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HTC Infringed Apple Patents, Says ITC's Initial Determination
CWmike writes "A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has made an initial determination that HTC infringed two Apple patents, HTC said late Friday. If the judgment is made final, HTC could be banned from importing phones to the U.S. It's the latest blow to Google's Android operating system, which is being attacked by competitors including Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. The initial determination will now be reviewed by a larger panel of ITC judges, who can uphold or reject it. The two patents appear to be fundamental to Android, according to Florian Mueller, a patent expert. 'They are very likely to be infringed by code that is at the core of Android,' he wrote in a blog post. The same patents are also at the heart of a dispute between Apple and Motorola, he said."
That is all.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And the patents (from http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/itc-judge-finds-htc-in-infringement-of.html) are:
U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data" (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of "phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates" and the ability to perform "related actions with that data"; one example is that "the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user's interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number")
U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data" (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent "relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications")
I think I violated these patents just reading this article.
Insert self-referential sig here.
WTH?, Didn't we already established in about every single article written by him that he is a paid microsoft shill trying to create FUD around android? Most of what he writes is BS, as has been proven again and again. I am not saying that everything that we writes should be regarded as BS, although I would ignore it because he already lost all credibility to me, he may eventually write something of value, but to call him a patent expert is just, well, it is enough to get me into rant mode and come post in an article that I should be ignoring. /rant
And I am very sorry for the rant, as I will probably regret it tomorrow, I am off to sleep.
Seriously. All computer software patents should be voided on the grounds that they are merely expressions of existing mathematical formulae and logic structures and prior art applies as a result. When it comes down to it it's all loops, conditionals, and math placed in an organizational structure or if you go even further.. 0s and 1s.
"My 0s and 1s were first, pay me millions!"
"It's amazing what can be accomplished when we don't care who gets the credit." -(I forget who originally said this, ironically enough...) :)
lawyers. Seriously, can we please round these bottom-feeders up and put them at the bottom of Yucca Mountain? Radioactive waste and each other are the only company they're fit to spend eternity with.
Good God, are you insane? Imagine the devastation if ten thousand years from now the storage vessel should spring a leak and the area become flooded with a mass of radioactive mutant lawyers.
I think Apple's lapping Microsoft in the douche of the Universe Award. I mean, we still have the swimsuit competition... *shudder* Ballmer in a bikini...
Apple's been getting on my LAST nerve, well, since they went Intel. I'm seriously re-thinking my interest in anything Apple at all. Steve Jobs can sit and spin... The only reason Apple's doing this is because the real threat for their smartphone business is Android phones. I wonder how long it'll take before Apple and Microsoft go toe-to-toe in the smartphone arena...
This fiasco, folks, is why Software Patents are evil.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
They most likely didn't pay anyone. The problem is that Android DOES infringe on those patents. Now, are the patents legal and should they be is another question altogether. And is the patent system completely and utterly stupid is yet another question.
What puzzles me in this is that Google cannot do a thing to help their manufacturers because they have so few patents. Why they didn't buy Nortel's portfolio is well beyond me. This would have been over in a snap.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Exactly! It's worse in software patents. In hardware you can do something that a competitor does but do it with different hardware but in software if you do some function that a competitor does it doesn't matter that you did it with different code. It's the function that is patented in software patents not the code. The code is of course covered by copyright which renders the entire matter insane to start with. Lets just use copyright to protect software design! How simple! Not to mention fair. We can't have that though it would interfere with stifling innovation.
Not sure why you'd think it only affects android. The Patent 5,946,647 effectively says nobody can scan some text and when a pattern is detected offer options associated with that pattern in the display. First thing that springs to mind is that probably every email client in the world is in violation, as they scan the text and turn email addresses into links.
It's a pure software patent, and as such not valid in Europe.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Just to be clear, this guy is not really a judge. He's just a bureaucrat. HTC has the right to contest his decision before a real Federal judge. Unfortunately, their imports will be barred in the meantime, so they might decide to settle even if they think they would prevail in court.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This article describes ADD, including what its developers considered to be unique and different from other approaches.
My take on this is that ADD did come up with some clever ideas in implementation that solved the particular problems they were addressing (focusing on simple problems and fast detection). It's clear that what's unique is the particular implementation, not the idea of detecting phone numbers and such. They cite lots of other examples of the idea.
So, there are two possibilities. Either the patent covers the idea (and thus is inappropriately broad and will be ruled invalid) or the patent is about the particular implementation, in which case it should be simple to implement in a way that avoids violation. In either case, HTC and Android will be fine.
I agree but for other reasons:
Software is already protected by by copyrights, having patent protection on software is double-dipping.
Patents on software don't make sense. THE COMPUTER ITSELF IS THE INVENTION and it is by definition, a multi-purpose machine. Patenting techniques you do in a computer is like patenting specific ways of driving a car, or combinations of musical notes.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.