open picture viewer and how to browse them, all by himself. Hell, he even sent email from the phone last summer, although it wasn't as he understood what he was doing then. =) Anyway, the UI is the single piece of iPhone that sets it apart, and the largest reason for it's continuing success. To repeat myself, yes marketing sold the phone, but it's the UI that keeps on selling it.
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
Microsoft almost certainly spelled out the list of patents that they claim Linux violates to the companies they threatened. Their evil brilliance is making signing an NDA part of the settlement, so the Linux community cannot take that list and invalidate or work around each patent one by one, as we will do with Apple's bullshit list.
To clarify, by "the device" I was referring to the hardware. I would stand by my assertion that the N1 is better hardware than the iPhone, by just about any objective measure. Where the iPhone really shines is the OS; it's a little more polished than Android -- and for some people this may trump the hardware and carrier disadvantages -- although IMHO Android is catching up fast (and I could point to a few areas where Android is better).
What about the display? As great as the N1 screen is, the colour isn't necessarily as good (an orange tinge in skin tones etc.) and it isn't as good under bright sunlight (very important to me). I'm sure there are many areas where the hardware is better, but I still don't see how that makes it an objectively better device unless you start making assumptions about users' needs and preferences.
Ok, I give. You're right, there is no one perfect hardware for everyone. About the display, the N1 has better contrast (OLED generally gives blacker blacks), 2x the resolution (pretty useful for web browsing), and lower power consumption.
Looking around, I found a recent technical performance comparison of the N1 and iPhone 3GS displays, which is quite critical of the N1. I have both phones and I don't perceive the flaws they find in the N1's display, but I know it's hard to see many of these flaws under normal use. To an iPhone user the resolution and contrast certainly pop out at you when you see the N1 display.
Linking to Wikipedia articles you haven't even read isn't a good way to drive your points home. Words like "reasonable" are up to interpretation, so unless you can tell us which specific patent they are withholding and what contract they are breaching you shouldn't be jumping to conclusions.
The black levels on my iPhone are pretty good for what and where I use it. I'm sure the N1 is better, but just how much better is it in terms of bring an objective benefit? Does that high contrast still apply outdoors? As for 2x the resolution, the same thing applies; just how much more beneficial is it given that I find the smallest renderable text on my iPhone too small for anything but short labels, at least at the distance I hold my phone.
If course I'd prefer a better display, but a device is more than just the specs of each component it's made of.
The Steve Jobs quote: ...is absolutely 100% accurate. Steve said it. It comes from an Apple press release.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
Here's a link at Apple. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/02patents.html
Please do some research before you say something "isn't real".
But my main concern in all of this is the set of follow up questions which should have been asked of Mr. Jobs:
"Mr. Jobs, do you remember a trip to Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox/PARC) back in the 1980s while you were developing a successor to the Apple II? Was this successor called the Macintosh? Do you remember what you saw at Xerox/PARC for the first time ever in your life? Was it a set of prototype computers, designed by Xerox, which had a mouse, used pointers and had 'windows' you could 'drag and drop' your 'icons' into? Do you remember those icons being used as symbolic representations of files? Do you remember a small button set at the top of each 'window' which allowed Xerox researchers to 'minimize', 'maximize' and 'close' these windows inside the interface? Did you see a program there that was a word processor with 'WSIWYG' capabilities? Did you create that exact interface within a year, and brand it with the Apple name? Is that same interface still the basis of your current OSX machines today?"
If you watch any truthful documentary about the rise of Apple, you will see this scene played out: The famous "Xerox/PARC 'aha!' moment". In other words: The moment in which Steve and a few of his crew called a buddy at Xerox, got into the building and asked to be "shown the latest cool stuff". They went to Xerox/PARC to steal all the interface technology being worked on there.
The "WIMPS" interface (Windows Icons Mouse and Pointer System) fully created by Xerox, and never once did Apple pay for the use. I saw Steve Wozniak give an account of this. He relayed the story like it was a regular "James Bond" movie.
Apple does not make new things. Apple takes (often by theft) existing ideas and refines and polishes them. That is how they operate. That is why I personally own an iPhone (3GS 32 Gbyte, baby!!!). Apple does a very good job of stealing from others and then polishing and refining. But it is still theft. Because it also relies on others leading the way to the solution, it is not "cutting edge".
They steal the toys from others, and then make other people's toys look pretty and run better. Don't ever forget that.