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Apple Counter-Sues Motorola Over Touchscreen Patents
Earlier this month, we discussed news that Motorola had sued Apple, alleging infringement of 18 patents involving the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple devices. In response, Apple has now launched a pair of lawsuits alleging that Motorola is the infringing party, pointing to a number of patents involving touchscreen displays and multi-touch technology, and also methods for interacting with settings and data on a device. Apple wants the court to award them damages and prevent Motorola from continuing to sell the offending devices, which include the Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, BackFlip, Devour i1, Devour A555, Cliq, and Cliq XT.
(n/t)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This whole patent war reminds me of the famous computer science analogy: the dining philosophers.
If each fork represents a patent, all the philosophers have picked up a fork and now are unable to eat because they don't have enough forks to make a smartphone.
Clearly someone thought of the poor struggling lawyers. They needed some love too. There can only be one winner here, and it won't be companies who are suing each other.
You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
No wait, that's not it...
1. Do something. Or perhaps nothing.
2. Sue!
3. Profit!!! [1]
[1] Profit only available to lawyers and other assorted douchebags.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'm just glad to see another example of patents promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
Because we all know that without these patents, Apple would never have bothered to produce devices with multitouch, nor would Motorola, nor would anybody. And really, the whole idea of using compound gestures like pinching is completely non-obvious. And we wouldn't want little startup companies to make multitouch products; we only want big companies with lawyers to be able to do it.
Can't you just feel the Progress?
Go, Apple! Cry havoc and let slip the lawyers of litigation!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
A sues B
B countersues A
A and B settle
A and B issue press releases that they have cross-licensed their technology
Is there a reason this still makes the news every time?
When was the last time some major company was sued to stop production of a product, and they were actually stopped? Never, of course; patent holders just want money. Sometimes the price might be too high, of course. But there's always a price.
We represent Nokia and we're going to sue Apple too.
Oops, we already are.
Fine, we're going to sue Motorola
Will this add a Hamilton cycle to the who-sues-whom graph of smartphone makers?
What's your point? Your particular "winner" didn't get picked? Patents have always been about a particular winner. The whole "advancing society" comes with the expiration of the patent much like with copyright. During the patent any benefit we gain comes from how well the patent holder executes their idea. That's the way it has always been. As for the obviousness of it, are you by any chance an expert in the particular field the patents are in? Seems that's one of the requirements, not "armchair expert" who slept at a Howard Johnson's.
with fire
Reminds me of a card game. Motorola has opened, then Apple puts their cards on the table and now the patent lawyers are debating, who has the better cards and how much one of them has to pay for an of court settlement. Same old shit.
Apple has long over charged for their hardware. Notice their massive profits? Reason is they have massive margins. They charge much higher margins than other electronics makers. They get away with it because their products are trendy, fashionable, and fashion is one area where consumers' normal price sensitivity doesn't apply. You'll notice that the iPod was not the first MP3 player, nor the first portable music device. What it was was a fashion accessory, you had to own one to be cool. The white earbuds were very much a status symbol, to the point that high end earbud makers suddenly had requests for white earbuds, something they'd not had before (black is less visible, more understated). People wanted better quality IEMs, but wanted the status symbol of white/iPod earbuds.
That's the reason the iPad is as much as it is. Not patents, Apple's business plan. So long as people continue to buy their stuff to be trendy, they can keep doing it.
People used to file lots of patents on "doing X on a computer", then "doing X over the Internet", and "doing X in Java".
Apple has contributed a great innovation to the world by patenting "doing X using a heuristic". Thousands of companies and lawyers desperate for more patents now have a rich patent field to mine.
Too bad that Apple didn't patent "patenting doing X using a heuristic".
Multitouch is a gimmick, something Apple can use to distinguish themselves from the rest. It's like their menu bar and their Finder.
Anybody who thinks that multitouch helps usability hasn't tried explaining it to their mother. And even for experienced users, it's an exercise in frustration: it works in some apps and not in others, it does different things, and you need to cover up even more of the screen with your hand. Furthermore, it doesn't carry over to pen-based input, and as the number of handwriting and drawing apps on App Store shows, people want pens.
Let Jobs pursue his insane obsessions. Google should focus on usability, do everybody a favor, and eliminate multitouch from Android.
a simple thing as touching something to activate something, can be 'owned' by some private party. a very basic act since stone age.
describe me how this is not feudalism. but dont use self-fooling believer talk as ayn rand while doing it.
Read radical news here
Just wondering... given the load on the USPTO, how likely would it be that both Apple and Motorola are violating each others patents on technology they themselves hold the patent to? Really: this lawyer frenzy just shows how big a mess it is.
China currently disregards any system (including world patents) EXCEPT for their own. Ok. Not surprised. HOWEVER, they have few patents compared to America's or International Patent systems. As such, they have less possibility of infringing. In addition, method patents only work in USA, and we can now see what a total disaster they have been.
It's time we the consumers start suing the companies.
wait, the lawyers will win again, damn.
this reality is starting to suck.
Be seeing you...
Every tried gaming on a non-multitouch phone? Since the screen can not report two locations at once, you can't hold down two virtual buttons at once - making the whole thing useless.
Don't even get me started on pinch to zoom.
JESUS CHRIST MONKEYBALLS!
Everything in the parent is true and insightful! IF Chewbacca is a wookie you must mod parent up as insightful!
Good god whats this world coming to???? TROLL what drugs are you smoking?
Were it not for the multi-touch screen, you'd need multiple buttons for the same purpose. So for a touchscreen device:
Stop responding to some imaginary, made-up point. We're not talking about screens that can register multiple or complex touch patterns--of course, those are good for all sorts of things. Apple contributed exactly zilch to those. We are talking about what's in the patent: using specific multi-touch gestures as part of the regular UI, for zooming, scrolling, etc.
This isn't an insane Jobs obsession. He's just thought it through, and you haven't.
It's you who hasn't thought this through: you're confusing multi-touch capable hardware with what Apple is actually claiming in their patent.
Since you seem a little daft, let me be explicit: Android should drop the crap that Apple is suing Motorola over. It's a useless gimmick. Of course, Android should keep multi-touch capable hardware, and apps like keyboard and music apps should continue to use it.
The real root of the issue here is that the law was not written so that ideas could be patented but
Apple is suing for infringment of an idea that they didnt even invent, but they bought.
You can't patent an idea,
you can patent a product or a process or a body of work but
you cant patent an idea.
As a matter of recent history, this concept is why Microsoft lost so many of those "We invented the GUI idea" when they didnt legal profit mongering. The argument is rediculous as it is here.
Lawyers tend to get all blinded by the money and forget that.
So expect this to be the begining of a long slow slide for Apple back to where they were in 1995 before Jobs took over again.
are scheduled to be eliminated anyway, like the Cliq and Cliq XT, as they bring new product to the masses..... What about the new stuff they are bringing out ?
I think that Apple need to pull their high head patents out of their @ss. Maybe if everyone shared the technology then we would be a lot farther then we are. Its greedy B!tchs like them that hold everybody back because they want more money. Maybe we should just get rid of money then. No money. Nothing to fight over. Progress triples in technology. Everyone is happy.
This might be a great time for Congress to step and clear up some rules regarding patents. Oh wait...nm
Before you launch an IP lawsuit against another company, make sure your own house is clean first.
I mean, seriously... These are so annoying!
How is a Dell Streak with a five-inch 800 x 480 screen comparable to an iPad with a 9.7 inch 1024 x 768 screen?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot