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iPhone Infringes On Sony, Nokia Patents, Says Federal Jury
snydeq writes "A federal jury in Delaware has found Apple's iPhone infringes on three patents held by MobileMedia, a patent-holding company formed by Sony, Nokia and MPEG LA, InfoWorld reports. The jury found that the iPhone directly infringed U.S. patent 6,070,068, which was issued to Sony and covers a method for controlling the connecting state of a call, U.S. patent 6,253,075, which covers call rejection, and U.S. patent 6,427,078, which covers a data processing device. MobileMedia has garnered the unflattering descriptor "patent troll" from some observers. The company, which was formed in 2010, holds some 300 patents in all."
But Apple has misbehaved in exactly the same manner, for the same absurdly ridiculous details.
You can't just look at Apple v. Samsung as though the complaint was isolated. This is the way law works. If you steal bread and get caught, you'll get charged for stealing bread, sure... but you'll also get charged with breaking and entering, trespassing, walking on the wrong side of a highway, and anything else the prosecution can think up... maybe most won't stick, but we're not going to let you get away with stealing bread even if it means we're prosecuting you for wielding a deadly weapon (the bread). That's what you and everyone else that is hating on Apple is conveniently ignoring... that this is how the law has ALWAYS worked. Apple is pissed off that everyone copied them. And everyone did. This is not in dispute. THIS REALLY HAPPENED. It's not a case of "oh, well... that's how everyone's design would have trended even if Apple never existed" --- which, btw, has always been a bullshit argument. Apple's R&D is legendary. Apple, in strict secrecy, spent millions of dollars and years working on this "perfecting" the smart phone experience, and iPhone is the culmination of that effort. Then, 6 months after iPhone is released, behold! ALL SMARTPHONES LOOK LIKE IPHONE. Apple's complaint in Apple v. Samsung was about blatant copying... but Apple can't quite get the offender for the exact, precise crime... thus... they got Samsung on some bullshit... and Samsung deserved it (Apple gave Samsung many opportunities to make it right, and even Google was telling Samsung to back off the blatant near-counterfeiting of iPhone, but Samsung WANTED to copy the iPhone because they knew they might get away with it).
I say let Apple do as they wish. If they can protect their IP, then good for them. If they can't... then we're just going to have to get used to a long lasting trend of zero innovation... because what is the point of spending time and resources on innovation if another company can come along, reverse-engineer your innovation in a few months, and release a product that is superficially similar, and fool 1 in 5 (or better) of what should have been your customer into buying the knock off? None... no point in spending anything on innovating anything new... because you can't justify the cost, and the subsequent loss by copy theft.