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ITC Rules Apple Does Not Infringe S3 Graphics Patents
First time accepted submitter boley1 writes "According to Cnet — S3 Graphics's case collapsed in their ITC suit, with the ITC ruling that Apple does not infringe on any of S3's patents. A big blow to HTC according to the report."
So much for HTC buying a warchest; according to the ruling it looks like AMD/ATI actually owned the patents in question.
I wish people would shut the fuck up about this. It's been discussed to death that Apple didn't do those things. Deals were made, shares were given out, staff from Xerox were hired, ideas were improved on, GUI metaphors were thought out. Drag and Drop wasn't invented by Xerox for example, Apple created that. If you read even Job's biography, those at Xerox get the credit for the mouse and the GUI.
As for the smartphone, Apple never said they invented the smartphone, just they made a leapfrog product.
Jonathanjk.com
On Android, S3TC (= DXT) is the texture compression format of choice for Nvidia GPUs (= all Tegra-based devices). The default texture compression format (ETC) is not as nice-looking, and does not support alpha.
On iOS, you're right, S3TC/DXT is not used, because the GPUs in these devices are made by a company named Imagination Technologies (I elieve they bought powerVR some time ago), who does not own a S3TC license. Instead, they have their own proprietary format called PVRTC (two variants, 2bits per pixel and 4bpp), that their GPUs can read and process instead of DXT textures.
As for no one using them, this is completely wrong: 3D games on mobile devices (think Shadowgun, Rage, Dungeon Defenders, Inifinty Blade...) all use compressed textures because otherwise the size of the assets would be significantly larger than it already is (think much longer download times and much higher bandwidth cost), and the GPU performance would be significantly lower (uncompressed textures occupy more space in video memory and their processing consumes more GPU bandwidth).
Who needs a
When did that happen for the last time in known history? ITC has one purpose only -- to protect US companies from competition.
It will come back to bite them eventually. Other companies are doing the same like getting apple banned in Taiwan. By setting up this framework of protectionism now they will suffer when being banned in China becomes worse for multinationals than being banned in the USA
The article you are linking to actually talks about banning APPLES (the fruit) imported from the US in Taiwan. You probably wanted to refer to the ban of selling some Apple products in South Korea, which is seeked by Samsung. This ban, however, did not happen so far it seems.