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."

Comments

too much cool-aid

[jipn4]

Multitouch is significant to the mobile battle because it enables the use of gestures, which allows for sophisticated interactions on small devices

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.

Re:too much cool-aid

[ettlz]

Multitouch significantly increases the number of simple gestures that can be created.

Does that include Flipping the Bird?

To promote the USEFUL arts

[Shihar]

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.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[MichaelSmith]

control+alt+delete is a classic multitouch gesture.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[Eskarel]

There is a slight difference between an idea being new and the implementation being new.

Just because Star Trek has used it for years wouldn't make the invention of a real transporter any less patentable, knowing that a transporter would be cool isn't the same thing as knowing how to do it.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[rtfa-troll]

Right, but the thing is that, although that's what the patent is supposed to be for, in fact the way they set it up Apple is claiming patents on multi-touch per-se. This is inherent in the idea of patents on ideas (software / business methods / mathematics). It's very difficult to define good legal boundaries which don't have stupid implictions. For example, software patent advocates actually often claim not to be advocates for software patents. They just care about transformations of matter. Including the change in the output of your screen caused by their software! In other words, the boundary which is supposed to limit software to where it's used as part of a machine process instead becomes a tool in manipulating the debate.

I think the only logical end is a fairly hardline freedom of speech position. Patents, copyrights and trademarks should only be allowed where they demonstrably increase freedom of expression. With trademarks this is easy; if I don't have a proper name for a company which reliably means that company then it's difficult to discuss that company. For copyright, that's quite easy to show, as long as terms are short and DRM (of copyrighted material) is illegal. For normal physical patents, that's likely true as long as the development in the field of interest normally takes place over a term at least a few times as long as the term of the patent. For patents on abstract process that's never going to be true.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[wvmarle]

While I mostly agree with what you say, it's not that easy.

As you pointed out the idea of multi-touching and gestures is not new, it may even be called age-old. Think of a womans body... reacts very well under multiple touches. It's just a way of interacting. The implementation of that however is another matter. How to detect those touches that's where the patents come in. But patents is not an easy matter.

For a start obviousness: many inventions that are patentable look obvious. This are very simple solutions to problems. But often they are only obvious after someone points it out to you. Novelty is a bit less ambiguous, as there is something like "prior art".

The worst patent fights we see is typically in software; the second bad one is medicine. For the rest the patent system works pretty much as designed, that is for the traditional technical/physical/machine type inventions.

Also in case of these "multi-touch" patents, it is most certainly not on the user-side of multi-touch. It must be on specific implementations of multi-touch, either technical (how to detect those two or more touches on a surface) or software (what to do with it). The first one I think could certainly be patent-worthy, the second not.

There may be multiple ways to implement those touch surfaces: different detection tricks and so. Those may each be patentable, and no problem with that. Use method A, pay for patent A, and you're OK. Invent your own method B, you may patent it yourself, and you can implement multi-touch by yourself using your method. Patents work as they should.

The problem is software-patents where a certain trick which may be implemented in numerous different, innovative ways gets patented. Then your new way to get the same result suddenly falls under an existing patent. And there it goes wrong.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[Arker]

Patent law has become completely perverted and is no longer even vaguely related to its constitutional form.

I remember in school I was taught that a patent had to lay out information so that you could sit down and read it and learn exactly how to do something new and useful and entirely non-obvious. In return for teaching everyone how to do this, the patent holder got a short term monopoly. Even that system was subject to considerable doubt as to whether the cost was worth it, as the normal thing with inventions was that there were several inventors who hit on the same thing very nearly simultaneously. But at least it made some sense.

Read a patent lately? They usually dont describe anything new or useful, and even when they do, they certainly dont do so in a way that would actually impart the necessary information to do it yourself. The old patent system may have been a bad trade in most or all cases, but it was a trade - now there is no trade at all. Just a pile of impenetrable gibberish filed to get a monopoly.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[Wildclaw]

The way this is done is by granting a temporary monopoly to an inventor for the singular purpose of encouraging more inventions.

And yet, over and over again, people seem to come up with very similar inventions independently. It is almost like inventions happen because the right prerequisites are there, and not because of some monetary incentive.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[serviscope_minor]

any idiot who has watched any sci-fi

Sigh. No need to bring that in to it and gloss over the real people involced. HCI researchers have been researching multitouch since the early 80s, or even before.
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

They did all the real hard grunt work making it actually work. Now a bunch of companies want to swoop in and claim the inventions as their own simply because they want to market it.

For what it's worth, I do not think that pinch zoom obvious. In 1984. When it was invented. By now, since multitouch is so old, to anyone versed in the HCI world, yeah, this stuff is a mix of pretty obvious and been done before.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[Trepidity]

I don't think you can generally patent an invention that already existed solely because you were the first to mass produce it inexpensively enough to make it a viable consumer product. If, in doing so, you came up with some novel innovation, you can patent that, but the innovation can't be as simple as combining the parts and then making manufacturing improvements to bring down the cost/size.

Re:To promote the USEFUL arts

[kazade84]

Think of a womans body... reacts very well under multiple touches.

YMMV.

HTC havent actually sued Apple

[mjwx]

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.

If anyone owns the patents...

[lowlymarine]

...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.

Re:If anyone owns the patents...

[mjwx]

...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.

This is what makes it so insidious and wrong. Apple don't have the hardware patents, they have software patents on certain processes (using two fingers to manipulate page size and so forth). Synaptic, IBM, 3M and a few others have the hardware patents so all Android phones with capacitive touch screens are capable of multi-touch in the hardware but it's not implemented in the OS precisely because the screen manufacturers bought the patent rights from Synaptics and so forth but Apple will not license the software patents to an OSS project.

Despite my usual disposition, this is not a rant against Apple specifically but the general uselessness of software patents and their tendency to inhibit innovation and competition. Although Apple, as a main contributor to software patents is far from innocent but they are the symptom, software patents are the disease.

Cross-licensing only works with the willing

[danerthomas]

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?

Re:Useless shit

[DMiax]

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.

Re:Useless shit

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking hard is it to just look it up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitouch#History