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Family Sues Apple For Not Making Thing It Patented (nymag.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A lawsuit filed against Apple last week argues that, by not actually making a product that it patented, the company is partly responsible for an automobile accident. According to Jalopnik, James and Bethany Modisette are suing the tech company after a car crash two years ago that killed one of their daughters and injured the rest of the family. The driver of the car who hit them had been using Apple's FaceTime video chat at the time. The patent in question was first applied for in 2008, and describes "a lock-out mechanism to prevent operation of one or more functions of handheld computing devices by drivers when operating vehicles," such as texting or video chatting. The complaint cites Apple's "failure to design, manufacture, and sell the Apple iPhone 6 Plus with the patented, safer, alternative design technology" -- in other words, lack of the program's inclusion -- as a "substantial factor" in the crash.
Since the idiotic driver that caused the accident was using Apple's own Facetime video chat at the time, how does Apple blocking others from implementing this technology come into play here?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Because the cause was someone being irresponsible. Apple is not at fault there.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Requiring people to share everything they create is not workable in any world I want to live in.
I think it is reasonable to require them to share it with the government if they want to copyright it. Otherwise, they can either not share it with anyone, share it only with people they trust, or release it into the public domain.
The original intent of copyright is to promote the availability of creative works by allowing the creators to sell copies of the work for profit for a limited amount of time. The practically eternal copyright term notwithstanding, the public is expected, for the cost of enforcing copyright, be given the work once the term expires, to consume directly or to produce derivative works from. However, if copyright holders can withdraw the work before the term expires, for example, by using encryption, region lock and other technical means to remove the work from circulation, then it will never end up in public domain. This breaks the contract between creators and the public and promotes the existence of a rent-seeking class that doesn't produce new content, but profits from it nonetheless.
So by requiring them to share it with the government, we can guarantee that copyrighted works will eventually land in the public domain, and not simply disappear forever.
It's bad law because, in the end, Apple had nothing to do with the accident. He could have just as easily been eating a Subway sandwich. Should Subway have been liable because the guy was a douche and their Sandwich bag lacked a mechanism to prevent him from eating it while driving?
To put it a more relevant way: car manufacturers have the technology to prevent rear-end crashes. Some production vehicles actually implement this (Infiniti has that system if memory serves). Automatic braking. This guy's car obviously didn't have it; the kid would still be alive if it did. Should they be able to sue the car manufacturer for leaving out a safety feature that the law doesn't mandate?
The law does not currently mandate that cell phone manufacturers prevent the use of cell phones while driving.
Now, if there was a legal mandate and Apple left it out, then that's a different thing, but that's not the situation. Apple broke no laws. Apple wasn't aware of the situation. It's well known by now that you shouldn't use a phone while driving, and they're not responsible for educating drivers on that fact. Nor are they responsible for dictating what their customers may or may not due with their technology.
Drivers are held solely accountable for the responsible operation of their vehicles. Apple was not operating the vehicle in any way, shape, or form. Sandwich or iPhone running facetime, the guy was being an idiot and should have known better. There is no excuse.
If this case succeeds, it paves the way for manufacturers to be sued for just about anything that goes wrong. This is not a sane thing. You may think it's okay because "Apple had the technology and should have implemented it," but you're not thinking about the precedent this would set.
We're talking about a body of resulting case law that would end up requiring manufacturers of ALL products to predict every possible misuse of their products, and actively prevent them, or end up the victims of every ambulance-chasing lawyer in the country (more than they already are). The patent is a red herring; well known technology exists to do lots of things, and the fact that it's patented is irrelevant. The manufacturers know about these technologies.
Forcing them to be responsible for their customer's sanity in such a situation is an unrealistic goal unless you want to destroy every hardware business in the United States.
Apple was not at fault. The driver was. The driver should be nailed to the wall for it, and passing blame won't help with that.
-- sigs cause cancer.
TFA is misleading. The lawsuit points out that Apple knew that there was a potential danger here. It knew that people would use the service irresponsibly, and went to the trouble of developing a safety mechanism to counter the problem. I imagine they didn't implement it because it would be hard to differentiate between someone driving and using Facetime and someone in the passenger seat or on a train or a bus.
Anyway, the fact that Apple knew about it and went to the effort of developing a way to mitigate the danger creates the potential for some liability. There is actually a history of this kind of lawsuit. Years back a guy tried to sue the manufacturer of a table saw for not including technology to stop the blade when it contacted human skin. Car manufacturers have been sued for not including safety equipment or mitigating things that confused drivers like the carpet getting stuck between the accelerator and the brake.
Personally I don't think it has merit, but the fact that it keeps coming up suggests that there is at least a need for some clarification.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What they invented, the 3-point safety belt, was indeed something that they could have patented but choose not to due to increased safety for all: https://jalopnik.com/volvo-gav...