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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.
Right, because Apple didn't buy Fingerworks and use multitouch to sue everyone else.
Um
A) Apple sued HTC, HTC bought patents defensively
B) HTC has been making smart phones longer than Apple
C) It is widely regarded that Apple copied LG in its design of the iphone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_(KE850)
D) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU (Steve Jobs on XEROX "Great Artists Steal")
This probably makes the texture compression patent (S3TC) invalid. Now it can be safely implemented in Mesa.
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
Who have Apple sued regarding multitouch?
http://mashable.com/2010/10/30/apple-motorola-lawsuit/
Motorola shot first.
Jonathanjk.com
Han shot first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first
If you read even Job's biography, those at Xerox get the credit for the mouse and the GUI.
Before everyone try to call somebody fanboy on Slashdot, you should think first! This is want a fanboy really means, You Linux fanboys, how many of you read Linus Torvalds biography? M$ fanboys, what about Gates and Ballmer?
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
I read it as AMD claimed to own the patents in question but the motion claiming such was denied when the case was found for Apple without needing it. I don't think there was a decision made regarding the ownership.
Well, they really should be dead before biographies are written... It's just not right to be able to read your own biography.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
When did that happen for the last time in known history? ITC has one purpose only -- to protect US companies from competition.
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
HTC did innovate, and they were innovating in smartphones long before Apple did. The problem was that they didn't have as powerful a patent portfolio. Really, the problem probably isn't with HTC itself. Rather, the difference is that they've largely gone from WinMo to Android. Switching from Apple's BFF to Google means that all that cross-licensing stuff between Apple and MS no longer applies to them.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
silo doors are opening... Steve Jobs's thermonuclear war is starting.
HTC thought it could buy some patents and defend itself? Afro-American please! It's a puny gnat compared to the mighty arsenal Apple will unleash on their asses. Those S3 patents, they are like McBain's safety goggles -- they do nothing!
The US-ITC rejects almost all such requests, so this is no surprise and doesn't necessarily mean the case has collapsed.
Some patent holders surely use these procedures just to smear product developers and scare investors - in the hope of a easy cash settlement.
More about the ITC:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/United_States_International_Trade_Commission
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Whats worse, is that for all of Apples blustering that Samsung copied the iphone, do a search for the Samsung f700. (Oblig wikipedia entry, no pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-F700) it was a phone by Samsung, sold by Vodafone in February 2007 (before the iPhone). And apart from the "sliding keypad", when closed looks REMARKABLY like an iphone in style yet predates the iPhone. More importantly, the Galaxy s, and the later S2 follow on from that design.
Have a nice day!
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
On (c), I never used a Prada myself but it was apparently a bit different. There was no multitouch, you scrolled with the volume buttons (??), there were physical buttons at the bottom of the screen etc. etc.
It did have a grid of icons that did different things, but that's rather common I think.
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.
No it does not still stand. The evidence that supported the argument has been found to be untrue. The argument is no longer an argument it is a blindly asserted opinion, that even in the face of evidence to the contrary (samsung failing to do exactly what you predict) you still maintain to be the truth.
According to your own link, that phone wasn't sold in Feb 2007, it was only announced then. It wasn't sold until Nov 2007. For the iPhone, the equivalent dates are Jan 2007 and Jun 2007. So no, it certainly does not predate the iPhone, either for announcement or shipping. Though the closeness of the timing indicates they overlapped in development periods.
As to similarity, the phone is a black rounded rectangle, but that's where the similarity stops. The UI is nothing like the iPhone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c1fc8120hA
It's interesting to watch actually because this was designed to be a cutting edge UI, and would have been accepted as such, had the iPhone not come out. The iPhone UI was so much better - a generation ahead.
No. It doesn't have anything to do with this. But yeah, I own and still use an S3 ViRGE. It's not a bad card for regular 2D stuff.
The principle is the same though. If the U.S. International Trade Court consistently rules in favor of U.S. companies, then it is highly likely that the trade courts of other nations will rule for their domestic companies. Apple sue Samsung in U.S. and win, Samsung sue Apple in Korea and win. Apple sue HTC in U.S. and win, HTC sue Apple in Taiwan and win. It is probably no coincidence that the first company to stand up to Microsoft's Android tax has been a U.S. company, rather than the foreign device manufacturers.
As regards this particular case, this is just one ruling in response to an appeal of a previous ruling, and this ruling will in turn be appealed. And even if Apple win the appeal, it still leaves HTC with hundreds of patents from the rest of their patent portfolio, plus the 265 S3 patents they acquired, plus the new patents they got from Google. They only need to win once to be able to block sales of infringing hardware. And they can't not win some of the time - if the U.S. ITC find in favor of Apple over a foreign company hundreds of times, then the international patent system is going to tear itself apart, starting with Taiwan and Korea.
(Meanwhile, China has practically no intellectual property or patent enforcement, and is rewarded with the fastest growing economy in the world, despite a prolonged global recession. Ahh.....)
That is why Google just gave HTC 9 new patents that originated at Motorola, Openwave Systems and Palm. And if those don't work, Google has another 17,000 patents thanks to its Motorola acquisition. In the end, either the patent system will break down (imagine those 17,000 patents being invalidated), or Apple is going to have to deal with the fact that it can't block competing products from the marketplace using patents. With the patent system, you only need one win with a non-workaroundable patent to be able to block a competing product. And once you get that, you can negotiate on a more level playing field.
"A government that is powerful enough to block your competitor's products from the market is powerful enough to block your products from the market".
Apple sued HTC in March 2010 From that article:
"Of note are the patents Apple asserted in its Delaware filing: one, patent 7,657,849, covers multitouch gestures, but only in a limited use case - unlocking the phone. The second, number 7,479,949, covers multitouch heuristics to determine how a device should interpret multitouch input, and was patented by Steve Jobs himself as well as a number of other co-assignees. The other patents in question are number 7,362,331, covering moving objects within a GUI; 7,469,381, covering list scrolling; 5,920,726, covering the management and recovery of a power failure by a digital camera; 7,633,076, covering how a device senses what a user is doing via the use of multiple sensors; 5,848,105, a co-channel filtering patent; 7,383,453, covering the conservation of power by a voltage reduction to the instruction portion of the processor; 5,455,599, an object-oriented graphical system, and 6,424,354, an event notification system for propagating object-change information."
Get real, would ya? You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor - Xerox - who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first. I got the loot, Steve! And you're yellin'? "That's not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first." You're too late.
I wonder if this means that AMD Air might not be such a dead deal after all? I doubt AMD is gonna suddenly intervene in Sept just out of the goodness of their hearts, especially when Apple is using intel chips. If the ruling is true AMD could royally fuck Apple if they wanted to, S3 texture compression is the basis of a hell of a lot in graphics nowadays. After all those patents are why Linux doesn't have full OpenGL support by default, because while OpenGL is royalty free those patents aren't.
So why would AMD jump in to help Apple, whose never bought a single chip they make? The only reason i can think of is a possible future product using AMD chips. otherwise it would be in their best interests to let Apple get screwed, or at least hit them up for a big fat licensing fee.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The bits about AMDs motion is in the second to last paragraph.
The actual finding
Anyways, give it a read before discussing what it says.
but wait, this is slashdot, rtfa? nah
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.