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Apple Wins Injunction Banning Import of HTC Devices
Newly accepted submitter squish18 writes "All Things D reports that Apple has won an injunction banning the import of some HTC phones starting in April 2012. The ruling by the ITC stems from two claims of the '647 patent concerning software used to enter personal data in mobile devices. It is interesting to note that the ITC has also reversed previous rulings regarding regarding infringement of two other '647 claims, as well as patent '263 claims."
It looks like Apple's victory is relatively minor. They lost claims on all patents except for one, and HTC/Google can work on implementing similar functionality in a non-infringing way.
Apple is becoming an evil empire!
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Just another reason why our patent system needs to be changed. And another reason I don't know who to vote for these days. It seems that all politicians (or most) support the current patent system or don't care to do anything about it. I mean, how can you patent touching a phone number on a screen? That isn't even close to an invention. Absurdity.
From TFA:
So the non-frivolous claim on which Apple actually prevailed was essentially a regex to find things that look like phone numbers in unstructured text documents, which then link to a dialer app?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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Can we elect people who will terminate software patents, please?
The flurry of international tablet lawsuits seems much more rigorous than I remember for any past technology. Was it always this bad?
Smart phones didn't sue each other this badly. Nor did DVD manufacturers. AMD & Intel went at it hard during the 80's & early 90's. Sony & Betamax sorta duked it out. But the tablet wars seem to be nutso.
At least the economy for lawyers is booming...
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Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?
Who's going to be able to innovate if they're being forced to waste their time looking for ways to work around stupid patents instead?
HTC gave Android Central the following statement (updated 6:20 EST): We are gratified that the Commission affirmed the judge’s initial determination on the ‘721 and ‘983 patents, and reversed its decision on the ‘263 patent and partially on the ‘647 patent. We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the ‘647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.
I would love to know what fraction of total expenditure for some of these companies is spent on legal tangles. All these cost are of course passed on to the consumer at the end of the day, so the longer this ridiculous farce of a patent system is allowed to continue the longer it will be that we continue to pay inflated costs.
No your wrong, there IS somebody who wins. The lawyers win, and the more something is tied up in court the more they win.
This should also be want Slashdot wants.
I like diversity in Slashdot opinions. If all Slashdot readers were Apple fanboys like you, it would be boring around here.
Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?
It's ironic that you chose the word "competition" to describe forcing people out of a space via an effective monopoly.
or does Apple have that patented too.
That's not reinventing the wheel, thats improving the wheel... Something you couldn't do if the wheel was patented because your improved version would still infringe on the original.
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I would hardly say that turning phone numbers into hyperlinks qualifies as novel and unobvoius.
A real problem is that fiendishly expensive lawsuits are required to overturn patents. we would be much better off if just anyone could point out prior art that would get the patent office to overturn patents that aren't really novelmor unobvious.
the patent examiner who decides the unobvious part really should be an expert in the given technology. had some examiner ever studied the most elementary graphics, they never would have granted a patent for the XOR cursor.
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uspto.gov requries the use of Apple Quicktime to view images. Whats wrong with gif, jpg, png...
Not having this 'feature' may be a win for HTC. I find it really annoying when I touch a date and have my phone set itself up to dial '2011'. It also doesn't work, because when I try to use this feature, it only recognizes part of the number : usually just the '1800' of '1300' part, which is completely useless.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If you filed a patent 15 years ago and there have been infringements of your patent for the last 10 or so years without you even blinking an eye about, it should be declared invalid.
I recall my pocket pc doing something like this. I bought it in 2002.
Sorry, but anyone who things that software is just as mechanical as an automobile engine has never rebuilt an engine.
Spoken as someone with a math degree who earns a living coding....
Not if the "innovation" involves coming up with a non-obvious way to perform a task due to the fact that some company has patented the obvious way of performing that task.
Sarah Palin is a stupid man. The word "man" means two things, one is an adult of the male gender, and the other is a human person of either sex. As in, you know, "mankind".
I would hardly say that turning phone numbers into hyperlinks qualifies as novel and unobvoius.
In 1996, it kind of was. The issue is that the duration of a patent is too long and what was once novel has become obvious.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
No, Steve Jobs said fairly clearly that he simply wants Android to die, and I somehow doubt that sentiment was isolated to him alone, especially considering he personally groomed Tim Cook.
Considering the majority of the patents were invalidated, it isn't driving innovation they were after. If it were, they would limit their claims to those that are copying their innovative ideas. Rather, they are trying to impede the success of their competitors.
Apple went through the trouble coming up with it in the first place. What's so wrong with expecting others to do the same?
I'm inclined to believe that others who implemented this have also came up with the idea themselves, without reading Apple's patent. It's a rather obvious thing. The reason why Apple was there first was simply because they were the first ones trying to make a portable device for which this feature made sense (i.e. Newton). The device itself was too early for the market, though. But when the time for such devices came, everyone came up with that same idea - which just goes to show how obvious the thing is.
Or do you seriously think that someone at Google is sifting through Apple's patents to see what else to steal?
Did you actually read the article you linked to?
Apple has accused HTC of patent infringement through its smartphones, and filed several patent lawsuits against the Taiwan-based company in Delaware in the last two years.
So Apple sued HTC and two years later HTC sued Apple, and HTC are the bad guy?
HTC ONLY sued Apple in retaliation, Apple were the first to go after every Android manufacturer claiming Android copied their 'inventions'. Apple have never denied that and are completely unapologetic about the fact that they started the war. HTC are NOT doing the same thing. If they were doing the same thing as Apple, HTC would be launching lawsuits against other Android manufacturers like Samsung based on the same patents they are trying to use defensively against Apple, and even against other companies like Nokia, RIM etc.
it's OK for HTC to use frivolous patent lawsuits and injunction requests to try and destroy another company.
Who said anything about destroy Apple? Some dude called Steve Jobs did say something about destroying Android..
HTC didn't start the war and they are still willing to negotiate and settle the legal issues, hell they even paid off Microsoft's extortion racket, I bet they would even pay Apple for their ridiculous patents.
So if Apple were to assert that HTC attacked first by blatantly ripping off Apple's inventions, and that Apple was merely "retaliating" against HTC by asserting their legal property rights, you would defend Apple?
No I wouldn't, because Apple's 'inventions' are mostly trivial and/or have tonnes of prior art e.g. slide to unlock, multi touch
It's not for you to decide whether a patent is trivial or ridiculous. From reading other comments, most Slashbots don't even know the details of the patent, let alone the subtleties of patent law.
That's the biggest load of crap I ever read. When the words of patent lawyers and Florian Muller count for everything and those of John Carmack and Linus Torvalds count for nothing, we are truly f##ked. And by we I mean the west, and especially the U.S. because China and the rest of Asia will go on without being encumbered by such stupidity. I have read and tried to understand more than enough of these patents and the words of patent lawyers to know that what you're spreading is pure FUD. You're insulting the intelligence of people on slashdot by trying to tell them that a software patent on a simple algorithm or process is beyond their comprehension because it is clouded in pages of incomprehensible legalese and entirely superfluous details (e.g. describing the inner working of an operating system and the mobile device which have no bearing on the funcitonality described)--that stuff is to fool the morons in the patent office (and the people who approve these patents are morons, I don't care if they are overworked underpaid morons, they're morons) and the courts. It doesn't fool us.
Being forced to reinvent the wheel isn't innovating, it's time and money wasting.
Humanity will get nowhere if it's forced to invent the same things over and over, rather than focus on inventing new things.
meh it wasn't. I think you're forgetting how 1996 was. you could select email addresses back then in some sw and send email. even 1993 you could find prior art.
when was lynx made? because what it actually does if there's an email tag is analyze the input and make it clickable and give you a choice to send email, no? the patent is so broadly worded that it's rather irrelevant if there's the tags around it or not.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.