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In Wake of Samsung Verdict, HTC Does Not Intend To Settle

Taco Cowboy writes "The recent lost by Samsung in a court battle against Apple apparently does not put a dent to other parties determination to fight Apple, inside and outside of the court system HTC's Chairperson, Ms. Cher Wang, has publicly re-iterated her belief that the $1 billion jury verdict against Samsung in the U.S. 'does not mean the failure of the entire Google Android ecosystem.'"

9 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. How is it even possible to innovate these days? by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putting aside the question of whether a company can patent stuff like a rectangle with rounded edges and other obvious design features, all these patent lawsuits of recent years have made me wonder how it's possible these days for any software or hardware startup to even get going. It seems almost a given that any company that comes up with any new idea or piece of software these days, and subsequently makes even a modicum of money off of it, is pretty much guaranteed to get hit by a slew of patent lawsuits, some perhaps from big-name companies with deep pockets and lots of lawyers.

    As someone who has thought about going into indie software development myself, this scares the hell out of me. I can't imagine investing a ton of time and money into some innovative new product, only to be drowned into bankruptcy by patent trolls and the software big guns who have quietly patented every obvious element of design and every trivial element of every bit of software and hardware (even those with with decades of clear prior art). I'm not sure I would even consider trying anymore without the investment of a big patent law firm just to protect me.

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    1. Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days? by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tesla innovated just fine. He died crazy and poor while lesser men made themselves the gatekeepers to his creations and robbed the masses blind, sure... but he still innovated. Well, invented... innovation is the dumb-grunt work, really... but the principle is the same.

      Just because you're a slave doesn't mean you can't work.

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      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days? by MrDoh! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Know how you feel. I had a few voip ideas and at the moment, I can't find anyone actually with a product out that does what I had planned, but when looking at patents, it's a minefield. There's so many patents I could see as /almost/ being the same, methods of communicating type stuff, control channel, that if I did well, I'm sure there'd be a line of lawyers. Still, the lawyers I've spoken with are happy to start the ball rolling, and have recommendations on lawyers to hire WHEN I get sued. They know how the lay of the land is at the moment. I've given up. That slim chance to make enough money to pay for lawyers to fend off the others? Stuff it, not worth the headaches.

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      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    3. Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days? by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not possible to do anything really, if you're a small time independent. I wrote my own video and audio codecs, encryption algorithms, and distributed file transfer protocols, virtual machine, and put together a secure unified messaging / VOIP / File sharing system. It's basically in beta -- All the features work, and I'm just working out a few small scaling issues. I wrote every line of code myself. My "dependencies" are OpenGL, Pulse Audio, X11 or Win32 -- Basically, an OS, and low level audio / video APIs. I didn't implement anyone else's protocols or formats, and still the Software Patent Minefield prevents me from monetising or open sourcing the system. Fortunately this is a multi-year "free time" project that began as a bunch of smaller learning experiences, not my bread and butter. Eg: "I wonder how would one create a video codec?", I asked myself, then just did it -- The same for making compilers, interpreters, encryption, etc. (cipher block chaining can turn any one way hash into a two way cipher). Making new software isn't really hard at all; It doesn't take genius, just takes time.

      Due to the current patent laws I can't afford to publish my software (except to friends and relatives) -- A single lawsuit would be the end of me even though I've never looked at a technology related patent. If I open source the code, that just opens me up to patent trolls so they can try to find their exact way of doing something in my code, then sue me for retroactive "damages" caused -- Yes, even just my own personal use of the code I wrote myself can be considered infringing and thus "damaging".

      The messed up thing is that both Patent and Copyright in the USA were created for the express purpose of benefiting the society as a whole. Patents and Copyrights grant a monopoly over works for a limited period of time to incentivize creators to make their works open to the public.... Uhm, that falls flat on it's face when you consider that Open Source projects jump the gun -- They don't want the monopoly at all, and explicitly allow the public to benefit directly at the time of publication. So, since Free (libre) Open Source projects already meet the stated purposes of the patent & copyright laws, forfeiting the monopoly by choice, shouldn't they gain exemption from patent lawsuits to repay them? Ah, but then anyone could just implement a software patent and open source it, and the whole software patent market falls flat on it's face, see? Patents are stupid -- Any Artificial Scarcity of Information is stupid in the Information Age.

      The USA's forefathers didn't contemplate a market would exist in which people would create things explicitly for the public to use free of charge. The founders weren't perfect, that's why they allowed amendments... As it stands it's questionable whether one can even place something into the public domain as soon as its created (Automatic copyright + "It's free" + "Nope, changed my mind, its not free" == ??) We should be treating every law with deep suspicion and testing every law's effectiveness via the scientific method. Otherwise we're operating by untested hypotheses. We don't really know if patent or copyright laws are actually beneficial to society as a whole. I'm fed up and ready to do the experiment: Abolish patents.

      I say "not possible to do anything", but what I mean is anything of real importance. Making games is a less risky venture, so I'll try that on the side now.

    4. Re:How is it even possible to innovate these days? by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nice .... so you can try, but you won't be allowed to actually succeed. The New American way?

  2. There's a reason Android is popular by neokushan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And it's not because they're like "Cheap iPhone knock-offs".

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    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    1. Re:There's a reason Android is popular by OoberMick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is it then? Is it because it's an ad supported way for google to deliver ads to more people? I hope google dies. I do not want to see an ad supported future for the internet.

      So what instead? Pay to visit sites? Or are you expecting sites to run on fairy dust?

  3. Never give in to extortion by sa666u · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course they won't settle. One should never negotiate with terrorists.

  4. Apple is the bad guy. by Coolhand2120 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've been following this since day one, and I gota say, Apple comes out looking like the bad guy every time. Litigate > innovate in Apple's eyes. Always has been. Remember the Apple clones? Every card carrying geek here knows that Apple "borrowed" a vast majority of the iPhone's functionality from smart phones that existed 5-7 years before the first iPhone. That Apple suing because they were "copied" is utterly ridiculous, at least to people who watched the smart phone race from the beginning. Only the uninitiated find any validity to Apple's arguments.

    And Apple, you feel people are being deceived into buying non Apple products? You who deceive people into buying Apple products with deceptive ads, demagoguery and appealing to people's ignorance about technology? How long ago was it that you claimed the Power PC was better than the Intel chip you now sport? Where did the in house Apple benchmarks go that supported your wild claims that the Mac was faster than the PC. It wasn't that long ago that you changed the meaning of PC (oh that's a workstation, not a PC) so you could falsely claim that your computers were better than any PC running any OS. Deceived indeed. Your empire is built upon deception, hardware lock-in and lack of freedom for consumers.