HTC Ready For Apple Patent War

chrb writes "The BBC have an interview with HTC CEO Peter Chou. Last week, a judge at the International Trade Commission found that HTC had violated two of Apple's patents. HTC shares fell 7% on the news. Chou predicts that HTC will win an appeal against the ITC finding in December. He also reveals that HTC is preparing to fight back; it will soon acquire an extra 235 patents from its takeover of S3 Graphics — including two that Apple has already been found guilty of infringing."

Comments

...Huh.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

While I do hope Apple loses this patent troll suit...

"it will soon acquire an extra 235 patents from its takeover of S3 Graphics"

...I really hope HTC doesn't become tomorrow's patent troll.

Re:...Huh.

[Nerdfest]

If you'd like to help out against Apple (on a different matter), the W3C is looking for prior art on a couple of Apple patents.

Re:...Huh.

[jader3rd]

...I really hope HTC doesn't become tomorrow's patent troll.

I think of patent trolls as those who don't produce anything (or anything of perceptible market value), yet sue over the fact that they hold a patent. HTC is actually producing products.

Re:...Huh.

[Kagetsuki]

Uhh, Apple is the one continually stifling progress by throwing around patents. Are you new here?

Maybe having to take some of their own medicine will make them think a little differently. I mean they even have patents that now prevent the W3C, an organization they are a member of, from making progress on finalizing standards. How does that one work?

Not like I really like HTC either. If they both litigate each-other into the ground I'd find that massively entertaining.

Re:...Huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think Apple is the only one stifling progress? That's my point, and that's why the GP's point is idiotic. All of these patent suits stifle progress and being in favor of other companies becoming patent trolls just for the sake of seeing Apple lose a lawsuit is idiotic.
 
Do you really think Apple losing a patent suit will make them against Apple. Are you new here? When Microsoft lost patent suits, did they go all out against software patents? When Apple lost previous patent suits, did they do it? You guys are so blinded by Apple hate that you're acting stupid.

Re:...Huh.

[Pieroxy]

Apple is a patent troll because they're patenting things that, if it weren't for legalese and unethical laws, shouldn't be patent-able.

Aaaaand, congratulations. However, that's not what we call a patent troll.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

Play with fire and get burned

[walshy007]

I think it is very fitting, for companies who sue using patents to have said sued companies come back with even more patents and try to cause financial harm to them in the same manner.

There are too many people in the world for ideas to be the property of a single man. Companies still get first mover advantage if they are the first to do something.

Chess with patents?

[Rambo Tribble]

What a tangled game; what an impediment to society.

Ready for War or Negotiation?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting as AC because I'm at work and I don't log into websites from work...)

According to Bloomberg, HTC is ready to negotiate with Apple. Now, I know that's not as exciting as "HTC Ready for Apple Patent War" because there's just so much sensationalism in that, but why let facts get in the way of sensationalism, right?

anti-competition

[SkunkPussy]

How about we compete on innovation instead of on ability to lock a competitor out of a market?

Re:anti-competition

[chrb]

That's what Mr. Chou wants: "We all have been living in this village for a long time, making smartphones. But one day this powerful man came in and said I invented this world, this world is mine. I don't think so. We have been making smartphones before the iPhone. This world belongs to all and nobody has a right to ask other people to leave. What it means is we don't want to copy anyone, we want to be a premium product. This world, this market is very big... is for all of us. Nobody should tell other people to leave and we should compete in the market place, let consumers decide... rather than in court."

Re:anti-competition

[Kagetsuki]

You realize Newton series was mainly just repackaged Sharp hardware, don't you? Granted they wrote their own software, but the hardware and most of the form factors came from other companies, who had been selling that hardware with their own ROM's before Apple even started. Sharp and Casio in particular started making "pockecon" [pocket computer] in 1980, the devices that would later be called PDA's.

Check it out, first sentence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad
For reference, most of the Newton devices were Sharp Zaurus (post-pokekon) hardware. The original Newton for example was a Sharp PI-7000 with the Apple ROM.

Re:anti-competition

[jareth-0205]

Of course, when Apple violates others' patents (eg well established valid ones from Nokia), they refuse to licence...

Re:anti-competition

[Calos]

Look at these tables, and ignore the rest, because it's Florian Mueller: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/these-tables-show-how-android-infringes.html

Patent troll? Yes. These complaints basically amount to "running a regex on an incoming text to look for things like addresses, and then making it possible for the user to interact with the recognized address by e.g. opening up Maps and having Maps search for that address," and claiming that no one can have an API which allows real-time interaction with a datastream, such as DSP effects on an audio stream.

Superfluous? Yes. Prior art? Yes. Patent troll? You betcha.

Re:Obviously

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Didn't you get the memo? Steve Jobs personally invented every aspect of personal computing, 13-proton nuclei, and the physical property of capacitance. HTC, by contrast, is definitionally incapable of doing anything except copying American Innovations...

The problem is...

[trum4n]

If any of these were my patents, the judge would tell me to pissoff, and apple would keep using them for free. Then they would re-patent them, like they did with multitouch, magically have no prior art, then i would be sued for infringement.

Another round

[Quila]

Apple paid the lion's share for the 6,000 Nortel patents purchased by the Apple/MS/RIM consortium.

And much of that isn't software patents and such, it's hard-core telecommunications patents, including many covering LTE.

Re:Another round

[Microlith]

It will bring definite disadvantage to any possible new competitors, since Apple et. al. will be able to handily keep them out of the market. In the mobile space, there will only be the incumbents. No new companies will rise, and this "Patent Axis" will make sure of that.

Aliens vs Predators

[mu51c10rd]

This seems very relevant to this article...

"No matter who wins, we lose"

All these patent lawsuits only result in settlements and royalties paid which then creates more costs to pass on to us consumers.

This American Life - "When Patents Attack"

[rcb1974]

NPR just aired a great story about the problems with some patents including software patents. It is nice to hear this stuff in mainstream media because it means more people are getting informed. That will hopefully result in more action to clean up this mess. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack Check it out.

Re:Who to Believe

[dgatwood]

Only if you don't actually try to make what you invent. If you do, then somebody else will come and sue you over twelve hundred "inventions" that they previously patented that are similar to some minor aspect of what you invented.

In the current patent climate, only patent trolls win. The only way to fix this is to shorten patent terms and limit transferability of patents from employees to their employers.