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How Steve Jobs Patent-Trolled Bill Gates
theodp writes "Apple, which is currently waging IP war on Android vendors, is no stranger to patent trolling. Citing the Steve Jobs bio, Forbes' Eric Jackson recalls how Steve Jobs used patents to get Bill Gates to make a 1997 investment in Apple. Recalled Jobs: 'Microsoft was walking over Apple's patents. I said [to Gates], "If we kept up our lawsuits, a few years from now we could win a billion-dollar patent suit. You know it, and I know it. But Apple's not going to survive that long if we're at war. I know that. So let's figure out how to settle this right away. All I need is a commitment that Microsoft will keep developing for the Mac and an investment by Microsoft in Apple so it has a stake in our success.' Next thing you know, BillG was lording over Jobs at Macworld Boston, as the pair announced the $150 million investment that breathed new life into then-struggling Apple. So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?"
nope he doesnt deserve any credit (Gates)
Don't you have to be a bottom feeding shell corporation with no actual products to be a patent troll?
Not sure Apple fit this definition at any stage of it's history.
Anyone who has been on the Internet more than 6 months remembers the "$150 million for Apple from MS" thing. It usually brings the Apple fanboys out of the woodwork insisting that neither the investment nor the promise of continued support were relevant for Apple's success and anyway Apple had SO much tech that MS was copying and MS would totally have had to pay out billions otherwise. (This implies that SJ willingly turned down the opportunity at several $billion out of the kindness of his heart, which is hilarious.)
Who fucking cares.
So sick of these two schmucks.
Yes. By focusing on creating products that are "good enough", he enabled someone else to easily produce something better and rake in billions of dollars.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Sure he does. Not only for investing, but for providing solid competition with a different angle to it -- a very successful angle -- that required Apple to innovate one way or another to succeed.
And even today, I still run Windows... under OS X, in a VM, sandboxed safely away from the Internet. :o)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Patent troll nothing. Microsoft was caught red handed with code lifted *DIRECTLY* from the Quicktime codecs. This was not trolling with a concept or buying patents to then leverage against someone else, this was outright plagiarism.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That makes nothing you need.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Who evers written this is a 5 year old kid knowing absolutely nothing about IP or IP law.
'trolled'. Get a life.
Oh my f'ing gawd! If you're going to use the term "patent troll", make damn sure you know what it means. When a company infringes a patent and is sued for doing so, the suing party is _NOT_ a patent troll. When the CEO of a suing company opens a dialogue and negotiates a settlement that is mutually beneficial to both companies, that is _NOT_ a patent troll.
A patent troll is a company that makes nothing of note (typically nothing at all) yet sues other companies for patent infringement. In fact, it can be best summed up that a patent troll's business model is generating revenues from suing other companies for patent infringement. Now, before anyone tries to be witty and claim that describes Apple, pull your head out of your ass and be honest - Apple makes BILLIONS of dollars _MAKING AND SELLING ACTUAL PRODUCTS!_ They invest a massive amount of money into R&D and thus have numerous patents covering their inventions. Thus, when a company infringes one of those patents, it is entirely within their right and understandable that they would sue for infringement but APPLE IS NOT A PATENT TROLL.
Seriously. You may not like their actions; you may not like Steve Jobs; you may think everything related to Apple is crap but be honest and understand what a patent troll is and recognize Apple is NOT a patent troll.
The major issue I have with people watering down the meaning of the term is that it weakens the debate against actual patent trolls who are leaches of the worst order. When you use "patent troll" to describe Apple, just because you don't like them, you weaken the ability to rightly vilify the real patent trolls.
Apple is NOT a patent troll. You don't have to like them - hate them all you want - but be honest and recognize they are NOT a patent troll.
Don't you have to be a bottom feeding shell corporation with no actual products to be a patent troll?
Not sure Apple fit this definition at any stage of it's history.
"Don't you have to be poor, with no actual possession, to be a crack addict?"
Patent trolling is an act, not a profession. Though some people/companies do base their business around that single act.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...the world's most valuable company?
Looks like Soulskill did not RTFA.
Apple started the junk IP lawsuits in the 1980s.
It made me a lot of money too. I left when it was still "Apple Computer". "Apple, Inc." doesn't make anything I want to buy.
Soulskill you suck............this is a story? This was in the book that came out last year....what an idiot.
Back then Microsoft was using their shear size to dominate other companies and it wasn't just Apple. I remember that little lawsuit with Stac Electronics. Microsoft basically bundled in Stacker and took the position of "what are you going to do about it"? They sued and won. Microsoft used to be infamous for lifting code and technologies then playing dumb. Even Vista, Win 7 and now Win 8 came under fire for being suspiciously like OSX. Microsoft seemed unbeatable a dozen years ago but they were never an innovator and that's where Apple blew past them. Also people keep forgetting Apple isn't a software company they are a hardware company that happens to make their own OS and some software products. Microsoft has always been the opposite.
So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter. Not investing in Apple would risk having Microsoft as pretty much the only operating system company in existence (OS/2, Solaris and others had virtually no market share, and Linux was not really a competitor on the desktop back then). With the IE antitrust suits just starting around that time, killing off Windows' biggest competitor was a bad idea. So, you could argue that keeping Apple alive was necessary for MS, even if it might cause future problems, and those could be minimised via network effects (people needing Windows to run their applications).
First, a patent toll isn't a company protecting their intellectual property. A patent troll is a 'firm' that makes nothing, but simply collects patents and hires a lot of lawyers in an attempt to squeeze some cash out of the victims of such tolling.
Second, when you have BILLIONS of cash in the bank, a $150 million 'investment' is better called, a token gesture.
R.I.P. ClarisWorks, you were ever a thorn in Office's side.
Why would Bill Gates invest in Apple if Jobs admitted that Apple wouldn't survive long enough to win a patent lawsuit against MS anyway? Something's fishy. Gates could just wait 'em out and let Apple go away and gobble up the patents. Must be something more to the story.
But I have no trouble believing that MS was infringing... I don't think they (or, probably, anyone else back then) paid much attention to "patents". They were paying more attention to copyright but even then, not very much.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Microsoft has played many roles over its long history with Apple. It has been benefactor, beneficiary, competitor, and on occasion extortionist.
As a benefactor, Microsoft has invested in Apple, more than once IIRC. They have also produced many solid productivity applications, and once upon a time a number of programming tools (MS Basic, QuickBasic, Fortran) for the Mac. Apple desperately needed applications for the Mac, especially during the early years when people were wrestling with the enormous increase in complexity that programming the Macintosh interface represented at the time.
As a beneficiary, Microsoft has reaped a nontrivial amount of money from sales of Microsoft products on the Macintosh platform. It also benefited from early exposure to the GUI ideas in the Macintosh and Lisa that popularized and built upon earlier work at Xerox. It could see the many interesting things Apple was doing with object oriented programming, multimedia, and other innovations.
As a competitor, Microsoft modeled Windows after Macintosh and used it to largely drive Apple from the market for many years. Microsoft used its position as the prime application vendor to shape how Macintosh was used, making it more difficult to use Macintosh in business by withholding key applications or dropping others. (Microsoft dropped Microsoft Project and Foxbase/Foxpro for Macintosh, and never produced Access.) Apple has repeatedly aided Microsoft through brilliance in conception, idiocy in execution, and almost non-existent follow through with future products - both hardware and software. (They are doing much better over the last 10 years.)
Business being business, extortionist may be too harsh a word, but Microsoft is rumored to have forced Apple to sell its marvelous Macintosh Basic to Microsoft for $1.00 if it wanted to get another license for the Microsoft Basic in the ROMs of the Apple IIs - Apple's bread and butter money maker for years after the Macintosh was released. Funny how much Microsoft Basic -> Quickbasic improved around that time. I seem to recall that Microsoft stopped development on Macintosh applications when Apple sued them over the look and feel of Windows as being too close to Macintosh. I don't believe those were the only times that Microsoft played hardball with Apple either, although it probably went both ways at times.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
For the twenty year span 1985-2005, Microsoft used Apple as their advanced R&D lab. Apple would continually release cool products and technologies, but since it was locked out of the PC mainstream they had to settle for at most 5 percent market share. Then Microsoft would ape what Apple did and try to make incremental improvements, usually mucking it up because of the warring UI designer syndrome.
Microsoft had fine engineers but they seemed (then and now) unable to create anything original. They depended on other companies to innovate, including Netscape, Sun (for Java), Borland (for C++ class frameworks), Sybase, etc. But most importantly, they depended on Apple, because Windows was Microsoft's bread and butter product.
By 2005 the world had changed so that the PC was no longer the center of the consumer computing universe. Jobs struck with the ipod and the iPhone and Microsoft was unable to respond with its usual monopolistic hold. Apple had the prime mover advantage.
Microsoft did not get to be a monopoly by kowtowing to threats of patent lawsuits from failing competitors.
the DOJ lawsuits against MS had more to do with MS supporting Apple than, well, anything. The DOJ was about to get all into MS's business, with bizarre stuff like forcing them to ship Windows without the IE browser, and other harebrained schemes.
this experience it also probably kept MS out of the phone market and the retail store market, vertical integration, etc. - apparently someone didn't give Redmond the memo that regulation and the FTC died when George Bush came into office. The things that apple is doing are blatantly anti-competitive, and nobody is batting an eye.
This is best explained by analogy, and I will try to put it into a /. context. Here goes --
Professor Xavier (a.k.a. Jobs) once started a school for the gifted, called Apple Computer. There, he and his close associate, Beast (a.k.a. Woz), created a wondrous thing, the personal computer. Upon hearing about this thing, another mutant, Magneto (a.k.a. Gates), came to visit with his close associate, Sabretooth (a.k.a Ballmer), to find out more about Apple. Magneto wanted to plunder Apple but knew that Dr. Xavier had a mysterious 'reality distortion field' that could probe his mind. So Magneto took a special shell (called DOS) that kept Dr. Xavier from reading his mind (there was no point to reading Sabretooth's). Dr. Xavier thought that Magneto was fairly benign and agreed to supply Magneto with his new invention, the Mac. Magneto took the Mac back to his lair in Redmond, and invented 'Windows' (BTW, Sabretooth wanted to call it 'Doors').
Since that day, Dr. Xavier and Magneto would meet at trade shows and Davos, where Magneto would boast of how his mutant Windows had conquered the other OSes -- MVS, VMS, Unix, OS/2, and even the Mac OS. Then, one day Magneto left his helmet in his luggage on the way to Davos, and it was lost by United Airlines (how odd?^). Upon meeting Magneto at Davos, Dr. Xavier realized all the things that Magneto had been hiding from him. So, he cranked-up his reality distortion field to super-strength, entered Magneto's mind, and left thoughts of tax shelters, charities, and vaccines in his head, along with the 'brilliant idea' of turning Magneto's company, Microsoft, over to Sabretooth. And, to top it off, Microsoft would bite a chunk of Apple for $150 million plus promise to develop Microsoft Office for the Mac OS FOREVER.
With that, Magneto 'retired' to save the world from disease and left Microsoft in the hands of Sabretooth, who made Microsoft more profitable than ever AND more irrelevant than ever. The rest is history.
THE END
Apologies to Stan Lee
The Forbes article is hardly any longer than this summary. It also does not substantiate the claim of patent troll for either MS or Apple (as mentioned ad nauseum by other posters).
Pretty sad attempt to generate some discussion. At least provide some substance.
FYI: MS no longer holds any of that initial 150 million investment; http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft.ars
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Bill Gates built the Microsoft empire by crushing competition and flooding the market with low-quality products and not letting hardware companies offer any alternatives. Most people use Windows and Office because "everybody else uses that". Even today, in 2012, you'd have a hard time finding a company willing to sell you a non-Apple computer without Microsoft Windows pre-installed.
Steve Jobs wanted to change the world. And he did, with good products that people want to buy and use.
There is this famous song: AC/DC - Dirty deeds done dirt cheeps....
I could not tell my impression of this story more clear and in just one sentence...
That Wikipedia quote, while it does have a leg to stand on, its one leg is not in any remotely good condition and it is missing several toes.
It cites an article where it is said the following, about patent trolls:
"The long-anticipated eBay case gets to the heart of the debate over so-called patent trolls â" companies that obtain patents only to license them, often using the threat of an injunction to extract a high price from infringers." Woellert, L.: eBay Takes on the Patent Trolls. Business Week, March 30, 2006.
One of the arguments that eBay made was that non-practicing inventors, quaintly nicknamed "patent trolls," should not be entitled to an injunction as a matter of course.
Oh, my! Now non-practicing inventors are "patent trolls" too.
And then it goes further along that way:
Who are these evil âoepatent trollsâ anyway? The term was first coined by Intel, whose in-house counsel was quoted to have said, âoeA patent troll is somebody who tries to make a lot of money off a patent that they are not practicing and have no intention of practicing and in most cases never practiced.â(TM)â Sandburg, B.: Inventorâ(TM)s Lawyer Makes a Pile from Patents. The Recorder, July 30, 2001. According to this definition, a non-practicing inventor is a patent troll.
And there is more:
Later, the definition of âoepatent trollâ was modified to describe those who buy patents, which they do not practice, for the sole purpose of assertion. Under this definition, to be a troll one needs to (a) buy a patent, (b) not practice the patented invention, and (c) assert the acquired patent. As I have argued in Making Innovation Pay â" Turning IP into Shareholder Value (B. Berman, ed., John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc.) (2006), this definition is patently absurd.
And in the end, the author decides that there is no such thing as a patent troll at all:
To summarize, the so-called "patent trolls" are stuff of myths and legends, not of sound reason.
So, you saying that "they are far from being a patent troll" makes sense - but only because "patent trolls" don't exist according to all those definitions above.
Particularly the Wikipedia's "common accepted definition", which is "patently absurd".
ON THE OTHER HAND...
Taking in account that "patent troll" is first and foremost a pejorative term (think of the first racial slur that comes to your mind) used to describe a perfectly legal, though sometimes morally questionable ACT, well...
Apple has been "patent trolling" many times. Or "asserting a patent".
It's all in the eye of the beholder.
As for the article itself... what retard wrote that, and how am I not shocked it's posted in Forbes? Yes, Apple (not jobs, the lawsuits had been going for years and Jobs had just returned) was running a legal battle against Microsoft at the time, but as Jobs said, Apple was going to go under way before they were able to win or lose. And to be honest, Microsoft had the money to even pay if they ever won.
Losses were not what was in Gate's mind at the time. The reason Gates actually bailed Apple out was that Apple going out of business would had been horrible for Microsoft's defense in their anti-trust monopoly abuse case since Apple's competition was one of the points that was constantly brought up by the defense during the case.
I concur. On all those points.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
How DARE YOU say bad things about Apple.
This is completely unacceptable, and will NOT be tolerated.
The GALL of you, to even suggest ANYTHING bad about Apple!
HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!!!!
I really wish Bill Gates let Apple die...
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
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So that MS could tell the DOJ - "Hey look, we're not a monolopy! We're investing in our competitor!"
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Well, yea, it's sort of a repeating story. Businessman creates a conglomerate empire, too often through dubiously ethical means. Later on, either through guilt or through boredom, the power that's acquired is used more towards philanthropy or just rots in a vault somewhere because the purpose was never the power itself or to wield it but the challenge to acquire that power in the first place and how to use it. Of course, that's just a caricature of the situation, and it's silly to label such people as one-dimensional supervillains.
But I think the point stands that as much as we can be happy that, say, philanthropists do go out of their way to spend their money for the benefit of others, we often turn a blind eye to the fact that government trivially spends more and does greater pragmatic good (health care, paid or manditory, and food programs come to mind), often again through dubiously ethical means*. And not being one-dimensional, I don't think it reasonable to label a person "good" or "evil" in a one-dimensional sense. Certainly, it's hard to think of any one person as a stellar example of perfection in some area. But, then, that's fine. I certainly don't expect as such. That's just hyper projecting and distorting actions, as if there needs to be some level of Godhood attributed to people to have respect or disrespect for their real actions. I think it's enough to just appreciate reality as it is.
*As much as I'm all about freedom and choice, I think it a bit dubious to pretend that business always gives you choice and government does not. A business that dumps toxic waste into a shared river certainly isn't giving you a choice. Neither is a business who, having undercut the competition, has decided to grant you such a pitiful wage that it's neigh impossible for many people to save enough to move away. Thankfully, government has been forced to step in and take away some of these evils. And that's the point, in fact, that the vast majority of people deciding to force actions, even if it goes against the freedom of a few, might be the right and ethical thing to do. It's not a matter of "might makes right", as certainly democracies are just as capable of and have harmed minorities in the past. The point, then, is the matter at hand heavily determines how ethical the situation is, not simply waving a hand about the mechanism and entirely ignoring the consequences. So, while I don't embrace at all the idea of government nosing itself into every bit of what would be great freedom, I think it crazy to call for anarchy just because government makes things worse at times; no system is perfect, which is why you have to actually weigh what's actually going on and not just hand wave in a one-dimensional sort of way.
PS - Thank you very much for the links. Your two examples are very much good examples of the point, as of how different Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller were.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Patent trolling? Come on. It was a settlement in a straight plagiarism case from Apples POV.
Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, Apple's statement on the stolen code.
"The pirated code was incorporated into a software product called Display Code Interface. DCI was codeveloped by Microsoft and Intel, and is bundled with Video for Windows 1.1D. Because of the circumstances of the code transfer from Canyon, we think Intel and Microsoft knew, or should have known, that they were getting pirated code. But we tried to use a cooperative, non-disruptive approach by filing our initial suit only against Canyon, and talking to Intel and Microsoft privately to get them to stop distributing our code.
They refused. Repeatedly.
So we were left with two options: let the two most powerful companies in the industry get away with software piracy, or go to court. We chose to defend our rights, and to attempt to bring this matter to a close as quickly as possible. It's very disappointing that we ended up in this situation, especially since Intel and Microsoft have in other situations taken a strong stand against software piracy."
How is it possible to write this garbage without mentioning that Apple had $4,000,000,000 in cash at the time?
Bill Gates's token $150 million investment pales in comparison! It was symbolic!
Also how is it "trolling" when Microsoft actually did violate Apple's patents?!
...Create the worlds most valuable company?
In the year 2000......in the year Two THOUSAND!
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization -year 2000 (duh)
If you want to get anal about definitions, then please tell us where the word "plagiarism" appears in the lawsuit?
I think the case was about copyright trade dress, not patents. I am not even sure if there were software patents at the time.
Also, I'm not sure if Apple had $4,000,000,000 in cash at the time.
Google the following: gates foundation site:techrights.org
Read all the article that appear.
You are welcome.
That is what bothers me. If a bunch of ignorant Apple zealots want to insist that Apple invented rounded corners, slide to unlock, and all things shinny; that's fine with me.
But, Apple pulling a Tonya Harding like stunt, to get Samsung devices pulled off market, because Apple does not want to compete with Android ICS; is very low scam, even for Apple.
Apple sues over garbage can icons, and rounded corners, and slide-to-unlock, and other such junk IP.
Apple's latest flood of lawsuits are not about protecting Apple's ideas. The lawsuits are about Apple breaking their competitor's kneecaps, because that's the way Apple likes to "compete."
Bill Gates built the Microsoft empire by crushing competition
Correct.
and flooding the market
Pray tell, how can one "flood" a market which is based on intangible goods whose duplication cost is near zero?
with low-quality products
In some instances yes. In other instances no. Windows 7 is not a "low quality product."
and not letting hardware companies offer any alternatives
Really? Bill Gates held a gun to their heads and forced them, did he?
Most people use Windows and Office because "everybody else uses that".
And it's apparent you have zero clue why this "everybody else uses that."
Even today, in 2012, you'd have a hard time finding a company willing to sell you a non-Apple computer without Microsoft Windows pre-installed.
The alternative is what, exactly? Ubuntu? Ha. Linux is not suitable for the desktop, period, which is why nobody considers it as a serious choice, not because Microsoft hired some guy named Guido to break a CEO's legs if he doesn't get in line.
Steve Jobs wanted to change the world. And he did, with good products that people want to buy and use.
Yep. And so did Bill Gates.
Asus begs to differ with you, what with all those Linux powered eeePCs they sell.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
sorry, this is pretty much known by anyone following computing at the time. It isn't news, it was done at the same time as BillG appeared at an Apple conference and got boo'ed as he appear on stage. The money was effectively a licence payment along with a promise that MS would continue to build MS-Office for Mac, although Bill was quoted that he would continue any product that still sold over a thousand units (paraphrased). I don't think Patent-troll can be used here as the things that MS were using also in use in MacOS and NeXTSTEP, etc, not the usual patent-troll action where some obscure process remains unused by it's owner until it's time to cash-in.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I don't think Bill was threatened by the patents since, as Steve himself said, Apple wouldn't have had the endurance to fight this war. But during this time (1997) was already eyed for abusing its almost-monopoly, and losing the only "serious" competitor (which, compared to MS at that time, was still tiny) wouldn't have helped Microsoft on that front. So I guess it was more valuable for MS to avoid additional antitrust trouble. Also, despite their competition, Bill respected Steve (but the other way round I'm not so sure; Steve said he respected Bill, but while reading the bio I'm sure he lied).
For Apple, it really was an act of desperation that in hindsight payed off. But at the Macworld Expo, there was this famous presentation where Apple announced the deal, that MS would do Office for Mac and made a kind of teleconference with Bill. Bill appeared super-big on the screen, with a grin. The audience booed, which Bill didn't hear. Steve later described this as his biggest failure on stage: it made Steve look little and weak, at the mercy of the Evil Overlord Bill.
Mod article down.
Oh, wait. Why can't we do modding for articles again? Oh yes, the /. frontpage would be very empty on some days.
There's so much flamebait in this, I don't even know where to start. Pathetic, really.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They had $1.2 billion in cash. The $150 million helped more than andersh believes, but it didn't save Apple. Apple saved itself.
Also, the linked article specifically mentions patents.
Pray tell, how can one "flood" a market which is based on intangible goods whose duplication cost is near zero?
So packaging, manuals, distribution, development, advertising, warehousing, and all the other work that went into software in the 80s & 90s cost "near zero?"
My god man, custom runs of floppy disks alone were $1 or more, and most products included multiple floppies. When CDs first came out there were substantial mastering costs involved in pressed discs, and the per-disc price was also measured in dollars, not cents.
You really need to realize that Steam wasn't available in 1986.
Windows 7 is not a "low quality product."
No it isn't, but Vista, the preceding product, was. It was such a low quality product that Microsoft was forced to roll up their sleeves and fix all the problems in it, then had the gall to charge us all for it.
When they did the same thing in Windows 98 Second Edition, at least they released a megapatch that updated long-suffering Windows 98 owners to Windows 98 SE. Similarly, when Apple released OS X 10.1 they gave it away free to everyone who owned OS X 10.0.
Seriously, what the hell.
Really? Bill Gates held a gun to their heads and forced them, did he?
If by gun you mean requiring them to pay him money for a Windows license even if they didn't ship a copy of Windows with the system or, if they didn't want to agree to those terms, pay a substantially inflated price for Windows licenses that would have made their business uncompetitive... then yes he did.
Moof!
...Jobs went to Microsoft on his knees and begging for money to stop the final death of his company.
Good to see that at least one point in his career, Jobs understood the word "humility".
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Sure, they had products. But I would still call Apple both lowlife and bottom feeders.
Look at the iMac and you'll se what I mean.
Slashdot is not responsible for the comments on articles but they are responsible for the titles of posts and what was described in this article is not remotely close to patent trolling. It's how patent infringement cases are handled in the best possible way. Not everyone who exercises his or her patent rights is a troll.
I would have had one of my flunkies buy Apple back then.
Patent trolling is an act, not a profession
SCO might have something to say about that.
Actually, some of the technology was patented, but had expired - the mouse, for instance. Also, due to antitrust litigation, Xerox had limits on what they could patent, so they focused more on products than technologies when applying for patents (for instance, the LaserWriter and Ethernet). Incidentally, they did sue Apple, but the statute of limitations had passed so it was thrown out. Apple also lost its early UI patent lawsuit against Microsoft precisely because they had largely borrowed a bunch of ideas from the Star.
But this meeting was later - by the time Bill and Steve met, Apple was sitting on a pile of new patents Microsoft was infringing on. The situation is not unlike the current Apple vs Android - Apple owns patents like swipe to unlock and Android (and Microsoft for that matter) is infringing. Saying Apple is a patent troll is unfair; defending patents you created is much different than buying a bunch of patents just to sue potential infringees as your sole or a major mean of income. For instance, look at how Unisys handled LZW - they bought Compuserv and thus the patent, then started suing anyone that made programs that created GIF (which uses LZW), and even though they probably wouldn't have won a lawsuit due to statute of limitations, they still made bundles of cash just by threatening to sue.
and I like my over-priced shiny Apple products. If it doesn't meet your needs then buy something else; I don't see why you have to insult hundreds of millions of people just because their needs are different from yours.
From dictionary.com:
innovate [in-uh-veyt] Show IPA verb, -vated, -vating.
verb (used without object)
1. to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.
-------
Society has already established the definition of the word 'innovate'. You don't like that term being applied to Apple so you try to redefine it so that it no longer applies to Apple. You might as well say the definition of innovate is "everything that other companies do but that Apple doesn't do".
As someone who design computers for a living--I do consider Apple to be innovative and I am consistently shocked at how many "technical" people genuinely don't understand the point of technology.
Of course Bill deserves some credit. Gates is Professor Moriarty to Job's Sherlock Holmes. Neither would have accomplished such great things, if their mortal archenemy hadn't been challenging, and dare I say inspiring, the other.
What is the difference between a "patent troll" and an inventor who patented an idea (with their own cash), tried but failed to get VC money to develop it, and then has to sue big company "BigCo" when it finally hits on the idea years later? An inventor can NOT simply talk to BigCo because of the threat of a "DJ" action (declarative judgement) - all they really can do is sue BigCo. But if they can't convince some attorney to take the case as a contingency, all they CAN do is sell it to a troll. I know of at least 2 cases that went this way.
The irony is that the inventor gets pennies on the awards dollar if a troll does the lawsuit; had the inventor been able to negotiate without filing a lawsuit, it would have cost BigCo a LOT less money and most of it would be in the inventor's hands. BigCos started this nonsense so they could stomp on little guys (individuals and startups).
Big Companies hold all the legal cards (and most of the lawyers). A patent costs between $10K-$30K to file and maintain - how many individuals can manage that, let alone the cost of a DJ? And yet those companies whine and whine and whine into the ear of the legislators AND the press who bought it. I do not.
All you smart folk out there beware - one day you may have the idea of a lifetime and find YOURSELF looking down the barrel of a corporate legal team.
Sure the patent system needs some fixing. But let us throw out the bathwater, NOT the baby...and the plumbing... and the bathtub...