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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.
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.
That's a lie, TekGoblin, if that's your real name. You are hereby summonsed to appear in a lawsuit before Judge T. John Ward. To be sued for your infringement of our patents on "a method and apparatus for limited truth delivery through use of over-extensive categories".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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
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.