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Wozniak On the Samsung Patent Verdict
dgharmon writes "'I hate it,' Wozniak told Bloomberg in Shanghai today, referring to the patent battle. He thinks the ruling will be overruled. Samsung will of course appeal, and this case will go back and forth for months still, but Wozniak just wishes everyone could get along. 'I don’t think the decision of California will hold. And I don’t agree with it — very small things I don’t really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies,' he said."
That would be amazing.
Apple STARTED this patent war. If they hadn't started aggressively going after the other major Smartphone makers, everyone would still be rolling along quietly.
"...and, you know, world peace would be great. Somebody should do that."
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I suspect that nearly everyone except the lawyers and leadership wish we could get along. When the patent system was envisioned a long time ago, progress didn't happen nearly as quickly, consumerism wasn't so rampant (you didn't buy a new ANYTHING every two years except maybe a toothbrush), and the manufacturing cycle was MUCH longer than it is today.
I consider the lawyers of these tech companies (Apple, Samsung, Oracle, etc) to be exploiting 'bugs' in the patent system, and I suspect that most others do as well. The patent system needs a hotfix, and there's no political pressure to do so.
Everyone has been copying from everyone else in this industry for decades, including Apple itself. Now that they're the king of the hill, they want to change the rules. Too bad for them, this kind of crap means that every other player will now proceed to nuke them with everything at their disposal - and rightly so. /me is eagerly waiting for a lawsuit over LTE in iPhone 5 from Samsung...
Er, its not the "decision of California".
First, because its not "of California", as it is in a U.S. federal court that happens to be located in California.
But mostly because its not even (yet, and quite possibly ever) even a decision in that court. Its the jury verdict which is still the subject of several post-verdict motions before the court finally (not considering appeals) decides on a judgement in the case.
"For anything non-trivial, it is simply illegal to develop software." Companies are getting away with patenting things that are trivial and obvious, for almost any piece of software, you're tripping over dozens of patents. If we were to enforce the letter of the law, developing software is illegal.
God spoke to me
It is truly sad that a voice of reason like Woz is so rare in "business" anymore.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Steve Jobs 1994
Nope, Samsung filed a patent on the design of the F700 shortly before the iPhone was announced. It wasn't released until Nov. 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-F700
Shows how much you know.
If it were just Samsung getting a little sloppy about Apple's design patents, you'd have a point. But the motivation for this war is the belief that Android itself is one big ripoff of iOS and needs to die. If Apple is allowed to claim ownership of the dominant user interaction paradigm, they will end up being the sole owner of the smart phone marketplace.
You say there are alternatives? These are a few small time platforms that manage to stay outside Apple's claimed IP They will always be too nonstandard to attract significant user or developer mindshare.
I don't know why this is modded up to 5 when it's verifiably false. Their demos were a month or so apart, with F700 coming a bit later, and LG Prada with similar design came out a few months before them both. If anything, it just shows that market was coming to this already.
Anyways, I find Apple fanboys' claims about "blatant copying" rather silly, considering courts have mostly denied Apple's claims about copying (up to telling Apple to apologize in UK's case) and most surviving claims are utility patents related, though even those didn't fare as well as Apple hoped.
So yeah, it seems "infringing on a software patent" == "blatantly copying" in their lingo.
"If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
Help stamp out iliturcy.
One Steve made a name for himself by opening up computers. His idea that a desktop computer should be a big open platform that anybody can plug into dominates computer design to this very day, and had a lot to do with the explosive growth of computing.
The other Steve wanted to close up smartphones. Come to think of it, he took a control-freak attitude toward every product he ever launched. Ironic, really.
I prefer this version
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Please go and read the USPTO design patent D504889 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=D504,889.PN.&OS=PN/D504,889&RS=PN/D504,889) and then come back to us. That particular patent is **exactly** a rectangle with rounded corners.
There may have been other patents in play, but that one is essentially what people complain about when the discuss this issue.
I, for one, despise design patents. The whole point of patents were to be novel (ie, new), non-obvious (to those versed in the art), and **useful** - that's the three-prong test for a valid invention. Design patents are only allowed on non-functional (hence non-useful) stuff and have therefore mangled the entire inventive process.
If they were "exact copies" why are verdicts from all over the world centered on software patents like slide to unlock and multitouch gestures, not design patents? Why's Apple suing Samsung for Galaxy SIII when it was widely claimed to be "phone designed by lawyers" as to avoid infringements?
Sorry, but "Apple only has a bone with Samsung because they make exact copies" don't really work, considering those verdicts, SIII lawsuit and preceding lawsuits with other major Android manufacturers.
Woz always seems to be sensible, realistic and honest. Make you wonder how S. Wozniak got mixed up with the likes of S. Jobs in the first place.
-Lod
I love Steve Woz. He is a really cool guy and is really the original brains behind Apple. Apple may have skyrocketed into fame because of Steve Jobs' marketing but its Woz that made Apple who they are today. The man is a old fashioned hacker, which is something that is missing from today's computer hardware and software companies. The computer enthusiasts have been replaced by the greedy business men in the computer world and its really sad.
Apple's '677 patent is exactly about a rectangle with rounded corners.
Read it yourself:
http://www.google.com/patents/USD618677
Woz is so cool. If only he were Apple's CEO, we wouldn't be having all these lawsuits, and we'd probably have some REAL innovation from Apple (not catching up to making a 4" screen and including LTE). C'mon, smartphone makers, where's that long-lasting battery power (perhaps with a solar panel on the back to boot)? Where's that built-in holographic projector (a la R2-D2)? Think how useful that would be in the corporate world! (Not to mention gaming!)
Yeah, he stole that quote from Picasso
"The best lube is your own spit" - Jenna Jameson
The specific (whole) quote that everyone likes to reference ("Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing good ideas.") was made during a 1996 PBS documentary called Triumph of the Nerds.
Sure, but then you can make many pies. Billions and billions of pies.
That may actually suggest that Apple and Samsung both copied a third party.
Which implies prior art that should in fact have completely prevented the patents in question from being issued in the first place.
The whole thing about federal courts giving the USPTO higher deference on patent validity when the USPTO itself rubber stamps everything and lets the courts sort it out.
So what if Samsung copied. Yes, if they did, it would be illegal, but that just means they should suffer a reasonable penalty.
Do you really think the amount Samsung had to pay Apple was reasonable?
First you have to prove that Samsung's copying of Apple products benefited Samsung. Sure you can point to Samsung's sales, but if you interview people who bought their products, none would tell you it was because of the iphone similarity.
I bought my galaxy S DESPITE the similarity, not because of it. I was happy enough with the phone that I was prepared to suffer the embarrassment of owning a phone that looked like an iphone (but clearly bigger).
Do you really think all those samsung phone owners were happy every time someone asked "is that an iphone?".
Personally I don't know and don't care if Samsung copied Apple. In my view there is no way that is worth 1 billion dollars. That is basically saying that Samsung contributed nothing to their own phone, or that people only bought it because of (Apple's) design. It isn't just wrong, it is ridiculous.
Do you think Apple is being honest about all this?
They are trying to include the Galaxy S3 now - a phone that looks nothing like any iphone ever made. And yet they are trying to make similar 'copying' claims about it.
IMO the original galaxy S1 and maybe the galaxy tab 10.1 are the only devices Apple actually has any shred of a valid claim against. But they are clearly not suing samsung for the reasons they state.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
If Apple Can Copy Braun Then Why Can't Samsung Copy Apple?
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
If Jobs wanted to go Thermonuclear they should expect mutually assured desctruction