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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."
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.
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...
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?
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
If multitouch sensors were that easy to create, don't you think we'd have had them in 1980, along with all the craze over touch screens way back when?
Bottom line – good quality touch screens that can take input from multiple contact points at once are hard to build the hardware for, hard to come up with algorithms to interpret the input from said hardware, and hard to build completely new user interfaces on top of.
Not saying I agree with long term patents, or that I agree with all the corporate bitch slapping going on, but that doesn't make multitouch any less innovative.
Your argument seems to be that "anyone could have thought of doing things with two fingers"... which is true... Unfortunately, not anyone could, or did think of *how* to do it. I have already thought of flying around in jet cars all day... Doesn't mean I know how to do it, or that it's in any way easy, or non-patentable.
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.
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.
If multitouch sensors were that easy to create, don't you think we'd have had them in 1980, along with all the craze over touch screens way back when?
We did. Sorry if I don't read the rest of the post.
How fucking hard is it to just look it up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitouch#History
It's not that simple. Nokia is enforcing its patent on GSM and making everyone pay. Meanwhile, companies are infringing on Apple's multitouch in order to stay competitive, so Apple wants them to pay too - including Nokia, who don't want to. So Nokia countersued. Etc. etc.
Patents are just a part of the technology biz. This is totally normal stuff.
I know it's currently cool around here to blame Apple for everything, but as usual things are much more complicated than that.
Why did you link to an article about software patents there weren't granted?
Also the article isn't excxactly correct.
If I make a device the does A. You can not make the exact same device just because it does B. You can modify and patent the resulting thing.
If I patent a hammer, you can't patent the same thing and call it a 'glass breaker'
I think this article may be a better description of software patents and lays out why they are bad:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/resurrecting-the-supreme-courts-software-patent-ban-not-ready.ars/3
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Xerox was the first commercial company to make a GUI. Both MS and Apple hired from the pool of people who worked at Xerox before the mac came out.
apple Market Cap: 229.19B
microsoft Market Cap: 253.10B
I wouldn't really call apple the little guy.