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Apple's New Patent Weapon — Location Services
DaveyJJ writes "Once again, it seems Apple is about to take intellectual property claims to a new level. Apple has been reissued a patent they acquired from Xerox that pretty much wraps up what we know as 'location services' as their own. In the overview, the patent says the system involved will display information specific to the location the device is in. The language used in the patent is broad and powerful. I guess now we wait and see whom Apple will use this against?"
US patents filed after 1995 are for a term of 20 years, which was changed from 17 years to align with the WTO. Therefore, Apple can flex that legal muscle (read: screw everyone that doesn't buy an iPhone) until 2018.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
20 years from filing - earliest filing - even in a reissue.
Therefore, at most Feb 2018 or about 6 more years.
A reissue filed 10 years after issuance is only able to narrow the scope of patents.
You armchair patent lawyers sure love your hysteria in the morning. Switch to coffee.
I am more interested if it broad enough to be shot down as prior art by Loran, Trimble, Magellan, Tom Tom, Navman, Lawrence, Rhino, Onstar, etc. They may have difficulties if the other established navigation players try to invalidate the claim. Apple is facing lots of prior art that existed long before they placed GPS in a phone. Time of arrival location services have preceded Apple cell tower location mapping back to World War One.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_location
The truth shall set you free!
How about at the point where you make a ask a bunch of friends and say "hey, it looks like I'm going to ShucksTown EndOfNowhereState; do you know a good place to go and eat there". Even more so when one of your friends says "never been there and never want to go; but I heard Jake went there; why don't you ask him".
Oh sorry; you meant "on a computer".
Having said that, your comment is generally on topic and in place. People, please learn. Most patents are not about doing something. They are (supposed to be) about a way to do something. The fact that someone makes a patent on "moving from A to B" doesn't make it wrong just because you have moved from A to B. If the patent discloses a new system for teleportation then it's very likely a real and useful patent. The fact that you previously drove from A to B doesn't make the patent on teleportation invalid.
Read through the patent till you get to the claims. Generally the first independent claim of a series of dependent claims will be the outrageous one which you can shout about. Note that all the claims in the patent have been approved as individually valid by the patent office, so you can choose whichever one you want to complain about. Complaining about the title, without specifying an actual claim allows patent lawyers to discredit your argument by claiming that you are ignorant.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
US patents filed after 1995 are for a term of 20 years from the filing date, which was changed from 17 years from the issue date to align with the WTO.
Fixed that for you. Many patents lose time from this change, since it frequently takes more than three years for a patent to be issued. This patent, though, does gain about 6 months.
I haven't seen many cases where Apple was the first to enter into litigation.
Gapes in stunned amazement. Let's just name some of the most famous cases where Apple sued first to try to stop competition.
I think we could even really claim Nokia vs Apple - in the sense that Apple clearly threatened Nokia first and Nokia just responded. I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola vs Apple couldn't be counted in the same category.
Apple behaves like a rabid dog when it comes to lawsuits.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();