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Patent Suit Leads To 500,000 Annoyed Software Users
ciaran_o_riordan writes "A rare glimpse at the human harm of a software patent lawsuit: company receives 500,000 calls complaining about video quality after a video call system was forced to change to avoid a patent. That's a lot of people having a bad day. We don't usually hear these details because the court documents get ordered sealed and the lawyers only say what the companys' communication strategists allow. However, for VirnetX v. Apple, Jeff Lease decided to go the hearings, take notes, and give them to a journalist. While most coverage is focussing on the fines involved, doubling or halving Apple's fine would have a much smaller impact on your day than the removal of a feature from some software you like. Instead of letting the software patents debate be reduced to calls for sympathy for big companies getting fined, what other evidence is out there, like this story, for harm caused directly to software users?"
Inconvenience, perhaps. Inability to fill the retina display with enough pixels, maybe. But "harm"? I think some perspective is askew here.
John
I am not going to cry for Apple over software patents. Software patents are a crime against humanity but they are in that fight using them to commit their own atrocities. There is nobody to root for in this fight. A pox on both their houses. Nice /. banner ad though.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." - Steve Jobs.
Well, sometimes that comes back and bites you.
"the data will bolster VirnetX's arguments that its patents are technologically significant, hard to work around, and deserve a high royalty rate."
None of this would have happened if IPv6 had been deployed by now, and everything had a static IP address. Then peer to peer services just work.
As noted in the comments the first time this was posted, this story doesn't mention the number of complaints received BEFORE the change, making the number 500,000, and the entire article, almost completely meaningless. Apple has millions of customers and, as with every company, a shocking percentage of them are either imbeciles or spend their days and nights pining for minor slights to write angry emails about. This could be perfectly average. The entirety of the information provided for the story comes from a party to the dispute.
it's not a dupe, it's a continuation of an evolving story. to clarify the summary, the company that is mentioned in the first sentence is Apple, and the video calling system is Facetime. Also, I didn't know you could call someone to complain? I guess it's nice to vent, but I usually just go to the genius bar.
Look, here's the simple fact: peer-to-peer communications for any protocol is not a "novel" idea. It's a normal, every-day thing a programmer or engineer considers as a means of preventing bottlenecks at a proxy or server.
Worse, the standards for SIP specifically set up peer-to-peer connections after the initial hand-shake, so every SIP stack is affected by this bullshit patent. In other words: virtually every IP phone on the planet, whether hardware or software based.
The US patent system is fundamentally and badly broken. Everyone knows that. But I'm rooting for Apple to spank the everliving shit out of these assholes.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Inconveniencing folks so they can't use technology until they give you money is the whole point of patents.
.. by competitors. Instead of doing R&D and very likely discovering things independently, the competitors are forbidden to innovate on their own and have to license the patent instead. The patent holder does not need to innovate either, they have the market locked down and can prevent anybody overtaking them.
A truly evil thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
if SIP did this before SAIC made this for the CIA then there is nothing to worry about since its prior art
this work was originally created for the CIA many years ago when peer to peer video was not obvious
noone is alone in hating software patents except the patent trolls.
The patent trolls are alone in hating software patents?
What's novel about peer to peer communications? Isn't that what the internet is built of?
Apple isn't complaining that it costs $2.4 million a month to work around the patent or that there are 500,000 complaints after the workaround was instituted. The patent-holder brought up these facts to show that their patent should carry a hefty royalty payment because Apple could not work around them--not only do you have to pay $2.4 million a month you also have to lower quality to the extent where you have 500,000 complaints even after paying that money.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Expanding on this, peer to peer video using telephone lines as the transport was first demoed in 1927, and even by then the idea itself was decades old. Protocols for peer to peer video predate all commercial computers; the idea was already obvious a hundred years ago.
um, how about Apple being the first company to successfully market a Unix-based OS to consumers? they sold shitload more computers than Sun, and there's way more OSX in use today than Ubuntu. probably because it works better, and it got started in the early 2000's.
we can also thank Apple for packaging together lots of useful features that weren't standard in the pc industry for years, such as mouse support, onboard 4-voice audio and built-in optical drives. until Windows 95, these weren't standard pc functions. and i know it was developed elsewhere, but having a 3.5" floppy drive beat the fuck out of using 5.25" disks. and working with Macs in the 1980's taught me tons about SCSI before I supported it on windows-based servers in the 1990's.
i'm so tired of all the vitriol spewed at apple for "stealing other people's work". they've innovated the hell out of the tech industry and you should be grateful you morons. just having an item or a concept isn't useful until it's affordable and easy enough for lots of people to use it without hassle.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
i'm so tired of all the vitriol spewed at apple for "stealing other people's work". they've innovated the hell out of the tech industry and you should be grateful you morons. just having an item or a concept isn't useful until it's affordable and easy enough for lots of people to use it without hassle.
There's a few problems. Foremost is that you are addressing people who are angry at attempts to change computers for the benefit of the average slob. If they were happy flipping switches on a panel (or pecking away at a keyboard illuminated by the green glow of their text terminal) then everyone should be. They want to 'keep it real'.
There are also sour grapes, some NIH, etc.
My favorite from 'them' is "Apple is just a marketing company" accompanied with "anyone could do what they do". Somehow they never are able to explain if it's "so easy" and obvious why did it take until Apple did it for someone to do it? When I pose that question, comments regarding my sexual prefence, my mother's sexual proclivity, and the possibility that my religious affiliation involves a certain fruit based organization are raised.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Whenever you hear stories like this, it's easy for people to call out for the elimination of all patents (just need to take a cursory look at the comments above). However, while the patent system needs reform, we still need patents. In many industries, companies would a lot of resources into R&D to come up with new inventions. If you let everyone random person/company come afterwards, reverse engineer the end-product, the company that invested all that R&D money will be at a complete loss. This situation is somewhat similar to the "legacy costs" of the big 3 auto manufacturers. They incurred all those labor costs (e.g. pensions, etc.) which is not an issue for the new companies, and as such are at a significant disadvantage in the market place. Similarly, if a company spends a lot of R&D money, but have to compete with other companies that DON'T have the R&D costs, but make the same product (due to no patents), the initial company will go belly up very quickly. Of course, this doesn't mean that all patents are good. MOST patents that I've seen are very obvious and get granted only b/c the patent examiner doesn't have enough time to really fight it out. The point system in the USPTO is a farce - when it comes to filtering out crappy inventions. While I completely agree that we need reform, calling for the all out elimination of the patent system is not any less foolish than continuing with the system we have now.