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What the Mobile Patent Fight Is All About
GMGruman writes "Nokia, Apple, and HTC are all suing each other over mobile patents. Google and Microsoft are also in the game. InfoWorld's Paul Krill explains what the fight is all about: control over multitouch, the technology that enables gesture interfaces on iPads, iPhones, and other smartphones. And he explains the chances that the companies will settle their dispute as they jockey for advantage, why Apple has been playing hardball, and why competitors are fighting back just as hard."
As if 'multitouch' is inventive or someone else would have never thought of it, its like someone patenting single click or one touch...
oh WAIT>. fuck we're doomed
You don't need multitouch for gestures; in fact, gestures are an alternative to multitouch. And it's also not needed; even software on iPhone and iPad doesn't use multitouch consistently, with some applications only using it for scrolling, others only for zooming, and few applications supporting rotation or more complex gestures. Someone has had too much of Jobs's cool-aid.
And, besides, Apple didn't invent multitouch, and neither did the multitouch company they bought. What Apple did is what Apple always does: they pick some technology, try to get exclusive use of it somehow, and then hype it up, creating the impression that their products are unique and must-have devices.
You can see their m.o. illustrated nicely in their negotiations with Swype: they were quite interested in Swype when they thought they could get an exclusive deal and dropped it like a hot potato when it turned out they couldn't. Apple isn't about choosing the best technology, they are about choosing something that's different from everybody else and creating the belief that it is better through marketing.
The point of patent law is to "promote the useful arts". In other words, better humankind. The way this is done is by granting a temporary monopoly to an inventor for the singular purpose of encouraging more inventions. This bullshit has nothing to do with that. Apple has an utterly bullshit patent that any idiot who has watched any sci-fi in the past half century has seen before. "Multi touch" is not some breath taking innovation. It is a "not shit" next step for touch based devices (which are also "no shit" inventions). Frankly, this just brings to the forefront the glaring flaws in our patent system. The idea that you could patent a broadly defined (and obvious) method of interacting with a device is absurd. Idea should actually have to be novel and non-obvious. When large companies are slinging patents at each other not to protect sunk R&D costs, but just to trip up their competitors in court, you know that this entire system is fucked.
Ready, set, go!
I know these aren't software patents, but this is profoundly stupid, and I'm sure we'd all enjoy watching Apple and MS get fucked over by their own greed.
The suit brought against HTC by Apple didn't include anything to do with multitouch, AFAIK. The multitouch patents aren't even relevant outside the US for the most part and nothing but the most precise implementation will likely survive any scrutiny with-in the US.
They've made a complaint to the FTC.
Apple is suing because it's being eclipsed by it's competitors.
Nokia is suing because it got sick of asking Apple nicely to pay for the patents they were using.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
...shouldn't it be Synaptics? Their touchpads have been multitouch-capable since Apple was still using PowerPC chips and the iPhone was just some obscure Cisco product.
So is this the start of Patent Armageddon we were told was coming.
See Apple, Nokia, and HTC lob patent nukes at each other is pretty interesting. Need to start stockpiling my old POTS phones. Maybe the owner of tone dialing will get into the fray as well.
I wonder if tapping out people's phone number via pulse dialing on my landline still works or did someone patent that too and is requesting royalties.
I remember using touch interfaces at Epcot Center in 1985. The difference here is the size of the device and he applications I can run (not only browse info about pictures), but other than that I see no difference.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
The Infoworld article makes some good points but the issue is too big to claim that those two pages say all this fight is about.
The emphasis on multitouch (which doesn't rule out that other key patents are held by Apple as well) would be plausible. It's extremely difficult and rare for a patent holder to aim for total annihilation of a competitor. Patents are much more likely to be used against a competitor (i) to maintain a certain premium functionality (ii) or to impose license fees that make it harder for the late entrant to offer his solution at lower prices while increasing your own profitability. Just looking at how two different players deal with HTC, it's pretty clear that Microsoft pursues a licensing approach (which enabled HTC to avoid litigation by agreeing to pay) while it's increasingly probable that Apple actually wants to preclude competitors such as HTC from providing certain functionality (such as multitouch) at all. In that case, litigation (which is now ongoing between Apple and HTC) is rarely avoided because the alleged infringer could only avoid it by reducing the functionality of his product.
The only way for a competitor to get away unscathed, neither having to pay royalties nor having to curtail the functionality of any product, is to strike a cross-licensing deal with the aggressor. So how likely is that to be the solution of the current dispute?
While they are fierce competitors, Apple and Microsoft put a cross-licensing deal in place a long time ago, and Microsoft has such a powerful patent portfolio, especially in connection with operating system and graphical user interface functionality, that it's in a position to do such a deal with Apple. That's good for Microsoft and for its licensees.
But how about everyone else? The camp that would most desperately need a cross-licensing deal with Apple is the whole Android camp, meaning Google and its hardware partners (the vendors who build phones based on Android, be it on the basis of a formal agreement with Google or on open-source terms). As the article explains, Google didn't even try to provide multitouch functionality by default and left it to those hardware partners to tread that dangerous path. When I talk to people, including IT-specialized journalists, about the mobile patent war, there's a very common misconception: "Google can do a cross-license with Apple." However, in recent years Google obtained only about 10% the number of patents that Apple received, and given the areas both companis focus on, it's likely that Google not only has fewer but also has, across its smaller portfolio, a lower percentage of patents that could really pose a threat to Apple. Google isn't a patent powerhouse. I only compared Google's patenting activity to that of Apple, and even Apple isn't extremely big (but some of those patents, especially the ones related to multitouch, may be very critical).
You wanna see a massive patent powerhouse (which however almost certainly won't come to the rescue of Android)? IBM pointed out at a press conference last year that at least at the time it had (and might still have) more patents than Microsoft, HP, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google combined...
c'mon...can you imagine a car without one?
heres a recommendation: reasonable license fees - with creation credit - aka royalties.
the more ludicrous and innovation destructive the lawsuit, the more seriously revision of intellectual property law becomes a priority
rather than wait for a change in law, vote with your paycheck: buy something else
--- tp|pt engineer * bs terminator * propeller head
Idea should actually have to be novel and non-obvious.
Yes, that's the idea and that's what the law says, but every word gets a different meaning under patent law than it has from a common-sense perspective.
Large parts of what the average person would consider "obvious" is considered "inventive" under patent law. That's why different attempts on both sides of the Atlantic have failed to get those FAT patents revoked. People thought that maybe the courts would be more demanding in terms of the inventive step involved than the examiners at the patent offices, but the judges upheld the original decisions to grant.
Yes Apple is doing wrong, but they are actually using the patent how a patent is supposed to be used. Not using it for patent trolling or for cross-licensing deals, but for a temporary monopoly on technology. I laugh at it because it is extremely ballsy and goes against the grain of how modern corporations work.
On a side note, has patents ever stopped OSS before? I really do want to figure out how to get my multitouch scrolling working on Linux on this EeePC at some point.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Nokia and HTC sell licenses for their patents to many competitors. Apple wants to buy licenses from Nokia and HTC on the same terms, but... Nokia and HTC would rather cross-license to get access to multi-touch than sell licenses to Apple, and Apple wants to keep multi-touch exclusively to themselves for now. so... Apple uses Nokia and HTC patents without first getting a deal but is willing to pay for them at the going rate and is hoping that the court will order that settlement. Nokia (and others) use Multi-touch without first getting a deal and are willing to cross-license and/or pay for it, and are hoping that the court/FTC will order Apple to make multi-touch available to others. The question is: Are courts more likely to order Nokia and HTC to offer Apple the same deal that they offer everybody else, or are courts more likely to order Apple to sell something that they have not been willing to sell to anybody?
well, I don't think this make important means, Nokia is professional in mobile phone, apple then have many lines of business, and HTC got its features, and they are different advantages in their business, just a few blending, but competition is needed I think. Though it seems that iPad is very absorbing now, but just bcz the releasing time. Of cource, there are many folks and developer all around it now, and service for it. such as this one: http://www.ifunia.com/resources.html nearly live on with apple!
The worst way to sell your Chinese Sweatshop tat is to spam completely unrelated newsgroups, Mr Qinglin Chen of 195 Huangpu Road, Guangdong, China. Let's see what that does to your Google pagerank.
The real problem with patents is the exclusivity.
Historically the precursor of (western) patent law was called Statute of Monopolies. At that time it was quite common for kings to reward their subject with various monopolies. But monopolies have no place in modern free-market democracies. In this sense patents are going against the basic principles of modern societies.
Since we need inventions, patents should still be rewarded, but not with exclusivity. Instead some kind of royalty system should be put in place, that would grant appropriate compensation to inventors, but not limit others to actually use the invention.
Pust my two .
Peter
Let's see what that does to your Google pagerank.
Nothing, because comments don't get index as per robots.txt?
see what it does in ultimate end ? companies end up trying to fuck each other, instead of competing for providing cheaper and more quality goods and services.
free market capitalism, patents and copyrights work well only during 'wild west' frontier eras of economies or technologies. just like in the early days of usa, in the early days of scientific age, or in the early days of the internet era.
when the market stabilizes, companies proceed to fuck each other for control, and the winner of the hierarchy of power proceeds to fuck customers.
Read radical news here
Jeff Han in 2006:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1901178468684079368#
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
It's strange that companies actually went for litigation. Maybe it happened because this new field brought companies into competition with other companies tehy hadn't dealt with before, so the usual deals of paying patent tax to each other couldn't be set up fast enough.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Fuck the multitouch patents! This is about patents over the standard mobile technology and the ability of a newcomer to enter the market!
I don't care whoever wins (though my dislike of Apple is strong) but the outcome will set a precedent for new companies that want to start producing a mobile phone. At the very least they will have to strong arm old players with some unrelated patents. Why do people read everything in this Apple-centric way?
multitouch patents are worth less too. Several of them are software patents. Billski et al is liable to curtail software patents in the US and most other countries do not recognise software patents.
All countries recognise hardware patents.
So even if the "per use" value was the same where patents are valid, if you exchange Apple's patents for Nokia's, Nokia is paying for patents in countries where there ARE no patents to pay for. Apple is getting a freebie. And quite a large one.
They've resorted to hog-calling?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Very succinct description of the state as I understand it too. Note that Nokia are simply suing for backdated licensing fees for their patents whilst Apple are suing to prevent their competitors using multitouch at all, reinforces the point that apple want it to themselves.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Cross licensing is what Apple don't want. Also note that the patents for software (Apple's) are not as prevalent, whereas the hardware patents are universal. So they aren't worth as much even if you class them the same.
All the others who get RAND put their patents in the pool. Apple don't want to pool their patents but they STILL want the RAND.
Isn't that discriminatory if Nokia allow Apple alone to do this?
Irony.
PS the patents aren't of equal value either: Apple without Nokia patents have no iPhone. Nokia without Apple patents still have capacitative multi-touch screens (HW patents belong to IBM among others) and even without that, they still have a phone.
One thing that my fellow Slashdotters aren't paying attention to is that this is an Infoworld story. If you don't know what that means, spend a few minutes at their web site reading stories and it should become apparent to you. If you're going to troll, you should know who you're trolling for.
Once you've done that, observe that it's the major players in the cell phone market all suing each other - this isn't a story about multitouch or GPS or anything like that, it's a story about how patents are used as weapons against competitors. There's a few mouth breathers making this into an "Apple hate" story but it's not - it's a "patent malfunction" story.
Maybe this one will be the one that catches the Patent Office's attention - or maybe not. But making it into anything more than a patent abuse story is intellectually dishonest and not worthy of a Nerd.
or Power or both.
Next.
i don't understand how an editor for a major tech site can write a post without even using a spell checker. it's 2010. just fyi.
because the multitouch patent also applies to any other instantiation of the multitouch idea. so yes, you have to build it, but once you build it, no one else can build it, even from scratch
in other words, yes: you thought up some stupid "no shit" idea, and now you are blocking anyone else from obvious no brainer low level technology. this is not fostering innovation, this is a troll living under a bridge, preventing anyone from crossing
patents are not tools of lone innovators to protect them from predatory established companies
patents are the tools that predatory established companies use to ensure their monopoly/ oligopoly
patents hinder innovation, they don't foster it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you got your ass handed to you on slashdot
I have had lots of MP3 players, most broke due to me breaking them, the iPod is the ONLY one to break on its own. I still got a Zen player that still works to this day.
Oh and the iPod's screen started showing dead pixels, something I never had problems with on other players as well.
No, Apple does make some intresting products, but there are some fan's who go WAY to far in their obsession.
Same with multi-touch and gestures, both existed and were used long before Apple ever got involved. And having a macbook, I must say that the trackpad is still a bloody awful device with it often doing the wrong thing. No such problems with a mouse/trackball, even when doing gestures in Opera.
Drink the Koolaid but don't bathe in it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So we patent the Shroedinger equation??? THAT was complicated, innovative and complex. It is also as much "not standard maths" (more so, if anything) as any algorithm that has patents.
So any use of a laser requires the Shroedinger patent license.
No.
Hell no.
Just tell me why your idea that some algorithms should be patentable.
And don't give compression: they enable works which are effective: DVD and digital music downloads became possible from compression algorithms: they would pay for MPEG2 compression because without it, they'd still have to press Laserdisks which are a shitload more expensive. The demand for compression made compression algorithms inevitable WITHOUT patent protection. Theora and Dirac show why and how. (Dirac especially: it costs LESS to develop a new compression algorithm, with the expense of avoiding other patents built in, than to license an OTS compression system).
you honestly don't understand how malicious software patents are
please read up:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/us-patent-office-tightens-the-screws-on-software-patents.ars
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You actually give a shit about something like that. That's really sad.
//...one outcome is already certain, says Yankee Group's Howe: "More money for the lawyers."//
I thought this part of the story was *very* amusing and possibly true...
Neither Apple nor Fingerworks invented multi-touch. Neither of them invented the pinch gesture.
If you go back to Bill Buxton's writeup you'll see that the idea of using the pinch gesture to scale objects has been with us long before Wayne Westerman even started studying.
While Apple's implementation of a touch controlled UI is extremely well done, they do not deserve credit for any of the ideas.
What Apple is trying to do is to rewrite history, and the sad fact is that far too many people lack any knowledge of history and are willing to accept the lie.
It is supposed to be jargon for the sphere it is written for. An engineering patent should use jargon FROM ENGINEERING. If it's written in legal jargon, how can an ENGINEER read the patent and learn how to do the patented item? If the engineer cannot do it, then it isn't describing the tech for the one "skilled in the art" and therefore is an INVALID patent.
Nonsense.
A search for "daveime slashdot.org" yields 1480 results ... the most recent being 18 hours ago.
Comments DO get added to the Google hivemind very quickly.
Gentlemen and Ladies, there is prior art to pinching motion. Here it is. Although this might invalidate my patent on eye roll motion, which automatically posts sarcastic replies to patent threads on /.
... not just Early Adopters.
I just bought a system which still has/uses PS2 mouse and keyboard ports.
I bought, used USB attached peripherals and have done so for years.
My keyboards, printers, scanners, cameras, DAW and MIDI keyboard etc are all USB.
There is no legitimacy for keeping PS2 crap around except inertia and the fact that PC product engineers don't seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Why does Apple seem to have such a sharp design team?
They don't really but they shoot the engineers early, when they are drawing up the specs and then bury them in the back yard so they can fertilize something rather than pollute product ideas with the same-ol' same-ol', like putting on-board PS2 ports.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Multi-touch will be the one-click shopping of this decade.
"As you'd expect, Apple has patented its multitouch technology" is not quite right. It incorrectly implies that Apple did all the innovation, and obtained the patent themselves. Instead, Apple has also acquired multitouch patents by purchasing other companies. And shutting them down of course, to make multitouch less available on non-Apple platforms.