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Motorola Sues Apple
rexjoec writes "Just a week after Motorola Inc. (MOT) itself became the target of legal action by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), it sued Apple Inc. (AAPL) for the alleged infringement of 18 of its patents. Motorola subsidiary, Motorola Mobility Inc. also filed patent suits against Apple in federal court in Illinois and Florida."
This is great! If this madness continues, companies will spend 90% of their revenue filing or defending dozens of lawsuits, get nothing done anymore, and will clamor at the doors of congress to save them from the patent madness they once thought to be such a great idea.
Or maybe we're all doomed.
--Udo.
It's like the Mutually-Assured-Destruction scenario in the mobile/wireless world!
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Under this patent system anyhow.
Which makes it no less ridiculous.
Is this really sustainable for the industry? It seems like every mobile company has patents that every other mobile company is either stepping on or tiptoeing around. I have to think that by this time next year all the major companies involved will have set up a meeting somewhere and agreed to cross license with each other. All these patent suits are just wrangling for a better position in the agreement that they all know is coming eventually. Of course, such an agreement would make it next to impossible for any new companies to enter the market, which I'm sure none of the current manufacturers would be sad about.
A diagram in the Guardian from last week nicely illustrates the insanity that is the mobile phone litigation business. With the vortex of lawsuits surrounding both hardware and software, it's amazing that anybody is able to innovate at all.
It's pretty hard to keep the graph up-to-date.
Regarding the unfolding mess, here's what info I've gathered:
And if someone wants to get an article started on this new lawsuit, go ahead:
Motorola_v._Apple_(2010,_USA)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I think we're seeing something different here. Company A gets sued by Company B, because B wants a revenue stream from a stupid patent (especially since it's rather obvious that B is struggling in the mobile market pretty badly). Company A, also struggling, doesn't want to have to pay for the eventual licensing out of its own funds, so it sues Company C to get a revenue stream that it will in turn use to pay B with (and maybe get a bit of extra besides). Eventually everyone is suing everyone else to, well, pay everyone else.
It all looks good on paper, though, and it'll confuse the hell out of shareholders enough to make them look profitable.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Here we g-ge-g-gh-go again! The patent system is like a bad Looney Tuners cartoon [well, no sduch thing really] - it needs to be ovehauled BADLY.
Th-t-the-t-th-the-th-that's all folks!
Getting sued by other major cellphone makers for patent infrigment.
Dumped into third place in sales by Google and Android.
Defective hardware - botched antenna design, wonky proximity sensor, and glass casing problems.
iOS woefully behind Android in features and ease of use.
And Apple has stopped giving out their iPad sales numbers updates.
At least they are doing better than Microsoft's colossal failure with the dead Kin and Windows Phone 7 OSes.
A nice data visualization will help
I thought it was bad before. I saw the graph on /. where all of the wireless companies are suing each other, but I thought: the graph isn't complete. You MUST have every node connected with with every other node (company) bidirectionally suing each other (to have a completely dense graph). My wish is coming true. We well have every node connected to every other node soon enough. All I can say is: if you want to be making major serious coin in the high tech industry today, become a lawyer and either work for the wireless phone companies, or for the media conglomerates (or... sparky for the really big money, work for a Washington lobbyist). Its
These patents are absurd. We've debated the frivolousness of many patents here for a while, but a patent for "Receiver having concealed external antenna" is just laughable. It makes me wonder if there is a patent for have an non-concealed antenna.
The transition from Motorola to Intel processors decided in 2005 by Apple may be another reason that encouraged Motorola to take legal action later on, when they could.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
while foreign companies are busy producing products and generating jobs and revenue, US companies are busy suing each other.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The transition from Motorola to Intel processors decided in 2005 by Apple
...happened after Motorola had already spun off its semiconductor division as Freescale in 2004.
Motorola was out of the picture by the time IBM had secured all three console's for its PPC/Cell chips and they dumped Apple as a customer.
This case certainly has nothing to do with that ancient history.
I thought that's where all patent lawsuits were filed these days!
I don't see how this is unexpected. Apple is a noob in the cell phone industry, that means the only patents they may have had were ones they bought from other company's or are paying License fees for. They just haven't been in the business long enough to have built up a cell phone patent war chest so there going to get sued by everyone.
Jack of all trades,master of none
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhjBlPucpd0
If Moto spent as much time truly innovating products that were on the leading edge of consumer demand, as they once did, they would not be looking like losers now.
Patents are only good IF YOU USE THEM IN YOUR PRODUCTS.
Patent trolls don't have ongoing brand value.
I loved the early Moto "flip phones" in the late 80s that were damn near indestructible, if bulky for a pocket.
Then when they started to miniaturize their phones, my experiences led me to believe that they lost the good designers, because of all the faults I saw in my phones (at rather inflated prices).
MS: You know, we could "misplace" the lawsuit MS has going against you.
Motorola: That would be great, but what would we have to do?
MS: Nothing much, just mess with Apple a bit. We could do it ourselves but it would attract the kind of attention we don't want right now.
First thing that when through my mind when I read the headline.
The "whole point of patents" was to enable someone to come up with an idea and have a brief exclusivity period so that they could get the idea to market.
The whole premise of patents was that it ACTUALLY TOOK time to get ideas to market, and that an average person COULD GET THEM TO MARKET. Thus they would encourage INNOVATION by allowing small players a way to compete with already entrenched players, via innovation.
Patents were not created so that giant mega-corporations could use them to gain further market share, they were SUPPOSED to be there for the little guy.
The "whole point of patents" is totally meaningless in today's business world. Patents do not serve to encourage innovation, the limit it, because everyone and every company who has an idea has to spend enormous amounts of money just to see if their idea is already patented, and the only ones who can really afford it are the players who are already entrenched. It is not just software and IP patents that have this problem either. With facilities like mini-fabs and Alibaba.com, anyone who has an idea for a product can have it prototyped and have mini runs done of it overseas for very minimal cost. For many inventions It actually will cost more for you to get your patent investigated and filed, than it will for you to make your first 10,000 units and start selling them. How is this supposed to encourage rapid innovation again?
Wonder how long before there's winmo7 lawsuits as well.
MS & HTC, LG & Samsung seem to have cozied up nicely (since they're producing
winmo handsets), but that still leaves Nokia, maybe Motorola, Google and Apple
Although I kinda doubt Apple will enter the ring against MS on this one.
don't be a spelling loser
In other news...Apple Computer has filed a patent on the proper way to hold a cell phone.
The more things change, the more they never do. I'm reminded of nothing so much as the great IP battles of yore, like Lotus and Ashton-Tate over "pull-down menus" (and the inevitable "throw-up menu" jokes); and how everyone with an ounce of sense thought the whole argument pointless, petty and stupid. The whole Xerox Star interface, WYSIWYG, F1 for context-sensitive help, a million other things where one company said "hey, that was our idea" and another company (often Microsoft), or sometimes the whole industry, said "so what, it's an idea - and the users have come to expect it". But today, we have companies who have the ability to patent "pull-down menus" or whatever other lame-ass, self-evident idea that comes their way. Mobile smartphones/computing is going to be a stillborn, schizophrenic hodepodge as a result of this. No Compaq will ever arise in the smartphone space, no CUA, no ISA. In five years, smartphones/mobile computing will resemble nothing so much as computing circa 1966, the "IBM and the BUNCH" days - proprietary hardware, bundled, non-interoperable, proprietary software, aggressive inter-vendor hostility, etc. - not so much walled gardens as armed camps.
It's never ever ever going to get any better, and the reason is software/business process patents.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
http://noolmusic.com/comedy_central_videos/drawn_together_-_standoff.php
You know, I was waiting for something like this to happen - a giant software patent circle jerk. The ultimate irony is that the major players are defeating their own goal of trying to render F/OSS moot. I'd wager the fear of patent wars might actually be helping the free, open source movement. For example, OpenBSD developed a router/firewall redundancy protocol called CARP which is patent un-encumbered, free, and arguably better than the Cisco VRRP. For one, CARP is simple to setup and troubleshoot, for another it is highly reliable. The University of Alberta uses several OpenBSD boxes CARP'd together and system admins have purposely pulled network cables during production hours to test and it works flawlessly.
Versus Android?
How so?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
When is Motorola just going to get out of the phone market. The MotoQ was worse than most flip phones. "Smart" indeed. It has terrible compatibility and very few apps running on legacy Windows Mobile 5.5 and not compatible for upgrade. The MotoDroid lacks features of the incredible htc droid. Motorola heres to you find a new industry because your products are inferior the day they ship.
Suing is how you say "hello" in the cell phone business.
Courts are supposed to fight crime, not help criminals extract money out of others.
Everyone knows that most software patents are not real inventions, THIS HAS TO END!
The customer is always the one who suffers in the end.
is of course when Apple sues Microsoft. Then we'll have an awesome threesome!
Motorola is extremely underrated on the list of evil companies. Look how locked down and not-at-all open their Android phones are, festooned with bloatware, and in many cases left to languish on antiquated versions of the OS.
It appear to me that what's going to eventually happen here is MS, Moto, and Apple will all eventually cross license. When this happens they'll have a stranglehold on mobile patents creating both a weapon against other companies and a very steep artificial barrier to entry into the mobile market.
Screw all these giant megacorporations making human life more miserable day by day. Poisoning the air, water, and earth, enslaving our children, completely controlling our media and pwning our political processes. The only real solution to any of this nonsense is to eliminate the corporation outright. This patent nonsense is just ONE aspect of the vile contempt the corporate model has for life and quality of life.
But don't listen to me. Ben Franklin was much smarter than I am and had extremely harsh and accurate things to say about patents in general. As did Thomas Jefferson about the banks that now own them all.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I'm confused. How does an environment like this foster innovation? I couldn't put my left nut in a cell phone without stepping on a patent (E. Gregious, "Male Reproductive Anatomy as a Modulation of High Frequency Signals", US Patent No. F00F114629, 33 Smarch 1901)
When do we finally get to that point so we can stagnate and watch China surpass us?
Perhaps then we will get a clue.. ( but i wont bet on it )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Already Apple is starting to bleed money thanks to the patent war on mobile devices. Most recently it lost a court case for a patent on cover flow and time machine
"Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."
reasonable approach to politics then little will fix the problem.
As if a centrist approach is practiced now. NOT!!!
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Remember Apple wasn't doing well till they got the iPod out. The iPhone made that cake really fatting :P
No, Apple was coming back from financial ruin years before the iPod came out which was in 2001. Apple's renaissance started in 1998 with the release of the iMac line. Since then Apple has come out with one hit after another, even with devices others had first.
For full disclosure, I typing this on my MacBook Pro and I may replace it with another. However I don't have an iPod or an iPhone. For now my Sony Walkman CD player works fine and when I get a new phone it may be an Android. And under my desk I have 2 PCs, a dual-boot PC with Windows and Linux, and a second PC with Linux.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What GP says is not a free market. In a true free market there would not be patents. Of course truth doesn't matter to some, such as those who oppose free markets.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ben Franklin was much smarter than I am and had extremely harsh and accurate things to say about patents in general. As did Thomas Jefferson about the banks that now own them all.
Thomas Jefferson started out against patents too, however his friend James Madison convinced him patents could be good.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The only winning move is not to play
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
... could be that Motorola is after cross licensing with Apple. There's a pretty good chance Apple has at least some fundamental patents on good Smart Phone GUI stuff, despite the evil nature of software patents. Probably nowhere near the stuff Palm has, or even some of the MS stuff, but if Motorola sees a war coming, why not shore up the defenses.
Apple was the last major phone manufacturer in business to actually start marking phones. There's a real fine chance they've stepped on all kinds of phone tech patents, and knowing the typical Apple hubris, they didn't bother to license them. So if a cross licensing is the goal, Apple may be forced to cooperate with Motorola, perhaps giving Motorola more ammunition against Microsoft.
At least until Apple and Microsoft sue each other over smart phones...
Or maybe Apple's been so blatent, Motorola figures they can get Apple to pay for their licensing deal with Microsoft. Microsoft, curiously, doesn't need to worry about cross licensing so much. They're just the software, not the hardware, so none of the phone mechanism stuff is their worry, but that of the OEMs... most of whom already have phone tech licensing agreements with each other.
In addition, the weird way they allowed software patents in the USA pretty much means you have an easier time suing a hardware company. Software isn't a machine, it's a document... patents are about machines. The loophole that allowed the flood of software patents in the 1980s, was the case of Diamond v. Diehr, which held that the inclusion of software in an otherwise hardware-based process wasn't enough to prevent patentability. In short, it's not the software violating your patent, it's that software running on hardware that violates the patent. So, most software patent cases are filed against some use of software on a hardware device.
-Dave Haynie
Using a reply like the subjectline like typical fanbois you can't even use a reasoned logical reply.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Too bad the diagram illustrating all the current patent litigation doesn't depict each individual suit; but then, if it did, I guess it would be pretty much illegible.