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Acacia Sues Amazon Over Kindle Fire

Posted by Soulskill on from the trollin'-trollin'-trollin' dept.

walterbyrd writes "A company called Smartphone Technologies filed the suit last Friday in Texas Eastern District Court accusing the Kindle Fire tablet of violating four of its patents. Smartphone Technologies is owned by Acacia Research, a firm that buys and licenses patents and is seen by many as a patent troll. 'One patent cited in the suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562, simply refers to a method for using a touch screen to enter commands on a handheld computer. Another patent in question relates to a method for storing calendars on a PDA and was initially issued to Palm in 2002.'"

25 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. This is how the system fails by Osgeld · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A PDA is just a weak computer in a small form factor, so why did palm even get it in 2002 when a calender on a computer was decades old before then?

    Patents are worthless, and are choking what little creativity is left in our country.

    1. Re:This is how the system fails by Osgeld · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your opinion on a particular product does not really matter, fact is everything sited in the complaint existed in the mid 1980's

    2. Re:This is how the system fails by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      And every particle used to make every invention existed in some form in the mid-1500s BC. Does that invalidate every patent?

      Of course not. Patents are a specific assembly of specific solutions to specific problems. If a patent turns out to not be specific enough, it can be made specific later or discarded entirely. The mere existence of similar solutions does not invalidate a patent, nor should it. The whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    3. Re:This is how the system fails by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Patents are a specific assembly of specific solutions to specific problems.

      You would never be able to guess that from reading an actual patent application. Obfuscation seems to be the key.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  2. Yawn... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

    Evil bastards sue evil bastards. News at 11.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Yawn... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2

      There's a difference: Amazon are evil bastards who actually deliver useful products, while Acacia are evil bastards who exist solely to make money by threatening to keep other people (whether evil bastards or not) from delivering useful products. The world is full of evil bastards, and that's probably not going to change any time soon; until and unless it does, I know which set of evil bastards I'd rather deal with.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:Yawn... by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Amazon are evil bastards who actually deliver useful products

      Actually nowadays I am noticing more and more often that Amazon isn't actually selling me products, they are merely providing a storefront for someone else.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    3. Re:Yawn... by SenseiLeNoir · · Score: 2

      And that's what a lot of people like about them. They feel more "confident" buying from the same retailer via amazon marketplace, than direct from the retailer, as they feel that they are more likely to be refunded if the retailer goes bust, etc.

      --
      Have a nice day!
  3. Sue Sue Sue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slashdot these days is little more than lawsuits, settlements and the ongoings of such. This is what our industry has turned into huh? Sad.

    1. Re:Sue Sue Sue by blarkon · · Score: 2

      Discourse on the iniquities of intellectual property is Slashdotter red meat in the same way that gay marriage and guns is red meat to the viewers of Fox News.

  4. Let's hear it for the trolls! by msobkow · · Score: 3

    Without them taking companies to court over issues that should never have been patentable in the first place, no one would realize or believe just how seriously screwed up the patent system is.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:Let's hear it for the trolls! by msobkow · · Score: 2

      If they don't understand the patents, they have NO BUSINESS issuing the patents.

      The patent office is supposed to REVIEW patents for content, not rubber-stamp them. It is NOT supposed to be the job of the courts to do the filtering at some point down the road.

      Do you really think underfunding, ignorance, and incompetence should be tolerated or forgiven when it costs the industry so many millions (if not billions) of dollars in legal fees to deal with the resulting morass?

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  5. Re:Thank god for American innovation by Kagetsuki · · Score: 3

    No no no, you see those who succeed in the free market decided to manipulate the legal system so that if anyone tried to innovate in some way that would reduce their market share they could sue them into oblivion.

  6. Re:Thank god for American innovation by bky1701 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which is why the free market is a myth. It can't last. As the players get bigger, and history shows that's the end result, they start to influence the countries they reside in, to make it harder for new companies to enter markets. Even if they don't, it is pretty hard to compete with entrenched companies benefiting from control of resources, logistics, resellers, etc..

    Libertarian free markets are a nice idea, but corporatism is their real life counterpart, and it isn't very fun.

    --
    Great Intellect...
  7. What can be done about it? by GoodnaGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have been reading about these patent wars for ages now. Most peoples reaction seems to be to grumble but put up with it. Is there nothing can be done? Our leaders seem unable or not interested. This is killing innovation in the electronics industry. Soon we'll be left with just a few big fish controlling everything. Maybe its time for the revolution!

  8. Must be new, useful, and non-obvious by jbov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?

    By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious. While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious. Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.

    I agree that the whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements. So, why should we slow that process down with software patents?

    1. Re:Must be new, useful, and non-obvious by julesh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used complex symbols (like circles, polygons, or letters) as commands. It's always been touching single points to select buttons, up until Palm created Graffiti. What does this patent cover? That's another rhetorical question. The patent appears to cover later implementations of Graffiti, which isn't surprising since it was filed by PalmSource, Inc.

      You do realise that when Palm released Graffiti, they were sued by the owners of the patents on Unistrokes, a similar system that dates back to the 80s, and is now expired, right?

      Graffiti was not new and innovative. It was at best a minor improvement on what came before. Actually, I'm not so sure it improved anything -- the original unistroke system worked pretty well, IMO.

  9. Re:The real question: Will they go after them? by stephanruby · · Score: 2

    Amazon has the resources to go after these guys, to remove them from the gene pool. But will they bother?

    The worldwide community of geeks have the resources, the time (at least, some of us have), and the tenacity, to invalidate most patents given enough motivation, or at least seriously water them down to render them ineffective, but why would we do anything in this case? Let's just wait until they go after the little guy, or a company we really care about (just not Amazon). In that respect, the patent troll made the right decision. That's what Jackals do. They go after the animal that the rest of the herd in the same boat will never even try to protect.

    (Seeing how tenaciously they hold on to the One-Click patent I somehow doubt it, but it would be nice.)

    You mean "held". Now that most of the Amazon one-click patent has been defanged by one seriously pissed off lone Amazon customer with no law degree but enough time on his hands and enough motivation, it's not like Amazon is making any additional money from that patent anymore.

  10. Re:It's looking like the patent courts are becomin by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's looking like the patent courts - in a manner of speaking, as I suppose there is really no single "patent court" - like the courts are becoming a sort of platform for marketing by obscure companies with uncertain patents on file - but not just any obscure companies, obscure companies with lawyers.

    Specifically, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas became nothing but a "platform for ... obscure companies with lawyers" some time ago. There seems to be something particularly toxic about this particular court's combination of judges, jury pools, and court rules that attracts this type of activity.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  11. Re:Cut off your hands! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    Prior art.
    http://gizmodo.com/5150019/the-joydck-mods-your-penis-into-a-joystick-nsfw

  12. Re:how strange by Zorque · · Score: 2

    Uh... you're the one who seemed confused as to why the suits all happened there. Sorry I was trying to clarify it for you, shitstain.

  13. $88 Billion wiped off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/09/21/riddle-me-this-do-patent-trolls-create-wealth-or-d.aspx

    Boston University study concludes that $88 billion has been wiped off the value of US companies by these trolls, raking in less than $8 billion in return, and since these trolls don't make things or really invent things, no manufacturing was made by them, and no scientists employed and no research done.

    What the USPTO has done is a disaster for the USA, and the reforms don't fix anything.

  14. Ironically by jbov · · Score: 2

    Correct. Even more ironic, is the reasoning behind Xerox losing a summary judgement to palmOne.

    The reason was prior art. The two pieces of prior art were from 1983 and 1985.

    So, at the time, palmOne said the software wasn't patentable due to prior art. Now they want to patent it themselves. Oh sweet irony.

  15. Hard to feel sorry by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As much as I dislike patent trolls, it's really hard to feel sorry for Amazon in this one. They are the ones who patented one-click-purchase, after all. What goes around comes around.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Hard to feel sorry by Theaetetus · · Score: 2

      As much as I dislike patent trolls, it's really hard to feel sorry for Amazon in this one. They are the ones who patented one-click-purchase, after all. What goes around comes around.

      That's a really good indicator that you don't know what you're talking about. The Amazon "one-click" patent wasn't a patent on clicking once. It was a pretty detailed and relatively narrow patent on one specific implementation of a shopping cart. It has survived a reexamination with every piece of prior art that Slashdot and the EFF could throw at it... at this point, it's one of the strongest patents around. But, wait, it has an easily understood colloquial name, so therefore it must be obvious, right?

      Wrong. There are 45 thousand patents with the title "engine". That doesn't mean they all patented the concept of engines. The title has no legal weight, and claiming something is obvious based on the title is at best ignorant, and at worst, FUD.