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Via Files Suit Against Apple
crookedvulture writes "Add chipmaker Via to the list of companies filing legal suit against Apple. Via owns a number of fundamental technology patents inherited from Centaur, and it's already forced Intel to grant an ongoing x86 license. Via also has a vested interest; CEO Wenchi Chen is married to the head of HTC, which Apple sued for patent infringement last March."
Surely Apple did not think that they were the only ones in the market with a patent portfolio.
It seems during this economic downturn companies have started throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to ravenously feed on each others still warm carcasses. What you'll end up with is a period of heavily suppressed innovation and increasingly locked down and crippled devices, software and services no one will be willing to part with money for. It's all going to shit!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Shouldn't they be suing ARM as Apple licensed it from them?
There is a difference.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
In a galaxy far away, large corporate conglomerates wage battle to gain dominance in the vastness of space. The only hope of survival are a small, but pathetic force of Jedi nerds who resist the insidious marketing ploys and legal shenanigans of these dominating legal war mongrels. Will these Jedi nerds prevail? Stay tuned for continuing episodes of the Phone Wars.
Other quotes:
"These are not the phones you are looking for"
"Apple. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy"
It seems during this economic downturn companies have started throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to ravenously feed on each others still warm carcasses.
What warm carcasses? Companies have been reporting massive profits, Apple certainly not the least of them. Companies are sitting on gi-normous piles of cash. Unemployment is high but so are profits. There is a lot of uncertainty (economic, consumer demand, political, healthcare, etc) in the economy so companies are keeping their powder dry and waiting for things to settle down a bit.
All these lawsuits are because we are at a tipping point where PCs are becoming less important and mobile devices are rapidly becoming more important. We're simply seeing companies fighting to establish dominance in this new world. Despite the patent system being rather broken, companies pretty much are forced to use every weapon at their disposal. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
The patent business is completely mad. Eventually (not so far in the future methinks), the world will grind to a halt as everyone will be in court fighting patent cases rather than doing anything productive.
"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead!" - Stan Laurel
It was Apple's mouth writing checks their ass can't cash. Apple is real worried: Android is a real threat to them. Their iDevice market is where their big profits are, they don't have a "what's next" lined up right now and Android is encroaching in a big way. In particular, HTC and Samsung have been since they've smoothed out android's UI and made it even more user friendly (if bloated).
So Apple went all lawsuit happy. They want to suppress any competition. turns out, the competition isn't so happy about that and is hitting back. Hard. In the case of VIA part of it is the relation with HTC, the other part is I'm sure VIA has an interest in the tablet market. VIA has never done well at the high end and so has stopped trying, but they do low end pretty well. Maybe they want in to the tablet market.
When you start suing everyone, expect to see the same in return.
CEO Wenchi Chen is married to the head of HTC
Holy fuck they must be rich.
HTC is literally in bed with VIA
Wen Chi Chen founded VIA Technologies in 1983, and has run the company for almost 30 years, building it from nothing into a billion dollar company that is now the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. He is the Taiwanese equivalent of Steve Jobs. Under his stewardship VIA successfully defended a patent attack from Intel that led to 11 different court cases in 5 different countries (sound familiar?). The investors don't care about the family connection - they care about profit. And if VIA's patent portfolio was strong enough to convince Intel to settle, then what makes you think Apple will be any different? Intel holds many, many patents on fundamental CPU technologies; how many do you think Apple holds?
Total FUD. Via runs passenger trains in Canada. Their chips are horrible AND expensive.
rewriting history since 2109
It's not just you. The fundamental problem is that there is a conflict between global capitalism and the patent regime. The patent regime is hundreds of years old, and developed from the rule of Kings, who could use their power to bestow monopoly rights on their allies in certain areas of production. Think about that - the whole system was based around an exclusive right to manufacture within the boundaries and legal jurisdiction of a single nation. This kind of worked, because the existence of a single legal jurisdiction resolved any conflicts (for better or worse). But with the explosion of globalisation in the 1990s, the whole concept fell apart.
Why would a foreign court recognise your patent? Patent resolution is far too arbitrary. Why should Chinese companies, who only recently discovered capitalism, accept that they have to give a share of their profits to Western companies for patents that predate the concept of capitalism in their nation? Why would an American court side with a foreign company over an American company? Why would Korean courts side with a Western company against one of their own?
Global capitalism encourages rabid competition; the patent regime is the complete opposite, and is more akin to the communist states which granted production monopolies to favoured suppliers. Monopolies, in essence, are anti-capitalist, and in this globalised world, lacking a single governmental regime for patent jurisdiction and resolution, it is inevitable that there are going to be huge differences in the way that nations treat different companies and different patents. And these differences are going to become more visible and exposed as more and more companies file for increasing numbers of patents, and courts around the world are filled with the growing industry of global patent lawyering.
Instead of competing in a free market, Apple files frivolous IP lawsuit all the time.
Apple is scared to death of Android, and Apple is Tonya Harding tactics to compete.
And Apple has been pulling this sort of crap for decades.
Oracle hates everyone, but is either leaving Microsoft alone for the same reason a barracuda won't eat a lawyer, or because they're waiting for the best time to stab them in the back.
It was a claim made by Google's David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. Basically, Apple and Microsoft banded together with some others to acquire the Nortel patent warchest to use against Android. See TechCrunch: "How Apple Led The High-Stakes Patent Poker Win Against Google, Sealing Ballmer's Promise". Apple and MS also banded together to acquire the CPTN patent pool. Why? Over half a million Android devices are activated every day. Half a million! How many winPhones and iPhones have been sold in total their entire history? Android is a huge threat to both Apple and MS, some would say the biggest threat, so it makes sense for them to work together.
When did Apple partner with Microsoft? What did I miss?
Here is the Web of Mobile Patent Lawsuits. How on earth is Microsoft and Apple partners?
A consortium including both Apple and Microsoft bid against Google for patents from Nortel and Novell, I believe this is what he is referring to, it was very highly publicized.
Companies are sitting on gi-normous piles of cash.
So we need to cut the taxes so that they will start hiring again! Really!!! Anything else will doom America!!!!!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Everybody but Google banded together. Google was invited to join the same group. The explicit idea was to get them out of the way so no one could use them to sue anyone else. Google is the only one who refused to play along and tried to gain them independently. Shows who is serious about trying to avoid patent fights.
A consortium of everybody except Google bid on (and won) those patents. And Google was invited. Everybody else just wanted them off the table. Google was the only one who wanted independent rights to them, presumably for use in their own lawsuits.
they sure as fuck tried to patent pull down menus well before that
""In September 1985, Apple lawyers warned Bill Gates that Windows infringed on Apple copyrights and patents, and that his corporation had stolen Apple's trade secrets. Windows had similar drop-down menus, tiled windows and mouse support as Apple's operating system. Gates decided to make an offer to license features of Apple's OS. Apple agreed and a contract was drawn up. A couple of years later though Bill Gates will have again copyrights infringement problems with Apple (Apple vs. Microsoft & Hewlett-Packard copyright suit), and then he decided to claim that Apple had taken ideas from the graphical user interface developed by Xerox for Alto and Star computers.""
even in the 80's people were fighting apples lawyers over patents that already existed ... Apple is the original computer patent troll and may they burn in hell for what they have unleashed (besides 30 years of fucking over their customers with substandard products glossed over in jizz)
Google was invited to join the same group.
The question is, under what terms? If Google had joined, would it have been able to use the patent pool to protect its Android partners from lawsuits? It seems very unlikely that Apple would've agreed to a situation where it has to back down on all of its anti-Android lawsuits, or that Microsoft would agree to a situation where it could no longer sue Android manufacturers. And if the patent pool wouldn't protect Android, then what motivation would Google have to join?
The explicit idea was to get them out of the way so no one could use them to sue anyone else.
Since the contractual terms between the Rockstar group members haven't been disclosed, it is impossible to know what the patents will be used for. It's a nice idea that they will only be used defensively, but history has shown that patents are often used otherwise.