Slashdot Mirror
Taiwan University Sues Apple Over Siri Patents
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting that Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University has filed a suit against Apple claiming patent infringement by the Siri voice-recognition software. At issue are two patents dating to 2007 and 2010. From the article: 'The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, on Friday, it said. "We filed that lawsuit in the Texas court because it processes faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and the compensations are usually higher," said Yama Chen, legal manager of National Cheng Kung, in the southern Taiwan city of Tainan.'"
I want to know !!
I wonder how much Apple likes being on the receiving end?
... until you get slapped by one.
IP lawsuits are great!
....and in other news...
It is nice when ugly corporations get hoisted by their own sack.
And so it goes
"We filed that lawsuit in the Texas court because it processes faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and the compensations are usually higher..."
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Maybe Chinese patent trolls will eventually alert US patent supporters to how stupid the system is.
--
that people would invent their own stuff...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
(Pun intended.)
n/t
All the patent litigation back in forth between the big tech companies just passes money back and forth with hardly any of them really making out above their "competitors" in the end. The patent trolls are the only annoying ones and even they perform a valuable service. All of this serves to keep the barrier to entry for new companies so high as to never be truly surmounted. With less new marketing destabilizing competition entering their markets these companies are significantly safer.
Patents are now simply a way for collusion to take place and not look anything like collusion, they are suing each other after all.
I really wish everyone would get over the idea that East Texas is still the best place to file patent suits. It definitely was for about a year in the mid-2000s, but since then it's returned back to within a few percentage points of the national average.
The percentage of patent cases where the plaintiff succeeded at trial was, over the period from 1995-2009, in line with the national average (66.7% trial success in East Texas vs. 66% nationwide), and by all indications it hasn't changed from that in the last few years (as a point of comparison, Florida Middle District Court had an 80% trial success rate for plaintiffs over that same period). Aside from the one-year blip where plaintiffs won more frequently and the district deservedly earned its reputation, its rates have been at levels that are in line with other district courts. Unfortunately, most people seem to have not caught on to that fact yet (even Wikipedia's sources regarding much of this stuff is several years out of date).
Because of that one year blip being so noteworthy, there is still a mistaken perception that the East Texas courts are plaintiff friendly, but that's all it is now: a perception. In fact, for NPEs (i.e. non-practicing entities, a.k.a. patent trolls), the Florida Middle District and the Delaware District courts had overall success rates (i.e. including summary judgments) that were about 11% and 7% higher, respectively, than East Texas over the period from 1995-2009.
That said, the East Texas courts do make for an ideal venue for trying patent cases, even if they're not as one-sided as people seem to think. The district has faster turnaround times than many other federal districts (which was part of the motivating factor in this particular case), the judges are well-versed in patent cases and have indicated an interest in handling them expeditiously, and there are local laws permitting lawyers from any bar association, not just the Texas bar, from trying their cases there, making it easier to use than some of the other districts.
The fact that the judges are knowledgeable is especially important, because many of the corporations being sued prefer to have their cases tried there, rather than getting them transferred to their home district where an ignorant judge can add a major level of uncertainty to the equation (in fact, in one case involving 112 defendants less than a year ago, the East Texas judge was able to dismiss 99 of the defendants immediately because they weren't infringing and didn't request transfers to other districts). As a result, more cases that start in the district tend to stay in the district than you might otherwise see, creating a larger volume of cases that reach a conclusion. So, not only does it handle more cases, but it also concludes more cases than most of the other district courts.
It's just a shame that people are still perpetuating the idea that it's plaintiff-friendly when it's not, since it sets up East Texas as a distraction and as a scapegoat to vent our frustrations over the patent system whenever a ruling we disagree with comes out of there. The fault isn't theirs any more than it is any other court's. It's the fault of the corporations playing this billion dollar game with each other.
(Note: much of this was pulled from a previous comment of mine from February)
It all started with Apple settling name dispute over iPad with Chinese company. That set the precedence for other East Asian companies to follow the suit. There was already suit for Chinese "snow leopard" name, some other bogus one, and now this... I am not siding with any side, but that sounds like leaching on potentially easy settlement money...
"What goes around comes around"
"Karma's a bitch"
So now we've even outsourced our patent trolls? When will it end.
that said, this could get interesting, and lets go super conspiracy theory.
Patent troll sues Apple, Apple "settles" which gives legitimacy to said patent troll.
Patent troll uses that legitimacy to get injunctions against all other smart phones that use voice.
Apple wins.
Damn it.
I am 31337 or something.
Normally universities do research and don't develop a thechnology to production quality. For this they either do spin-offs or licensing. And apple didn't license the patents.
I am more interested if someone here checked the patents in question have any merits?
Another question is should a (presumely public funded) university patent its inventions at all?
> "We filed that lawsuit in the Texas court because it processes
> faster and its rulings are usually in favor of patent owners and
> the compensations are usually higher,""
Holy bloviators, Dark Knight! A lawyer who told the undistorted truth!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.
Disclaimer: I'm not a patent lawyer, but I do know a thing or two about speech recognition. I've only read the summaries of the patents, but they don't seem to cover anything that Siri or any other sensible speech recogniser system does.
Patent 7,266,496 (from 2007) is about a complete speech recogniser on a chip. This couldn't be further from Siri, which sends the audio data to the cloud to be recognised. The four "modules" that the patent covers are bog-standard. Patent 7,707,032 (from 2010) describes a silly way of doing speech recognition (by comparing with individual training samples) and is unrelated to any modern commercial speech recogniser.
This is just some Taiwanese university hoping for two minutes of fame and a settlement. They seem to be getting their fame, but they're not going to see any money.
The news release itself openly admits to jurisdiction shopping!
The normal defence for companies being sued for patent infringement is to find a breach of their own patent portfolio by the suer's products, then settle out of court.
It kindof assumes that the entity bringing the case makes commercial products themselves. Entities that don't are basically untouchable, which is why patent trolls avoid selling actual products.
Its going to be very hard for apple to find a quid-pro-quo breach by a university.
I don't know what you mean by "pat ant in fringe meant." Would you like to search the web for 'picture of a stallion'?
I have no problem with the university suing Apple, but... everyone sues in Texas because they will automatically win... doesn't that seem like a problem?
Texas shouldn't be allowed to somehow interpret the law differently enough that they become famous for coming down on the side of patent "owners", and even if they do, I am not sure other people should be allowed to shop for the best jurisdiction for their case.