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What If Android Lost the Patent War?
adeelarshad82 writes "The patent system is certainly complex, especially when it comes to smartphones. The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.' Taking advantage of the opportunity, Apple has its patent strategy aimed squarely at the number one rival to its iOS mobile operating system, Android, which is now embedded in 40 percent of all U.S. smartphones compared to Apple's 26.6 percent. Apple's lawyers have been aggressively suing Android manufacturers HTC and Samsung for various technologies, from the 'look and feel' to how it connects to broadband networks. A recently published article takes a deep dive into the lawsuits' possible outcomes and their effect on end users."
Pinkey and the Brain (lawyers, newly qualified)
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I'd be more interested in reading what would happen if software was considered un-patentable tomorrow and all software patents rendered void.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Perhaps if this happens the effort to fix patent law will finally gain enough support.
May I be allowed to say: holy fucking shit. 250,000 patents in one phone? Insane. Absolutely insane. The patent system is supposed to be used so a new device has maybe a handful of patents in it. Quite often, only one. Because very few inventions are really novel and deserving of protection. But everyone on /. should know this already, and I'm just treading old ground.
I'll end this by just saying: fuck lawyers. There is good reason why so many people despise and hate them, and our present patent system is an excellent example. Leeches, most of 'em (to be fair, a few are alright... but very, very few.)
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.'
Luckily patents are not created equally and I would imagine that companies decades older than Google and with far more product lines, areas of business, etc have more patents. Is this really grounds for assuming Android is teetering upon a rain slick precipice of darkness?
... er Lawyer guidance modules. Legions and legions of lawyers. Row upon row of mindless litigant bastards that will close ranks when one of their number is befallen by a fatal case of morals or common sense.
I think patents are kind of like nuclear warheads and mutually assured destruction requires only that you have a couple thousand strategically positioned with MIRV
My work here is dung.
Software patents are a pox on this nation. They undermine the system, stifle, rather than motivation, innovation, and are used as clubs by the bullies in industry.
The idea that I can "create" something intangible, easily replicated, and quite literally out of nothing simply by typing some characters on a keyboard is absolutely insane, and should never have been allowed in the first place. Had the system existed like this centuries ago, the book market would have been driven into the ground by publishers who owned the patent on "arranging characters on a page to create words and express ideas".
And the fact hat Apple is choosing to beat Android into submission with them, rather than make a superior product, is very telling indeed.
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I realise that Slashdot and PCMag are US-oriented but I'm getting a bit tired of articles written as if what happens in the US affects the whole world. Where is Apple suing HTC and Samsung? In the US. That kind of patent bullshit does not fly everywhere in the world, and HTC and Samsung are not even mainly US-based. Granted, the US is a big important market, but it's not everything.
So ok, worse case scenario, they win and the US is taken over by Apple alone. Frankly, I doubt Microsoft will let that happen, 'cause it needs hardware to put their OS on, and we all know Apple will never let them put it on theirs in a million years. But ok, let's say for the sake of argument.
So? Why should the rest of the world care? I'm seriously asking. How will the rest of the world be affected by a decision given in one country, that's the host of a fairly atypical, malformed and out-of-control patent system? Will they be able to replicate this feat elsewhere in the world?
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
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Google would pay. The amount of information that they can collect through these devices is too valuable for them to toss in their cards. Either that or they remove the infringing bits of code, some of which aren't vital to Android, as best they can or find ways to get around them. Additionally, they could just buy some patents of their own, grouping with whomever else they need to and use that to strengthen their position.
One way or another, though, they're going to need to pay something to someone. Hell, they've probably already wasted more in legal fees with Oracle than if they would have just worked out a licensing deal with Sun. They might as well cut their losses and make the deals that they need to now.
If you think lawyers make the decisions, then you don't know who has the guns.
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I had an iPhone 3G, and this crap makes me want to punch people. If Apple can't compete, that's their fault. The patent system needs to be reworked to make competition a level playing field, as opposed to a legal wasteland that prevents good products from reaching their potential.
Google patents are not so many. But the companies who would be immediately hurt - they hold a lot. I mean the idea of starting a all-out patent-war against Sony, HTC, Samsung, Dell, Archos, Asus and some chinese manufacturerers (many of them veterans in the PIM/mobile business), which could block a company easily from half of the markets, would be stupid. I mean sure Apple *could* bet that Sony does not find some Japan-only patents (yeah, they exist) (moreover in JP they would go against NTT...). Sure they can bet that the legal fight in intransparent judical systems are worth it.
It would be much more reasonable to compate the patent stack and pay some money and settle the thing by agreeing not to step on anybodies feet.
Well, take a page from Intellectual Ventures.
Sell a few selected patents to an independent shell company. That company, which neither creates or sells products and is out of the control of Google, will be free to sue Apple and Oracle (and any other threat to the Android market) freely for patent infringement, but not Google (due to a contract that went along with the sell). This independent company cannot be targeted for patent infringement no matter how many patents Apple and company might have. Any funds can flow to filing more patents and buying more patents in order to maintain their attacks.
Or better yet, funds collected might be used to fund patent reform efforts (again by contract).
1000 patents is plenty to launch a number of these companies, which could cause Apple huge amounts of damage, while Google itself (not really making phones directly) would be largely immune from this sort of attach.
I have been thinking about this for a while, and can't really see a flaw in the approach, other than it is really Evil.
Many folks here address issues from a US of A perspective then extend their often flawed logic to world scenarios.
In reality, if Android lost the battle, it would still flourish in the rest of the world, as it is doing now.
Heck, Nokia is almost unheard of in major US markets, but is doing quite well worldwide.
I liked your assertion:
...Granted, the US is a big important market, but it's not everything...
I tether a laptop to a feature phone and tell Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia to suck it.
I immediately loaded the article and searched for "Florian Müller". Imagine my surprise when the name didn't come up. His first mention is on page 2.
but no one has complained about vertical, circular or scribbly swipe? The patents should lie into how swipes are implemented...although i can't imagine algorithms being too different standing on their own as far as code goes but the code is going to be different because the callback mechanisms are different in relation to the OS backend.
Row upon row of mindless litigant bastards that will close ranks when one of their number is befallen by a fatal case of morals or common sense.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
OMG OMG Princess Bride reference! Original! So original! This guy knows what he's talking about! Durrrrrrrr ...
Perhaps you mean "litigious?"
Or perhaps litigant works as well?
Hey thanks for your lesson in how to not look something up before obnoxiously correcting someone though.
Apple will not succeed in any of this the law suits are ridiculous suing over shape and size and so forth, not to mention Android does way more then the icrapPad I think Apple is afraid of losing there market share and reaching pretty far trying to quash any and all competitors. Good luck with that android already has a huge market share and Microsoft is also coming down the pipe this fall so I am sure we will see apple suing them as well. Hey apple might as well go after HP for the slate while your at it.
Vote with your wallet don't buy anything apple.
As a "whole" the iphone is protected by copyright law.
The patent law says that an idea in the iphone could be own, and not used elsewhere.
The individual patents (like swiping your finger) however, are ridiculous. This is nothing more than "click drag" with your mouse. Yet, they could use this one "patent" to hold back and sue their competitors.
What's worse, is MS sueing but not even explaining what patents they are going after, just a "YOU ARE INFRINGING, GIVE US MONEY OR WE WILL COST YOU MORE MONEY IN LAW SUITS". This is extortion!
I hope this helps you to see why software patents are so bad.
What the hell is wrong with competition?! Ideas are nothing, implementation is everything. If Apple didn't have incentive to keep creating after Android supposedly 'copied' them, then they would have dropped out of the smartphone market. Android is a better product. So what if it has some similarities to Apple??? Let them duke it out in the marketplace, not the courtrooms.
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Actually iPhone was not the first, first version was done in Finland, but not by Nokia, as pioneers they didn't have the ecosystem so there was no market and first try did bankrupt.
http://gizmodo.com/231186/myorigo-mydevice-becomes-relevant-again-thanks-to-the-iphone
So there is previous art before iPhone, I wonder who owns the patents that Finns made or was there even patents made, at least that some serious previous art :-)
you seem to be confusing patents and copyright
Thing is Google aren't stupid. They'll wait until their market share is really high in mobile then start charging for Android.
Is Florian Mueller the king of Slashdot? It seems so since he gets mentioned more than any other single person.
While the iPhone may not be a 'no shit' device, the patents are not on the iPhone. They are on specific components of a mobile phone. Some of those components are of the 'no shit' type. One of the more publicised ones is on the use of a slide gesture to unlock the phone.
Agreed, mod points be dammed. Patents are stifling technology development by the small people. What we need are more engineers and fewer lawyers
Umm, you can't patent an idea. You do know that, right? You can only patent an implementation. A huge part of the problem with software and business method patents is that they come very close to patenting ideas rather than implementations; thus the ongoing arguments over whether they should be allowed.
I'd also like to throw just a little reality into this conversation. You may have an idea nobody has had before. You're much more likely to be struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark than for this to be true, but let's just go with it. The patent system is not there to protect your idea. Not in any way, shape or form. It's there so that if you find a way of making that idea into reality that is so clever and non-obvious that nobody else can figure it out, you might be persuaded to tell people how you did it so they can learn and carry forward from there.
How do you get persuaded? By being granted an artificial monopoly to replace the natural one you would have had otherwise. If that's not a good deal for you, keep it as a trade secret and move on. Either way, you're gonna be on a ticking clock as far as being the exclusive provider of whatever your widget is, so you might as well get used to that idea and get to work on the next one.
In my opinion, Google does not spend billions of dollars patenting every little obvious feature of their software because they know that software patents will eventually be gone. However, the U.S. appears completely serious about software patents given that the current patent reform bill contains no language that would improve the software patent situation, let alone abolish them. Since our political system is owned by corporations, software patent reform won't happen until the most powerful corporations pay more in patent licensing fees than they make. In other words, we're going to continue to quibbling over who came up with an IDEA first (not an invention) while the rest of the world makes progress and slowly out-innovates us. Why compete based on merit when you can set up artificial barriers that prevent competition in the first place?
The ONLY things that should be patentable are physical devices.
ANYTHING other then that is covered by copyright.
You come up with a fancy new IC that increases radio reception by 10 fold, it is a physical device and can therefor be patented and under your control and you will sell them by the truck load or license the manufacture of the device and collect royalties. The WORLD will beat a path to your door trying to get it. Some companies will offer you huge sums for an exclusive license.
Software patents on the other hand are ludicrous on their face. You say you have a patent on Linked Lists? Well you pretty much own ALL software EVERYWHERE no matter who wrote the linked list code, no matter the language. That is wrong.
If your code is copyrighted then NO ONE ELSE can use YOUR code that YOU wrote and this is where some fools think that patents should apply since you wrote code that does compression very very well and you can reduce the OED to 10,000 bytes. Well sorry dude I can write that 10% better but using pretty much the same Linked Lists and compression algorithms, but I found a way to fold constants better then you did and my code is better, but it is not YOUR code, it is MY code and I copyrighted it IN TOTAL as a body of work that has a beginning and end end, as does yours but they are different works just like two books about the same subject are two different works that lead to the same conclusion.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I have seen how people act about their phones. They have the attitude of "from my cold dead hands" of an NRA freak mixed equally with the behaviors of a meth addict. They can sue until the cows come home, but the cat has gotten out of carrier. You won't be able to put it back in. Android phones (or the like) will go underground like drugs. All the enforcement (patent or otherwise) won't change that. It would only become a question of how to get them over the border.
then there was linux based PDA's with phones in them (sony) then palm phones and a half dozen others then Opps apple "innovated" the smartphone and all other phones before it did not exist
Ideas are cheap. It is the implementation of the idea that is so difficult.
There were natural barriers to entry into the industry which gave Apple a big advantage for 2 to 3 years. Developing a mobile OS that can compete with iOS is not easy to do and not cheap. Apple was able to crush the competition because it executed their platform better than anyone else without the need for patents.
It wasn't until Google and Microsoft finally came out with products that were in comparable quality to the iPhone that Apple started to get sue happy. Instead of out innovating the competition like in the past, they are just using the legal system to give themselves a competitive advantage while hurting innovation in the industry.
>charging for easily-forked open-source code without guaranteeing commercial-grade support
A herp and a derp.
Is Florian Mueller the king of Slashdot? It seems so since he gets mentioned more than any other single person.
Florian Mueller is the current more vocal MS shill in the war against google. Is is doing the same role as Enderle does, only Enderle is by now completely discredited, and some still quote Mueller as if he knew what he is talking about. As usual, your best source is Groklaw, they've discredited many of Mueller's ravings already.
Can someone explain what the problem with Florian is?
I read his blog and his views broadly match my understanding of patent law.
I understand that there was some issue a couple of years ago regarding IBM, an emulator and Groklaw is this the primary issue.
To be clear I don't like software patents and think that the world will be a much better place without them but the reality is that they exist.
It looked a lot like iPhone, you're a lying.
Forget part of your sentence there?
Apple doesn't even have hundreds of patents related to smartphones, let alone thousands. Apple has perhaps 300 patent /applications/ related to smartphones and most were filed within several months' time of the iPhone introduction in January 2007. Google is late to the patent party because Google is not the primer innovator in the smartphone space. It's tough scheiss for them, but Google will try to steal the technology anyway, just like they copied every book they could get without prior permission of the copyright holders. To Google, stealing seems to be synonymous with innovating.
You forgot to point out that Apple invented Multitasking. Or did they simply raise the bar for pr?
Your idea isn't worth shit. If you implemented that idea using a unique and non-obvious technique, then you would have an invention which may be worth patenting. The problem is that software is implemented via code and code is covered by copyright law, not patents. You are right in that "some idiot" should not be able copy your code and sell it for less, but you're trying to prevent other people from investing their own time and resources to create a similar product from scratch.
Yes, it was. Clearly you have never heard of the LG Prada. It contained a large capacitive touchscreen and was released before the iPhone had even been unveiled.
How did Android look like iOS? Because it had a desktop with a grid of icons? Because it had menus? You are making very serious claims without being the least bit specific.
> The ONLY things that should be patentable are physical devices.
> ANYTHING other then that is covered by copyright.
Actually, that argument is kind of like advocating cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. As bad as software patents are, replacing them with copyrights would be worse. At least patents aren't eternal in duration and expire someday. If only literal sourcecode could be copyrighted, I'd be in agreement. However, if you're going to allow copyright to be blurred into 'look & feel' issues that currently get rammed into the 'patent' realm, it would quickly become impossible to write any kind of meaningful program for commercial gain.
If they are software patents then most countries are not affected. The problem would be mostly the USA and Japan. If I am not mistaken: China, India and the EU do not have software patents. Also in Latin America there should be no problem selling such phones. And I doubt that it is any different in Africa. So in the end it is a local problem.
If these patents are on hardware designs, the situation would be slightly different. And it could be a big issue. However, on the hardware market this is no longer a game Google against Apple, Nokia and Microsoft. It is a game Samsung, HTC, etc. against Nokia and Apple against RIM.
He does except for Steve Jobs or Steve Balmer or Larry (get off my boat) Ellison.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Maybe they should have been more serious about bidding for the patents that are now being used against them.
Florian Mueller is to Slashdot as Justin Bieber is to Youtube.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Who am I kidding. There is no middle ground, burn everyone
I second that. Let's kill them all. And so, it begins.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Then Google would have to buy Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
when you come up with your *own* iPhone-esque idea. Competition is *not* when you copy somebody else's idea. What we want is for more companies to create new, unique ideas, not just copies of someone else's. Also, it's kinda impossible for Apple and Android to duke it out on a fair battleground. Android is free to manufacturers. They can sell phones for less because they don't have to invest in the R&D to invent new ideas, which kinda proves the point that allowing and accepting copying as a way of competing is a disincentive to the guy that would spend $$ to create a whole new product.
If Android lost the patent wars, and I was unable to find new phones running Android, then I guess the only option would be to buy an iPhone.
I would not be happy about it due to the obscene price gouging and markups on accessories, and having to buy more expensive ios apps.
What I would struggle with the most would be having to learn to be an Apple user, which would mean having to learn to exude an air of smug arrogance towards other lesser class humans who are not iPhone owners.
Is there an App that teaches you how to be an Apple Customer? Is it expensive?
If Google lost and Android was no more, then I would look at WebOS. The Palm Pre was underpowered, but the OS was not that bad. I liked it more than Android in many ways. Unfortunately, like beta-max, it lost out.
...what if Oracle win. Oracle has put them in a rather bad position... if they win... they'll lose much more than they lose if they lose.
If Oracle win, Java will become a non-option, if Oracle lose they'll lose the patent but Java will still be a good solution. Uncle Larry is in real deep shit now.
Here's the problem with your whole scenario:
I was carrying around a phone and a PalmPilot some years ago, wishing they were the same device. THE idea was not something novel, as I'm sure I was not the only one thinking the same exact thing. The moment you toss in Internet Access (DATA) availability, some things just become obvious. The problem isn't that these aren't inventions, they were obvious extensions of what already existed.
You can't say take "email" which has been around forever (computer terms) and suddenly patent "Email ... on a PHONE!!!"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Oracle is suing Google for patent infringement - the Dalvik VM appears to directly infringe the old Sun patents. They have emails that seem to show that Google knew about the possible infringement and proceeded anyway.
The Apple patents are a sideshow - Oracle vs Google is where it's at.
Oh, then once Oracle is done then Apple is next in line.
He is a professional lobbyist who has the gift of the word. Currently he seems to like software patents, or at least sigh heavily and claim they are never going to disappear because that would be unthinkable, so don't try to think about it.
Indeed, ONLY your COMPLETE source code would be patentable. Anything you only have binary images for from a THIRD PARTY read that as closed source drivers, microcode binaries, obj files, RTL's etc SHALL be specifically and obviously noted in your source code with reference in comments as to the copyright holder.
Look & Feel would not be copyrightable in any way shape or form, nor would they be patentable.
Copyright would be be for 10 years, renewable one time for 5 additional years.
That means we have to define what to do about any software that has versions. Is the (c) only good for the original, or the patched version? If you have a version 1.0 of a software title, when you patch it to 1.5 is that the original version or is it a new version? If it is the original version and through the years you have gone from ( for sake of argument ) Windows XP, Windows XP 1.5, Windows XP 2.0, Windows XP 3.0 then does the original copyright of Windows XP 1.0 ( lets say 1/1/90 ) that expires 1/1/2000 with the possibility of being extended until 1/1/2005 or does each succeeding version have to be re-filed with the time frame obviously being extended from the data of publication of the latest .x version?
The Source Code has to be filed with the Office of copyright in a human readable form and the media on which it is filed must last the life of the copyright grant..
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Ideas are worthless. Everyone has ideas -- you, me, Mr. Malda, even that idiot you're complaining about. The real secret sauce is all the stuff between idea and sale -- the boring stuff. Why should i pay you for having the same idea first? I'm the one who had to do all the boring stuff. Maybe you did boring stuff too, but if it was the right stuff, you wouldn't need the patent to win.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
APPLE listen up! If you sue them out of existence I will never buy another product of yours for myself or as a gift. ever. after all if your fancy UI is so superior why would you need to result to lawsuits to prove it?
Huh? I don't think the GP meant that. Software is currently covered by copyright+patents. A popular opinion on Slashdot seems to be to simply get rid of the patents entirely and leave copyright as it is (well, as a separate argument, probably to reduce the time copyright lasts as well). Personally, I think copyright shouldn't even apply to compiled code without the source being given to the LoC but that's unlikely to happen.
APPLE listen up! If you sue them out of existence I will never buy another product of yours for myself or as a gift. ever. after all if your fancy UI is so superior why would you need to result to lawsuits to prove it?
If Apple does not defend their IP then many companies will abuse it and consumers will buy the barely sufficient copy instead of the real thing.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
In theory, copyrights cannot stop independent innovation.
If something's patented, you can't copy it period. However, copyright will prevent copying but if you do your own engineering clean room style, you're safe.
So you have a touchpad device (no mention of multitouch), that in vertical orientation imitates an iPod and in horizontal orientation becomes a video player. Wow.
Fandroids hate facts.
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So why don't you go back to typing "dial 155-FOCK-YOU" on your Linux based PDA-phone instead of wanting a copy of the non-inovation from Apple?
Fandroids hate facts.
What all this patent nonsense amounts to is companies that got in, people who made billions, and are now closing the doors behind them. Try and start an innovative company, web service, etc. without being stymied by patent trolls or legitimate companies with too many lawyers. You can kiss tech innovation goodbye. As for Google, they're subsidizing their "free" phone OS with ad revenues. It's called "dumping" and MS has done the same thing. So did Rockefeller when building Standard Oil. Say what you will about Apple, at least they've been up front with their product pricing - charging a fair (if not higher than most) price. Plus, they have finally learned how to leverage their first-to-market advantage, vs. years past when MS/IBM routinely stole their lunch. Patent reform and FTC scrutiny are in order. For Google to provide freeware is dubious. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and all that...
I want the US market players (mobile, computing and others) to tie themselves in patent knots. Maybe then people will have the courage to attempt to reform such a broken patent system. It's almost a joke. Instead of encouraging innovation It's having the opposite effect. It completely stifles innovation relegating it to an ammunition stockpile just in case someone else takes a patent potshot at you. Only companies (and not individuals) have the financial clout to even do this. It also steers foreign companies away from the US for fear of treading on someones patent toes. I wouldn't try publishing any programs in the USA - it just means that I would probably get spanked by someones lawyer sooner or later for the method I used for string concatenation or adding two numbers together or something else simple and obvious like that... And I'm not the only one to think this way either. There are other people that I know in the computing industry that give the USA a wide berth for this very reason.
Same here. Slashdot should clearly mark articles that include Mueller. He's no "expert" by any measure of the word.
Collapse like the fashion industry? :-) ... ..."
"The Fashion Industry's Piracy Paradox"
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/597
"The typical explanation for intellectual property law goes something like this: Creating new books, films, drugs, songs, etc. is expensive, but once the nifty new thing is produced, copying is cheap (or, in the case of copying done over the Internet, free). Unrestrained copying robs creators of the means to profit from their works -- the copyist can always outcompete the originator. So we need IP protections to make sure that the original author or inventor has control over copying. This way, authors and inventors will be properly motivated to create.
That's a sensible theory, but it doesn't always translate in the real world. Consider the fashion industry, a creative industry larger by far than the film, recorded music and book publishing industries. The logos and labels that adorn apparel and accessories are protected by trademark law. But the designs of the garments themselves - the cut of a sleeve, the fit of a bodice - are not. Copyright law does not cover most fashion designs because clothing is a "useful article", a class of items that falls in the jurisdiction of patents and not copyrights. But patent law is almost irrelevant to fashion designs, both because the patent standard of "novelty" cannot be met by most designs, and for the practical reason that the patent application process proceeds too slowly to be meaningful for most fashion designs, which live a brief commercial life and then disappear.
So current U.S. IP law does little to protect fashion designs, and yet the fashion industry is doing quite well, thank you. How can that be? Take a look again at the typical explanation for IP law that I set out in the first paragraph of this post. Anyone who shops - even us men - cannot help but notice that there is lots of copying (aka, "piracy") of fashion designs. And yet the stores are full of innovative new designs every season. We have a puzzle.
So what does this matter? Well, if the law prohibited fashion design copying, then the fashion industry would have a much harder time creating and responding to trends. U.S. copyright law prohibits not only verbatim copies, but also any work that is "substantially similar" to a preexisting copyrighted work. So if copyright law were extended to fashion designs, the unique innovation culture of the fashion world might come under intense legal scrutiny. Designers will give way to lawyers, as every season's new collection is carefully examined for potential legal liability. Young and unknown designers will be worst off, as they will not be able to afford the lawyers' fees that will be part of the new price of admission to the industry. And an industry that has been a thriving locus of both unbridled creativity and profit may suffer.
So, let's talk about how can anyone make a sofwtare project or innovative hardware device when they have to learn about and negotiate 250,000 patents, any single one of which can lead to an injunction to stop production? It's just absurd.
A related satire I write from almost ten years ago that is sadly more true everyday:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
"My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all f
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Can someone explain what the problem with Florian is?
He has views contrary to /. groupthink. Do I need to go any further?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
He is becoming paranoid troll. Really. Lately his articles are much less an overview, but rather a bashfest of some party in the patent lawsuit. He started inserting reviews of cases that are not about FOSS(Lodsys vs iOS devs) and not even about software in general.
His most objective articles are about Lodsys vs mobile app devs, BTW.
His stance in Oracle vs Google is obviously against Google, in the form "I think" and "I agree with". Or maybe he has an issue of writing a diplomatically impartial text.
On the technical side of software his knowledge is nowhere to be found by now. And unfortunately his only knowledge about IP law is in the US patent law and it's moderately good. His understanding of copyright law is lacking to say the least.
Why is Android able to be attacked? I understand that Android is Linux based and Linux has withstood patent attacks from Microsoft, SCO and others in the past. What has Google done that makes Android so attack-able?
FM;DR
Can someone explain what the problem with Florian is?
The fact that he's not a patent or FOSS expert but he plays one in real life. That whole issue with Bionic was moronic and knowledge of the history of linux and the GPL would have shown it as a clear non-story, so he was either ignorant (in his purported field of expertise) or ran with it anyway just to make some noise and drive hits to his blog.
I don't actually know how many lines of code there are in a typical Android phone at release, but it could very easily be in the neighborhood of 250,000 lines. If true that would mean each line of code violated a patent. I find it astounding that something as small as a line of code could embody a concept worthy of patent protection. Unless Microsoft was involved, and it was something crucial like... "The use of a NOP instruction to act as a placeholder for code that will be inserted later." Or, "The use of a jmp instruction to alter the flow of execution of a program depending on a logical condition."
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If they lost?
I hope their users would raise up and demand patent reform.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Or perhaps litigant works as well?
Hey thanks for your lesson in how to not look something up before obnoxiously correcting someone though.
And you would unfortunately be wrong. So hey, thanks for the lesson on how to look stuff up before obnoxiously correcting someone, but please learn to look something up and properly understand WHAT you've looked up.
Litigant is typically applied to the two (or more) parties involved, not the lawyers handling the legal aspects of the case.
Don't hate because you look like an idiot on the internet. But go on and hate because someone made you look stupid, it just reinforces the fact that you are, in fact, an idiot.