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Samsung Beats Apple In Tokyo, Itching To Sue Over LTE Patents
AmiMoJo writes "A court in Tokyo has ruled that Samsung Electronics did not infringe on a patent relating to transferring media content between devices. Tokyo District Judge Tamotsu Shoji dismissed the case filed by Apple in August, finding that Samsung was not in violation of Apple patents related to synchronizing music and video data between devices and servers."
This particular battle is just one front in a patent war that spans ten countries and dozens of cases. Samsung also confirmed it was ready and willing to sue Apple if an LTE iPhone ever hits the market. Meanwhile, Apple was granted a number of new patents on Tuesday, including one for changing settings on a wireless device depending on its location (#8,254,902). For example, sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater, or communications with other devices could be disabled in a science laboratory.
Well, from all I've heard, the US jury really dropped the ball on following instructions in the US trial, it sounds like Japanese jurors looked at things differently.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Obviously this is blatant abuse on both sides. It no longer about genuine infringement it's about sticking it to the competition or getting back at them. Now the patent system is it's own worst enemy, stifling innovation and progress. What a shame.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Either I'm missing something, or that doesn't make a lick of sense. LTE is all FRAND (just like 3G) isn't it? So what are they going to sue over exactly?
Apple should focus on bringing the best product to the market not the most expensive. Many people buy Samsung because you don't have to drop $600 on a phone. Apple is on its way to being the biggest patent troll in history.
For example, sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater, or communications with other devices could be disabled in a science laboratory.
How is that patentable?
Not only is a obvious, it is already implemented by various android applications. Tasker probably being the most famous.
Can you now patent stuff people are already doing?
"sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater"
I've been calling for this feature since the 90's.
It should NOT be patentable. Seriously, I am so fucking sick of patents.
How do we stop this insanity.
I bet those people who were at the Batman premier that were attacked by that gun wielding psycho are sure glad their phones weren't disabled so they could call the emergency services.
Jeez apple, I know thinking different is hip and all but....
Not to mention existing art
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Because you can't make calls from a device that is set to vibrate and not ring on an incoming call, right?
Ah so, this is what World War III will look like. It won't end until we nuke patent and copyright law. Sometimes you have to destroy the derelict in order to build something better
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It seems like an interesting strategy for Apple to protect the reputation of their restricted development platform by patenting technologies that are already used in Android applications which demonstrate clearly the benefit of a more open approach. Sadly the patent will probably hold up, as the first public release of Locale seems to have been in October 2008, 3 - 4 months after the Apple patent was filed. The patent application would have still been non-public at that point, so rather than the Locale developers copying Apple, I suspect both were inspired by the same presentation from somewhere; Apple's approach was to patent the ideas they'd got from elsewhere and sit on it, the Android approach was to make an app and get it out there.
Because you can't make calls from a device that is set to vibrate and not ring on an incoming call, right?
well you can't on one that's set to disable communicating with other communications devices(in the patent), though I suppose emergency services would still be good to go - good luck dialing them up with the screen shut off though.
now.. who the fuck wants a phone that gives the keys to control if it's on to someone else? but all the obvious useful use cases actually have so much prior art that it's not even funny because it's such an obvious idea to make sw that enables sound when you're in your home network cell or switches profile to "business" when at the workplace location.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
with bluetooth being the communication path. Had little linux machines with a bluetooth dongle which tracked visible bluetooth devices and also sent messages requesting silent mode and so on. It was just a minor part of a research project at uni, we did get pretty good tracking data though just from setting up nodes around the building and recording what devices were seen. You couldn't be sure that Bob usually arrives at 8:00am, went to his office, and then to the espresso machine room, and then back to his office every day - but his phone sure did.
The humans have played their hand, now we get ready to play ours.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because you can't make calls from a device that is set to vibrate and not ring on an incoming call, right?
If the patent for "the process for setting a mobile phone to only vibrate during an incoming call when in a particular location" was really granted to them, I think the prior art for that was seen about 20 minutes after the first mobile phone was put into a consumer's hand. Really, who signs off on this shit?
I have patented the following:
A method for clipping toenails with a lever driven cutting device.
Either grow long nails or pay up.
Silence is a state of mime.
now.. who the fuck wants a phone that gives the keys to control if it's on to someone else?
People that buy iPhones, duh.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Didn't know UK was in Asia!
I bet those people who were at the Batman premier that were attacked by that gun wielding psycho are sure glad their phones weren't disabled so they could call the emergency services.
Except it's a legal requirement that all handsets must be able to dial emergency numbers, regardless of their settings, or even if they have a SIM card or not.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Sammy probably buys several of every new cellphone to examine them for unlicensed IP to keep the lawyers busy. I'm pretty sure all of them do this.
bah.
For example, sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater, or communications with other devices could be disabled in a science laboratory.
Umm. Already do with with the Tasker app.
You can attempt to patent every possible permutation of its application. If you're a jerk.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yes. Flamebait. But this is an A/C that got modded up Insightful for this uninspired drivel.
If Samsung wins, if the LTE case ever comes to court, the effects will be that the Apple victory in the States will become meaningless. "Here is the x billions I owe you, and thianks for the x billions you owe me." Besides, I'll bet the Apple victory gets over-turned quite quickly.
Who in hell is issuing patents on configuration settings? That isnt a unique goddamn invention. Of course, neither are pinchy finger motions. The "Kids in the hall" should have patented that one when they were crushing other peoples heads.
Let's see here.
Base station could be a PC, right?
Settings could be any setting in the "Settings" menu, right?
Then I have already implemented Apple's patent with Tasker and a computer with a Bluetooth radio. When my Android phone is in range of my desktop PC (which can be detected with Bluetooth), I toggle developer mode on. What exactly is different with Apple's implementation, other than Apple probably using proprietary devices and protocols?
How come we never hear about them refusing to license these patents to their competitors? Oh, right, because they are FRAND patents and Apple plays by the rules.
http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/01/the-enemy-of-my-enemy/
Yes, this system sucks. All other systems suck worse. Do you have a better system?
My vote is that software & consumer electronic patents should expire after 3-4 years.
Meanwhile, Apple was granted a number of new patents on Tuesday... For example, sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater, or communications with other devices could be disabled in a science laboratory.
Gee, a feature so obvious and so simple that nobody except corporate 'we own everything' bastards would even think of patenting it. And the best part for Apple is, the technology already exists - it'll probably take about a day's work to make this happen, and then they'll have a monopoly on an absurdly simple and easy 'technological advancement'.
Why do we continue to accept such an obviously and fatally broken patent system? Yeah, I know 'bread and circuses' is the correct answer, and it pisses me off.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
not concept. Originally the patent was to cover the specific method of implementing an idea (like a better gear tooth pattern, or a more efficient mechanism to husk corn, or whatever.)
However, in the case of software patents they really do seem to be patenting an idea. So current patents are so broadly worded that they really do essentially cover the idea of pinch-to-zoom, or the idea of having a little marker showing your location on the current page while scrolling. If we held true to the original rules, the patent should only cover the implementation--that is, the source code.
It's not just software patents either. There is a company called Sawstop that makes tablesaws that can detect if the blade comes in contact with human flesh and slams the blade to a stop, dropping it down below the table. Their patents are so broadly worded that they've basically locked up the whole concept of flesh-sensing technology, making it really hard for anyone else to come out with competing technology, even if implemented totally differently.
It's just that everyone else other than Apple just cross-licenses their patents instead of paying cash royalties.
Heck, Qualcomm's standard rate for use of FRAND patents is 3.5% of the final retail price.
Motorola charges the same rates to everyone (and they're less than Qualcomm, actually). It's just that normally companies don't pay cash but rather cross-license their own patents.
Apple doesn't want to cross-license, but claims the cash rates are too high. (When they're the same as what everyone else is charged.)
Apple should focus on bringing the best product to the market
If Samsung is going to sue them for releasing an LTE phone, how can they?
Not that of course they didn't bring it on with this pointless patent pissing match. But even so, why do you only berate Apple when Samsung is trying to prevent Apple owners from getting an LTE phone?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, for one, they have a patent on it; that right there is 90% of a win, just see the Apple vs. Samsung USA edition.
hell, my old phone used to connect to a device in my car that used a wireless setting to automatically change the device so that voice would come out the car speakers, and provide a settings control on the dash that I could use to accept or break calls.
But that was only on a featurephone, so I guess the Apple patent still applies as it uses the magic words "on a smartphone" :)
GOOG et. al. want to play this game, AAPL is up 1 set by a score of 1Billion to love, the match isn't over and patents are not WIN-WIN strategy in-play, but tactical, a move used to advantage. Thermonuclear is both decisive and definitive without regard to consequence, HoneyBadger style. AAPL have dry powder, ammunition, troops and a plan which just as the gauntlet Steve Jobs laid down implies will end battle in a way that precludes all response. Game, Set...Match
Look at the Raspberry Pi. The hardware is capable of handling a bunch of codecs, but they only actually enable a couple because the licensing fees for the other codecs were too expensive. If you want to decode MPEG-2, you need to buy a separate license after the fact.
Either I'm missing something, or that doesn't make a lick of sense. LTE is all FRAND (just like 3G) isn't it? So what are they going to sue over exactly?
To add to that, Apple is just going to support LTE with a Qualcomm chip. Is Samsung saying they didn't give Qualcomm a license to sell the chip to anyone?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is cute when people think things that are completely unrelated serve as prior art. Your example is like saying Barney the Dinosaur is prior art to my Purple Popsicle patent.
Yea, how silly of me to think that an application that controls the lights and sounds emitted by a wireless device, based on location, would qualify as prior art for a patent on applications that control the lights and sounds emitted by a wireless device based on location.
Silly, silly me.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If these patent wars continue, there will be an endless amount of patents for everything imaginable. Someone needs to draw a line in the sand, or nuke this whole patent system altogether!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If the patent for "the process for setting a mobile phone to only vibrate during an incoming call when in a particular location" was really granted to them, I think the prior art for that was seen about 20 minutes after the first mobile phone was put into a consumer's hand. Really, who signs off on this shit?
Please explain. Do you have a phone that will only vibrate in certain locations, but ring in others, without having to change it?
...has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. It is not an invention per se as there is nothing new. It is not novel either, as the same thing has been done on many different types of devices before someone at this company thought to file a patent for it. Let's pick the thing apart, shall we? Claim by claim - though we'll skip a few for brevity.
Claim 1 asserts a base station which communicates with wireless clients and pushes relevant configuration data to them. It can only do that when the wireless device is in range. As a rough equivalent, think of a wireless router pushing network configuration data through DHCP to relevant clients. It can send specific data to specific clients (based on MAC, etc). The wireless clients generally notify the user ('wireless network detected!') and perform the configuration changes as pushed by the base station (can be anything from simple network configuration to more elaborate changes). If DHCP is not enough for your configurations needs, try ACAP (rfc 2244) as it has been languishing since 1997... would be nice to use it as I thought it showed promise back then.
Claims 2-8 just say this should be applied to a mobile device connected to the WWAN. Big deal. They narrow down the patent a bit, probably to make it easier to get it past the examiners. There is no inventiveness nor novelty in changing these specific parameters of a device configuration so it does not really make sense to have these claims - it is not as if the application of the mechanisms used by the likes of DHCP suddenly becomes novel and inventive when applied to the intensity of the backlight instead. It is, in other words, obvious to anyone in the field.
Claim 9 touches ACAP again, of course you need authentication to change certain parameters. You don't want that base station at the corner coffee shop to change your PROXY settings to run everything through their cousin's server.
Claim 10 tells the device to go into sleep mode. Yes, and? Why is this worthy of a claim in a patent application? Where is the novelty or inventiveness? What is the difference between putting the device in sleep mode and, eg, putting the backlight or the ringer in 'sleep mode' (ie. turning it off)? Next, please...
Claims 11-13 cover location assertion based on various methods, as all devices which are equipped with the right hardware have been doing since this hardware became available. Next.
Claim 14 tries to make a special case for a mobile device which uses its WLAN interface instead of WWAN. Next.
Claims 15 and onwards are of the same calibre - a total and utter lack of either inventiveness or novelty permeates them. As it does this whole 'patent'.
Still, the patent was awarded. And as such it can be used to stifle competition, force wanton changes in competitors' devices under the threat of litigation and actual litigation. If this comes before a jury the outcome can be anything as shown by the recent 1 billion dollar charade. If it comes before a panel of experts I have some hope that it will be squashed.
A friend of mine is a patent liaisons specialist ('patentgemachtigde'). When I speak to her about these issues she keeps on responding that bad patents are not a problem since they will be turned down in court. It has been a while since I spoke to her so I don't know if she still makes these claims, but it should be clear as daylight that the court is NOT the place to decide whether something is worth patenting. This should be handled by the patent office, NOT in the courts. The current system where patentability seems to be determined by 'throwing claims at the office to see which sticks' causes untold grief and massive economic losses for anyone not involved in the actual patenting process. And that is probably also why the likelihood of any significant changes is rather low, as the ones deciding on these changes are often direct beneficiaries of the current system: lawyers...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Meanwhile, Apple was granted a number of new patents on Tuesday, including one for changing settings on a wireless device depending on its location (#8,254,902). For example, sound and light from the device could be disabled when entering a movie theater, or communications with other devices could be disabled in a science laboratory.
Sorry Apple, I got there first (ad this is just one paper, I began disseminating the work 2003).
Dodd, R., Green, S., and Pearson, E. 2009. User capability in an adaptive world. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGMM international Workshop on Media Studies and Implementations that Help Improving Access To Disabled Users. Beijing, China, October 23 - 23, 2009 pp. 79-88. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1631097.1631110 New York, NY: ACM Press.
Abstract
General computing devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, personal, and mobile; and bring expectations of multimedia delivery with them that are traditionally the domain of desktop computing. Given their small form factors with restricted interaction modalities, optimizing interaction between user and device becomes critical to the usability and accessibility of the device. To this end, we present simple but powerful models of user capability, capacity, and preference that allow for a wholly adaptive and optimized user experience, with the models driving selection and configuration of appropriate interaction modalities, and themselves adapting their settings in order to reflect both changes in the environment, and the history of user behaviour . In order to achieve this, user profiles are no longer collections of purely static values, but may also contain functionally dependent properties that are changeable in response to external events. The models themselves do not perform any adaptation, but aim to drive the adaptation process.
Locale for Android won the Google Android student competition in August 2008, and existed far before that. I am quite certain that it could be easily proven that Locale existed prior to the date of this filing, and it enables the ability to change settings based on location (among a plethora of other things)
I don't see why an access point couldn't be a base station either, by the obfuscated description in claim 1. The base station is triggering the event, not controlling the client device. I've used a Tasker profile that detects the SSID and puts my phone in silent mode for meetings at work, and the it's the WAP that's detecting the phone, allowing it to connect, and causing the change in profiles on the phone.
Yes.
I'm sure Apple will try to patent this, but you heard it here first: what Android needs is the ability for users who don't want to actually *use* wi-fi for some reason to nevertheless allow it to be turned on long enough to listen for nearby SSIDs, and possibly send out a round of "are you there?" inquiries to access points that are on the phone's list of known, but non-broadcasting, SSIDs. There are plenty of times I might not want to actually USE wi-fi for some reason, but nevertheless wouldn't mind if apps could semi-passively use it to "check out the neighborhood" and "see which access points are nearby".
Ditto, for GPS. The power-intensive part of GPS (once you get the initial fix, and a few hours thereafter) isn't the telemetry-sampling, it's the math you have to do to get a fix based upon it. What Android needs is the ability to periodically turn on the GPS radio and sample GPS telemetry (becoming more and more aggressive when the accelerometers indicate motion and it's been a while since the last successful reading), but just buffer it in case something needs a GPS fix within the next minute or two. If something wants a location fix, THEN do the math to calculate the location fix. Otherwise, just sniff the air and log the raw telemetry data in a ring buffer for a few minutes, or until the next successful reading.
Another thing Android desperately needs: a setting that tells it, "Connect to these access points when available, but don't send a single byte of data once you do until (and UNLESS) you've ALSO connected to ${this_vpn} via that access point... and terminate the wi-fi session without sending further data over it if you can't. I have a $3/month VPN account I use with public wi-fi, but I hate, Hate, *HATE* the fact that Android sends out a torrent of pent-up http requests the *nanosecond* the wi-fi connection comes up, and there's no way to stop it. Not even Tasker can suppress them until it brings up the VPN... assuming it's even able to bring up the VPN. Somewhere along the line, newer versions of Android became hellbent on forcing users to password-protect their phones in order to store VPN credentials, and apparently at one point Google intentionally removed the ability to launch a VPN via intent in a way that conveyed the password through the intent (to make it impossible to auto-launch and auto-login to a VPN, and force users to use Android's built-in password storage instead, which forces you to enable additional annoying layers of security you might not want if your only goal is to keep others at McDonalds or Starbucks from casually slurping your non-https background Facebook logins by hiding them in a VPN stream).
"...and the degree to which the target environment can be expected to infer application choice and to derive appropriate configuration settings. "
My paper describes a user profiling mechanism designed to describe variations on configuration based on user capability and current environmental conditions. It is part of a model of self-adapting user interfaces.
There were patents during the Renaissance--often credited (in part) with the encouraging innovation.
Think about it, what is your motivation to invest in R & D if you know that whatever you invent can be immediately copied by someone else? It just doesn't work.
If you look at any digital camera that has a flash that only goes off when it is "dark enough", doesn't that preclude this Apple patent since device settings change based on the amount of light in the room? My Palm Pre Plus has it in the camera app, and prior art should be found in most digital cameras at this point. Ford Sync has settings on adaptive audio based on speed, which could also feed into the arguments about "we know about the environment, so adjust settings accordingly".
Claim 1 says there is a base station and a client device, and describes a number of software modules that control settings on the device, without specifying where those modules reside.
Claim 2 states: The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the client wireless device comprises a cellular-enabled mobile device having a wireless LAN (WLAN) interface, and the apparatus is contained substantially within the cellular-enabled mobile device.
This is exactly what Locale is. It is not until claim 15 that the base station is described to contain any of the modules that are required to implement the invention.
"Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."
China will happily manufacture phones for whoever is the winner in the fight. As well as manufacture their own phones for their internal markets, which don't bother about all that patent stuff at all.
I remember an app on my original Droid two years ago being able to change things like ringtone, vibrate, etc, based on GPS-determined location.
Locale has been available for Android since before Android was released: http://www.twofortyfouram.com/ It's flashy and plugin based now - so any range of conditions can put your phone in any range of states. But initially, it was mostly about turning your ringer off when you went to the movies.
You apple fanbois will babble just any gibberish to claim you're master is right and others are wrong, won't you?
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.