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Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Should Be Shared
An anonymous reader writes "In attempting to fend off Apple's suit against Motorola Mobility and advancing its own patent litigation against Apple, Google, which is facing a lot of regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad over what some allege is abuse of standard essential patents, has been arguing that proprietary non-standardized technologies that become ubiquitous due to their popularity with consumers should be considered de facto standards."
Google wishes to embrace and exploit.
That strategy might work in the media to get people angry at Apple, but it's a bad idea in a court. You are basically admitting that Apple is right, but then saying it doesn't matter because it "oughta be" a standard. At that point the judge will say: thanks for admitting Apple is right to save me the bother of the trial. Not a smart move.
Considering what Apple's patents tend to be about (swip to unlock anyone?) they may be annoying but they aren't what I would call "standards" in the way that 802.11 is a standard.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Apple's PR is doing a great job. Way to spin something into a provocative flamebait. Google didn't say what the title says it did, but timothy just couldn't resist.
The summary is misleading. What Google is saying is that if certain patents are considered standard essential for communication (3G, WiFi etc.), then parents on touch screens, scrolling etc. should also be considered the same. Apple would not be forced to share them, they would be forced to license them at a fair cost. Right now, Google-Motorola cannot use their patents the way Apple uses theirs because they are classified as FRAND, whereas Apple can use their patents to force import bans on Motorola and HTC products, for example. Apple would still be paid for the licenses to those patents, but would not be able to refuse to license them or charge an exorbitant fee.
The alternative would be to, you know, not issue broad patents for scrolling and slide to unlock etc.
Are you kidding me? Do you think the average (even above-average) user wants to go through PAGES and PAGES of radio buttons? Rounded vs. sharp corners? Why not allow them to determine just HOW round? Now we've gone from radio buttons to sliders everywhere.
Seriously, customize EVERYTHING? You can do that in Linux - look at how well that worked out for the consumer.
Google's argument actually makes sense. As I read it, they're saying that a company which holds a patent on technology that is essential to meet an industry standard must license it in a Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) way. But a company that has such a strong market position (i.e. a monopoly) can use patents to exclude competition. So Google is saying that FRAND should apply whether the technology is required because of an industry standard or because the patent holder has a monopoly.
Samsung, Motorola and other old players in the telecoms game have a huge problem today because for many years they have been playing reasonably nice with each other. It used to be that the players came together in standards organizations, agreed on standards, promised to license them to each other on FRAND terms, and then competed on implementation. Then a new kid comes to town who wants everyone to license it their FRAND patents without giving any back.
Apple, like Microsoft, hates to offer their own patents as FRAND, and only ever tries to create formal standards when they need to subvert another standard. They are the masters of de facto standards. Since the old players are now desperately abusing their FRAND patents as leverage in patent negotiations, they have a difficulty in calling Apple out on the hypocrisy of this.
However, the big loser in all of this is us. Since FRAND patents are so weak in aggressive patent wars, and antitrust bodies are now looking to make them even weaker, companies will stop making FRAND promises. The result will be less standardization and more lawsuits, leading to less capable and more expensive products. Hence Google's point is actually a very good one.
A joystick in a car would be stupid. Cars are not fly by wire systems; they are mechanical (with some hydraulic support via "power steering", but even when the power steering fails the car can be controlled via the mechanical wheel). Can you imagine the force required to control a car via a joystick if you had to keep it mechanical? If you then made it a completely drive by wire system, you just added a bunch of complexity and failure modes to what should be a ubiquitous and (fairly) inexpensive object. You've taken a simple, cheap design and made it cost more simply to have a less efficient steering mechanism. Why? It is designed pretty damn well now.
The term for this is "punishing success." Create a technology that's too successful and pretty soon people will call to have it stolen from you for the "public good." And naturally they will mask their naked desire for such theft with terms like "sharing."
Note that I don't support software patents---I don't support the idea of patents, or "intellectual property", at all. But so long as we're going to have the government pointing its guns around at people, protecting businesses' intellectual assets as if they're real property, the idea of selective enforcement of patents, especially based on criteria like this, is even more repugnant than "IP" itself.
So! I hope Google will be equally as cheerful when the government comes in and wrenches all of their technologies away from them because they've become so ubiquitous! I mean, if there's anything "everyone" uses on the Internet nowadays that ought to be "shared," it's Google search, right?
Liberty in your lifetime
apples pricing on the Ipad is only becuase they manufacture one or two styles at the same time.
What the competitors need to do is to stop pumping out new models and build just a couple high quailty models
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Almost all of the ones I saw in the PDF were pretty bogus ones. Claims by competitors that google pushes it's own results to the top of the results. So far I've yet to see a case for that one presented convincingly, the top results tend to be whatever is most often the more popular item, in things that google is the most popular, google's items show up, in the ones they aren't their competitors show up. Then warnings and alogations of patent abuse. Can you even name a time google used a patent offensively? Can you crop out the fat and point out 1 or 2 that google was actually ruled guilty in, most of those are either undecided or not found not guilty. I'm not saying google isn't debatably bad, I'm saying that particular list is focusing on pretty ridiculous stuff. Google deserves quite a bit of flack in the privacy area, but their patent practice in the phone arena? I've yet to see them do anything shady in that arena besides attempt to cover their own ass from incoming fire.
I believe that it is the government which sets up the laws which protect private intellectual property. Without these government patent laws, there would be no way to protect intellectual property. Anarchy would allow the free flow of ideas without these artificial barriers to embrace and extend.
Not sure how John Galt would resolve the conflict between "government is evil" and "government must protect my private property" since it has been 50 years since I read those polemics.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
"Others can embrace and extend when the patent expires."
The problem with that line of thinking, is not realizing that all that is created is evolutionary. Everything we build is done in small incremental steps, building on what was just built. No one goes from a horse and buggy to a Ferrari. You go from a horse, to a horse and buggy, to a motorized carriage and so on. Everything that Apple or anyone else has built, was done standing on the shoulders of giants.
No, source code has no value except as A METHOD of explaining the idea. It is not the idea.
Well, that was my point. A patent is supposed to protect not an idea, but a concrete implementation, like a steam engine. You can't patent the concept of accelerating a car by heating some gas, you have to actually show how it is supposed to work (by using diagrams and text). However, you can patent the idea of clicking on a button to buy something in an online store, or using a shopping cart to represent the items you're about to buy there.
The only way to perfectly specify how a software idea is supposed to work is by showing the code. Everything else is vague and could be written by just about anyone. Patents were supposed to protect the inventor, not somebody with a typewriter/word processor and some vague idea. Originally, patents were required to include a working physical model of the implementation. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case.
In addition to that, actually implementing software is the hard part, not coming up with ideas for software. However, that's a holly different topic and not covered by current IP laws at all.
Good job. I think you make a strong argument against software patents. If software patents are indeed the patenting of ideas rather than concrete implementations, then they should not be issued.
The comparison is false. There is no new idea. The intent of computers is to replicate manual or analogue methods of doing things in a digital computerised format, using computer hardware and software, that is a straight up logical process. As computers take a greater part in the interaction between people and the activities they conduct, so more of those interactions are 'digitised'. Putting more devices in one space is a simple direct product if miniaturisation and making use of existing hardware with the minor addition of new hardware. Whilst the hardware itself should certainly be patentable if it requires new manufacturing techniques, the software should not ie it is simply the logical algorithms, the formulas inherent in making the hardware function.
The whole idea of falsity of patenting every shift of known existing method and idea from analogue or manual use to digital is simply a US greed based lie. Nothing new, no new idea, no creation, just lawyers, lobbyists, corrupt politicians, greed and bullshit. You can shove rounded corners on rectangles where the sun don't shine along with slide to lock and any other kind of anticompetitive profit jacking up bullshit.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen