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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.
I'll get the popcorn.
Then I could rope emotionally distraught people into my lucrative lawsuits, and give them nothing in return.
This is fucking awesome... using patent system against it's own masters. Yes, patent is proof of substantial invention, so it was conscious choice not to use it as described.
It seems to me that if more people sued when patents were not implemented, we might have less patents out there making every developers life worse. Patent trolls might think twice before setting up shop.
I would say that someone choosing to video chat on their phone while driving a car is 99% the main factor in that automotive crash.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
It is apparent that you failed to notice that the young woman was not the one who was using video chat at the time of the accident, rather, the driver of the *other* vehicle was.
As another commenter has pointed out, it is most likely that the driver of the other vehicle did not have deep enough pockets to be worth going after.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Patent means the solution is complete and merely needs to be enabled" ah, no. Just look up all the moronic shit that has been patented over the last 100 years, and you'll see that there are plenty of patents for ideas that are just plain stupid, non-functional, and counterproductive to their own designs.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Oh so all those perpetual motion machines that have been patented are all ready to go? Cool.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Good luck to them. On my 15 mile commute to/from work literally every day I see multiple retards driving and texting at the same time, often not keeping in their lane, or even looking where they're going, even on the freeway.
I also see at least one accident every day where someone has driven into the back of someone else. Obviously self-regulation isn't working. It apparently accounts for so many accidents that it boggles my mind how using a cellphone while driving isn't already illegal here in AZ.
You should need to submit a working prototype to get a patent. It's crazy to issue a patent based on a description of something you don't even have.
We should replace the patent prohibition with mandatory royalties to the patent holder. That way the inventor gets paid and the technology gets used.
Is there not mandatory insurance in the USA? If not, why not? If so, then the driver has virtually infinitely deep pockets. Which is why most places make at least injury insurance mandatory.
Just a question. Why is it bad law?
and the lawyers will get paid.
and paid.
and paid again.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
> Let's understand the REAL issue here; the PATENT prevented everyone else from implementing a safety.
Clearly Apple's patent didn't cause Apple to not implement it, so what do you think caused that? I would think that customers want to use their phones while riding in cars, buses, etc. Customers won't buy buy a phone that locks itself when moving.
Suppose Apple tries to get really clever and try to guess whether the person using the phone is the driver or a passenger, and they advertise this "safety feature". Obviously it's not going to guess correctly all the time - sometimes it'll annoy passengers who it thinks are driving, but worse sometimes it would guess "passenger" when the person is in fact driving. An advertised safety feature that often fails is obviously a huge liability. The parents of the teenager who crashes while using her iPhone will sue Apple, saying "web bought our daughter an iPhone because you said it has this safety feature. Your safety feature didn't work, you owe us $20 million." There would be plenty of other paths to liability, of course. Suppose Apple blocks video chat but not phone calls. Teenager talking on iPhone crashes. Parents sue "you could have prevented phone calls while driving, your feature that blocks Facetime proves you can and know you should. You failed to block phone calls, you us $20 million too".
> Apple better have a really good explanation for why they did enable this moron to do so while being able to disable him.
Here are a couple of really good explanations:
Yes, Apple could make the phone completely lock itself any time it's moving. Customers, who like to like to use their phones while riding in cars and buses, would then not buy their product, they'd sell no phones, and nobody would be protected. A few parents might want this safety feature on their kids' phones, so maybe they'd still sell a few iphones to parents based on advertising the safety features, but mostly it would put Apple out of the phone business.
The phone could try to guess whether the person is a passenger or if they're driving. Sometimes it would guess wrong, of course. When it wrongly guess that a passenger was the driver, the passenger's phone would lock up and annoy the hell out of customers. Back to explanation #1. Worse, sometimes it would guess "passenger" when in fact the person was driving. The parents who bought the phones based on the advertised safety feature which would actually fail often would then sue Apple every time a crash occurs.
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
And so I hope that Apple fucking buries the avaricious family for being assholes.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
ok, so how would it know the person is the driver and not say, a passenger?
End result - the victims may well become the de facto owners of an indentured money source - and probably a very crappy one - but their ability to collect from an insurance company's perceived deep pockets is, in fact, limited by law. Insurance is intended to spread the risk of unforeseeable circumstances, not to pay for willfully neglectful, indifferent, or outright illegal acts. This accident wasn't so much an accident as it was the foreseeable result of an intentional violation of a law with disregard for the potential consequences.
Instead of building the limiting technology into the telephone, build it into the car? A gradual power-down to halt (like a bait car) might cause some problems, but not as much as a full-speed MVA, and (to my mind) the technology ought to be no more difficult to develop - and we can limit it to the vehicle operator.
The idiot caused the accident. Idiots do. We would not need road laws (or many, if any, other laws) but for idiots. But I know no one not even excusing myself who is not an idiot at times. So we have rules and the less idiotic obey them - mostly. Probably proportional to idiocy
But we are talking about social responsibility here. Something that is in some measure, already required of a company (or a person).
Let us look at a slightly different software situation. Say I write and sell a program, some software. After a while my product is discovered to have an easily fixable but disastrous bug. A fix and redistribution (or at least inform and make available) should be mandatory behaviour on my part and doing this should not produce a profit. But provided I word the licence correctly I am not responsible for the disaster or damages pertaining to such. I had not anticipated it and it was not negligence to fail in that anticipation.
But if I knew the bug was there before I sold the software then I would be liable for the disaster and damages because I knew it could occur. This is exactly the knowledge that Apple demonstrated it had when it applied for the patent.
Wether or not Apple has any liability depends on what that patent actually describes and wether it was possible to implement it. If Apple did not want to lose sales because people did not like it (like they did not like seat belts) then Apple are possibly in the poop.
So, please, why is it 'bad law'?
Hope this gets thrown out in the court. It is driver's responsibility not to use distractions while driving. He used the gadget / app at his own discretion. I would not want gadgets to start being overly smart over what humans can decide.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
We are a bit different. We have a semi socialised medical system in the first place. But it spreads wider than that. If you are injured in a car accident your medical needs will be covered. The car must be registered and there is a mandatory (injury) insurance component in that. But that just determines where the bill will go. The the injured will all be covered because necessary medical treatment is always covered here (social medicine). So even if the car was not registered and you were racing it in a paddock you are still not going to get a bill from the hospital. At least not an unaffordable one.
Now I agree there are property and pain and suffering issues that may go to courts, criminal and civil but mostly the civil cases are smaller than those in the US and more concerned with accommodating an injured victim than mollifying them.
I do not think that criminal charges are enough sometimes though. That facetiming driver should get a thirty year sentence with a minimum of twenty five to be served in hard labor. Here they would be out in a few years.
There is one reason and one reason only for including Apple in this lawsuit, they have deep pockets. The family is after cash, period.
They are either hoping Apple will settle or, because of the way the US legal system works, if it goes to court and Apple is deemed even slightly at fault they will be responsible for all of the award the other responsible party(ies) can't cover.
see: Joint and several liability
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
We should replace the patent prohibition with mandatory royalties to the patent holder. That way the inventor gets paid and the technology gets used.
Although I like this idea, how do you decide the royalty amount? Is it 10% of the cost of the final product? 50% of the cost? 10% of the profit? What if the patent is only a small part of the product? What if the patent is practically the entire product? I don't think you can set a single royalty amount that works across the board. The only real option would be for either have the two companies decide or the courts to somehow decide on a case by case basis which is pretty close to what we already have now. The only difference would be that a company would have to allow you to use their patent for a reasonable price which I agree would be an improvement.
> example; You Tube videos that 'have not been made available in your country'.
That's quite frustrating, I'm sure.
> Once someone has decided to commercially share they should not be permitted to 'select' an audience or even a specific distribution channel.
So if I write some software for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, designed to help aid workers avoid danger, I have to sell the system to ISIS as well? While it's certainly frustrating to have trouble watching your favorite Bieber video in the format you most prefer, I may create software systems that actually impact the world, that affect your safety and security. I think I would be very irresponsible for many creators to be indifferent to how their creations are used, and by whom.
Personally, I would go so far as to say that if an artist doesn't want their best-known work to become known as the theme song of the Donald Trump (or worse, the KKK) they should be able to decline that license.
I'd gladly write stuff for Unicef at alow price and I think I'm within my rights to then decline to sell it at the same price to Martin Shkreli or Ahmadinejad.
Again I do understand your frustration, yet dictating things through law is always ham-fisted. One must be careful about the unintended consequences because every law has unintended consequences - often MOST of the instances to which a law applies aren't the types of cases it was intended for.
There's an app for that. Have you installed it?
There is no available mobile technology that can distinguish between a passenger operating a phone and the driver. So this lawyer is just looking for an easy settlement.
While most of my work is in security, and a long explanation would be necessary to understand an example, here are two simple examples I can share.
I wrote some software that would be very useful to spammers, and I've owned a couple of hosting companies. In both I "selected my audience", I declined to sell the software or hosting services to spamming scumbags. I think it's good that I can, and most people do, decline to provide software and services to spammers. I even put the following in my license file to make it easier to use my copyright against spammers:
License cost to use this software for legitimate opt-in mailing: $150
License cost to use this software for sending spam: $250,000
That would give my lawyer a (weak) basis to sue spammers for the cost of the license they failed to purchase, $250,000.
Another, less ethically clear but real example is from back in the 1990s when Microsoft's motto was "always be evil". At the time Microsoft was in legal trouble all around the world because they were constantly fucking everyone over. I wrote some which I gave away free. Sun distributed some of my software with their OS. I didn't want Microsoft using my work for evil, so my license was that everyone could use my work, for free, except Microsoft. If Microsoft wanted to use my work as part of Windows, they'd need a license from me that didn't allow it to be easily used for evil.
You are really good at debate. But to me 'debate' is not the point. The point of a debate is to win regardless or veracity, accuracy or anything really. Debate is a game and pointless except for the fact that it currently drives almost everyones opinion.
Both of us know that ISIS (Daesh please, it is more insulting) would not give a damn about copyright or even paying you and would just take it anyway. So your point was moot before you even started typing. A good debating technique but of zero societal value. Why did it make it to paper? The reason is clear from the rest of the paragraph. There you attempt character assassination, to what point? Your entire paragraph is semantically null i.e. worthless. In fact so is the rest of the post.
If you had nothing but self adulation and denigrating of others to say why did you even post? I mean it is not as if you have shown anything to be self adulating about.
Not such a subtle troll really
The only thing of value is the last paragraph but even then you continue with unnecessary aggression and false statements about your perceived 'oponent'. Saying 'law should' is not proposing a law. It is proposing that some principles should be considered in formulation law. Or have you decided that law is unnecessary? (Sorry, I should not imitate your style).
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.
I don't know if there's actually a law on that (I suspect there is), but it's not really relevant. A firearm is deliberately designed to harm and/or destroy things. A phone is not. These two products should have different standards applied.
-- sigs cause cancer.
Well, to be fair, this is Slashdot. Debating is what we do here.
Curly brace style. Vim vs Emacs. C vs C++. Perl vs Python. Spaces vs Tabs. It can get pretty ugly. And that's before politics was thrown into the mix.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That was the sort of response I wanted. It convinced me well enough. Clearly stated and well thought out. Thank you again.
Socialized medicine doesn't cover burial. Did you read the story, or even the summary? The family suing deserves every bad thing that can befall idiots, but they aren't suing for medical expenses. They are suing for wrongful death.
Or maybe they are smarter than a dead mouse, something which you are clearly not, and they know the feature would not work from the consumer's perspective. It's also completely foreseeable that someone fiddling with the radio can be distracted to the point of causing an accident. But car radios have been a thing for nearly a 100 years. You have no ability to think, and it shows.
Surprisingly, I agree with this family. If you patent something and don't either manufacture it or drop the patent or allow others to manufacture it, then you are responsible for impeding the progress, and therefore may be responsible for consequences. At least when you prohibit others to do what you decided not to, and I think it's safe to assume that Apple would sue anyone who would attempt to implement something that's described in their patent.
And by securing the patent they did everything to prohibit others to create the solution. That's what I would call pure evil.
I own precisely such a weapon, a double action revolver. Uncocked, it has a trigger pull tension sufficient to make accidental discharge highly unlikely.
Unlike you, Apple realizes that technical solutions can't prevent shit-heads from doing stupid things. If it had been Hangouts, this story would have been about Google, because Waze actually has a feature to prevent drivers from using it while the vehicle is in motion, so why didn't Google add it to Hangouts?
Apple will point to standard-equipment radios and state that car manufacturers have known for decades that they cause distractions which can have lead to death, yet they have never implemented a mechanism to lock out the driver. In fact, it's quite common for controls to be embedded in the steering wheel, which demonstrates that the manufacturers expect drivers to use them! And the manufacturers certainly can tell when the car is in motion. If car manufacturers aren't liable (and they aren't), neither is Apple.
I would say that someone choosing to video chat on their phone while driving a car is 99% the main factor in that automotive crash.
If a manufacturer patented the concept of a safety preventing a fatal accident, then failed to implement it resulting in the exact fatal flaw it was designed to protect, I could easily see fault lying with the patent holder.
Let's understand the REAL issue here; the PATENT prevented everyone else from implementing a safety.
The only thing I use a cellphone for while driving is clipping the thing into a dashboard cradle for turn-by-turn navigation. As far as I'm concerned they can block everything else if the device is moving above a certain speed except perhaps making calls over a hand's free Bluetooth link and play music or audio books but I'd be pretty pissed off if I could no longer at least navigate using my smartphone. Then there is the issue of passengers. It's not surprising that the original patent :http://www.google.com/patents/US8706143 proposed to use a motion analyser to determine if you are in a driving car and a 'scenery analyser' to determine whether you are the driver. That sounds to me as if they are proposing to use the GPS chip to determine if you are driving and turn on the camera and use some kind of mini AI to determine whether you are sitting in the driver's seat driver or not and then base decisions on blocking on that. Even if that is possible given the current state of object recognition technology I think this would be a buggy feature which is probably why Apple did not bother with it. You could also add transponders to the driver's seat area and sensors to the phone (as the patent suggests) to determine if the user is the driver but it would take years and changes to automotive regulations to bring that into general use. Even if Apple had put such sensors into the iPhone 6 would have had little effect since no car these days has such transponders installed. The third method the patent mentions is a signal that is only receivable in the driver's seat area to disable the pone. That sounds like a good idea until you start pondering how long it would take texting drivers to figure out that holding the phone over the passenger seat still enables them to text while driving which is arguably worse than texting while pinning the phone to the steering wheel. Finally I'd be surprised if there was not prior art on at least two of these features. In the end it is the the idiot who texted or video chatted while driving is who bears 100% of the responsibility here just like it's the guy who brained you over the head with a baseball bat that bears the responsibility for that act and not Ye Olde New Jersy Baseball Bat Company (Inc) for failing to equip their bats with a people detector and exploding air bags.
...waze gets dued for distracting drivers with that notice!
I hate Apple, but I do hope the family looses as it's just ridiculous to sue Apple for something they didn't do and are not responsible for, the only person responsible for this is the driver that used the app.. This really sounds like a moneygrabbing sceme. Or better yet, sue the carcompanies for making cars that buckle during a crash, hell sue carcompanies for making cars that can crash.. LOL..
Because, quite frankly, this is just patenting shit to lock out other people, and a cancer that needs to be stopped.
Yes, duh. The description/design in the patent can certainly be implemented.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, a guy crashes because he's videochatting while driving, and sues Apple for not developing a patent which would've prevented him from being an imbecile?
We're overdue for a meteorite and a start over.
were his balls cut off and was he put on the stick for his utter stupidity? Or was this one of the untouchables?
And in the UK, your insurance has no liability cap, so you can get an award directly from the fault parties insurer in the tens of millions (a theoretical upper liability limit has never been tested in the UK insurance system, insurers pay out either what they are told to pay by a court, or what settlement they come to, and this has resulted in some impressive payouts) if that is what is needed.
So we end up with much less frivolous or ridiculous court cases here, because we don't need to make tenuous connections to third parties in order to get a larger payout, its all handled by the insurer directly. Whether the insurer tries to reclaim money from a third party is another issue but its still not our problem.
In this case, you would sue the other driver for wrongful arrest and you wouldnt ever have to get Apple involved.
Driving in the US scares me, precisely because of the liability limitation issue with your insurers. If I am injured or killed, I want your insurer to have unlimited liability, nothing less.
> Let's understand the REAL issue here; the PATENT prevented everyone else from implementing a safety.
Clearly Apple's patent didn't cause Apple to not implement it, so what do you think caused that?
What causes a lot of brilliant ideas to not make it to the real world? Pick a reason. There are likely several to choose from. Funding probably can't be used as an excuse for one of the wealthiest companies on the planet.
I would think that customers want to use their phones while riding in cars, buses, etc. Customers won't buy buy a phone that locks itself when moving.
Then perhaps customers should stop breaking the fucking law resulting in deaths on the roads from distracted driving.
Suppose Apple tries to get really clever and try to guess whether the person using the phone is the driver or a passenger, and they advertise this "safety feature". Obviously it's not going to guess correctly all the time - sometimes it'll annoy passengers who it thinks are driving, but worse sometimes it would guess "passenger" when the person is in fact driving. An advertised safety feature that often fails is obviously a huge liability. The parents of the teenager who crashes while using her iPhone will sue Apple, saying "web bought our daughter an iPhone because you said it has this safety feature. Your safety feature didn't work, you owe us $20 million." There would be plenty of other paths to liability, of course. Suppose Apple blocks video chat but not phone calls. Teenager talking on iPhone crashes. Parents sue "you could have prevented phone calls while driving, your feature that blocks Facetime proves you can and know you should. You failed to block phone calls, you us $20 million too".
Quite frankly, I'd rather see the all-or-nothing approach. Users are idiots who don't give a shit about enacted laws to prevent distracted driving fatalities, and innocent people keep dying as a result.
Of course, we'll put autonomous solutions on the roads that are unproven and likely insecure before we take cellular capability away from the Snowflake generation. Pick your poison.
I'm scared now.
I'd better retract my patent application for "device to prevent retards from using their phones at completely inappropriate times".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I've seen so many comments on here and other blogs about how Apple is to blame because they're "blocking" other's from using the technology. Or it's Apple's fault for not implementing it in their phones.
First, the idea sounds simple in concept until you actually look at the implementation. Can my wife not FaceTime/Skype while I'm driving? Can I not use it on the bus, taxi or train for work (which I do frequently... well, I try to avoid the bus)? How do you handle rare occasions where you can't get a consistent fix on the phone's location? If Apple could think of a good, reliable way of implementing this without regularly interfering with legitimate operations I'm pretty sure they'd be all over it because they have a PR department on steroids.
Second, this is against the law in California... so why isn't the California Highway Patrol being sued for not enforcing the law? Why isn't the car manufacturer being sued for not having a safety device that requires both hands on the wheel (there are practical problems with as well, I'm just using it as an argument)? Why aren't they required to have safety radars on all their cars (the recent Tesla video shows it might have prevented this accident)? Why isn't the cellular provider being sued for providing data service to a customer that they can tell is traveling over a certain speed? (same practical problems apply here).
Finally, almost anything can be deadly or can lead to deadly consequences. If you drop M&M's in your car and bend down to pick them up while speeding down the freeway and kill someone it is NOT M&M's fault for having a poorly designed bag. It is your fault for making a stupid, reckless decision. Period, end of story.
I want to believe this is a case of grieving parents being maneuvered by an asshat lawyer but who knows.
the PATENT prevented everyone else from implementing a safety.
No, no, and NO. Looking at the comments here so far, I strongly suspect nobody has bothered to look at the actual patent.
The patent prevents other from implementing a VERY SPECIFIC safety mechanism, most notably including a "scenery analyzer" that [magically] determines where in the car the device is based on camera inputs (this part is why you're not going to see anyone implementing this for a good long while). Claim 1 of the patent:
1. A handheld computing device comprising: a motion analyzer configured to detect whether the handheld computing device is in motion beyond a predetermined threshold level; a scenery analyzer configured to determine whether the handheld computing device is located within a safe operating area of a vehicle based on at least one of picture data and video data; and a lock-out mechanism configured to automatically and selectively disable one or more functions of the handheld computing device based on outputs from the motion analyzer and the scenery analyzer.
Should family members of victims of gun violence also be able to sue firearm manufacturers? We've seen that electronic safety measures exist, so if we can sue Apple for not implementing a safety feature on a cell phone, surely we can sue manufacturers of far more dangerous devices for failing to implement every safety feature they can, right?
OR IS THIS WHOLE THING RIDICULOUS?
This is a clear cut case of irresponsibility on the part of the driver who was driving distracted.
Completely correct. However unfortunately that doesn't bring people who are killed back to life. For better or worse we have to look for ways to solve problems like drunk or distracted driving that will prevent the accident from happening. Just punishing the offenders after the fact demonstrably doesn't fix the problem. Despite decades of strong drunk driving laws we still have thousands of fatalities every year from people driving drunk. People are still dying even in the face of laws prohibiting using phones while driving.
The end-game is a society completely risk adverse to rocking the boat or trying anything new from fear of completely manufactured legal attacks.
So we're supposed to just be ok with people dying because some asshat couldn't be bothered to get off the road before using Facetime? Look, I think this lawsuit sounds highly sketchy too but it is a real problem in need of a real solution. Maybe we should disable all calls and texts to/from a phone which is determined to be within a moving vehicle. (yes even the passengers - suck it up, You and your passengers can wait a few minutes for their call.) If it's important to speak to someone, pull off to the side of the road and put the car in park. We've clearly proven that we cannot be trusted to handle phones responsibly in a car. Don't like that solution? Fine, come up with a better one. I'm all ears, believe me. But the status quo isn't acceptable. Douchbag lawsuits obviously aren't the solution so what is?
Does Apple's patent enable the distinction b/w a driver and passenger?
I'm not convinced it should matter. The question is whether passenger's "rights" to use their phone are more important than the safety of other drivers on the road. I would argue that safety is paramount in that context if we can actually prevent distracted driving. Until we can come up with a more fine grained solution, disable them all if that is the only safe option. Nobody's civil rights are being violated here and we've proven VERY clearly that we as a group cannot be trusted to leave the phone alone while driving. If someone can figure out a reliable way to disable only the driver's phone then we should do that but since we (so far) cannot we need to do the next best thing. I don't see any credible argument that your right to use your phone should supersede my right to use a motorway in reasonable safety. As the saying goes, your right to swing your arm ends at my nose.
Since you're obviously blinded by partisanship, I'll try to briefly explain why this can turn out to be a good thing overall.
No rational person believes anyone other than the driver that was using Facetime should be held liable, regardless of political affiliation.
That being said, why do we let companies hold patents for products they never deliver on? I'm not a patent law expert but to me it seems against the spirit of the laws which were to provide incentive to inventors to create and profit on their inventions for a short period of time.
With software patents normally being incredibly vague to begin with, any competitor would be at risk of litigation if they wanted to implement this feature even though it would be a benefit to society.
I am considered a liberal by American standards and I don't think Apple should pay anything for this accident. However they should lose their patent and all other "defensive" patents that have not been implemented, as should other companies.
Use it or lose it. That's my opinion.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Just because somebody patents something doesn't mean it is technically practical to create said device.
It may rely on technology that may not be practical (giant flying seeing-eye to monitor driver) or even exist. Unless they can show that it was possible/practical to implement, I don't see this suit going anywhere. Even then - this is a thin claim.
And --- Personal Responsibility !!! Text and Driving is known to be dangerous.
> A phone is not. The phone didn't harm anyone in this particular case; it didn't explode or anything.
> There you attempt character assassination, to what point? Your entire paragraph is semantically null i.e. worthless. In fact so is the rest of the post.
> If you had nothing but self adulation and denigrating of others to say why did you even post?
Can you point me to what sentence you're talking about, because I re-read my post and I don't see anywhere that I said anything about you. I mentioned the KKK and Daesh as examples of people I don't want to work for; is that the "character assasination" you're talking about?
> Saying 'law should' is not proposing a law. ...
> Or have you decided that law is unnecessary?
As mentioned in my post, I've decided that new laws are generally ham-fisted, a blunt instrument. Additionally, 99.9% of the stuff that matters is already covered by existing law. Therefore, when one's first thought is "there ought to be a law" that's normally a mistake. My default position, my starting point until there is evidence otherwise, is that new laws are likely to cause more / worse problems than they solve, therefore we should be careful when we start down the road of "there ought to be a law".
I also believe generally that if you make a table, that's your table for you to use as you see fit. You can invite me to sit at your table or not. If you make a coat, it's your coat. You can keep it for yourself, you can offer to sell it to me, you can give it to me as a gift, or you can trade it to me. It's yours because you made it. If you make a computer program or tou make a song, it's your program, your song. You made it, you can do what you want with it, as a general rule. Not an absolute rule, but generally. I respect that even if I'm slightly annoyed because I'd like to sit at your table or burn a copy of your song to jam out to.
> Both of us know that ISIS (Daesh please, it is more insulting) would not give a damn about copyright or even paying you and would just take it anyway.
That's why the medium matters. You suggested a creator shouldn't be allowed to decide which medium is used for distribution. If I'm required by law to post all of the code code on the internet, the goat-fuckers will of course take it. If the code, at least the sensitive parts, is supplied to the aid workers embedded in a piece of hardware, it's a lot harder for Daesh to get, and especially harder for them to get many of them.
Therefore, while probably more than half the code I've written in my career in publicly available on Github or similar places, some is intentionally available only to approved customers. For fifteen years some groups of bad guys have been trying to figure out exactly how certain elements of my security code work, and for fifteen years I've been able to mislead them with decoys because I don't have to put the code on Github for them to see.
How about if I patent personal responsibility and sue the parents for not implementing it in their kids?
I like the idea of suing people who sit on their patents without bringing them to market, but yeah, this was solely the driver's fault, not Apple's.
I would imagine it's been tested in court, but since Patents are intended to protect the ability of the inventor to sell their invention, why aren't patents that the inventor fails to bring to market within a reasonable time inherently invalidated? What's the rationale behind allowing companies to sit on patents that they aren't actively marketing?
Because patenting something and then not using said patent simply reeks of patent troll.
If you patent something, you should be required to produce it immediately in order to keep your patent protections.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hey, I'm sorry one of their children died in a needless car crash, but we all know, had this been a RICH Hollywood/sports/entertainer, they would go after them, and not apple. The DRIVER was 100% responsible, not Apple.
I can just imagine a judge hearing: "Let me explain this peculiar reason why Apple has to give me free money. Bonus! There's a lot of nuance."
Have gnu, will travel.
The true end-game of this - and almost all legal scenarios - is to make sure that lawyers are still necessary. If you step back, you will see that they have created a legal system that they tend like a garden to solely ensure that they are necessary. It doesn't matter what kind of lawyer. I have not checked, but would be willing to bet that a lawyer initiated this lawsuit (playing on the emotions of a grieving family). Step back and consider who all the real winners are in this scenario... it's the lawyers.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
While it would be nice, it wouldn't happen.
What would happen is that companies would either sell their unused patents to another company, who could hold onto it for a while, then do the same. Or they would just create a subsidiary, and sell it to them. Or some other shenanigans that I don't have the mentality to think up. However, what it would ensure is that patent attorneys would still be need (more than ever!) which in my book is a bad idea.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
From my point of view the evil doer must be punished more than those who have lesser involvements in the crime. Apple should make it impossible to use these products in a running car. However the driver who chose to use the product while driving is the major culprit. So let's say we put him in prison for 20 years. How much income will he lose? In fact, if he is well invested he might have substantial earning while in prison. How much must the world bend to compensate for the idiots among us?
Still doesn't mean that they are responsible. Responsibility lies on the operator of the vehicle. Cell phone manufacturers are not required by law to prevent use while operating a motor vehicle. That's where PSA's come in and the Gov't states that it's illegal to use a cell phone(except hands-free features) while operating a motor vehicle, to discourage said activity.
and shoot on sight all the copyright/patent trolls.
Apple was aware that the possibility existed. Apple was NOT aware of the specific driver being a douche.
There's also the fact that Texas does not have blanket "no phone while driving" laws at the state level. Some locales do, but not all. In some areas of Texas, it's perfectly legal to text (or do anything else on your phone) while driving. Stupid, yes, but legal. Each state in the Union, and, sometimes each city in each state, has different rules regarding this.
In order to respect those rules, Apple would suddenly be responsible for keeping track of the laws in every city and town in America. That's overly burdensome.
You can't have differing laws like that and then apply a stricter standard to the device manufacturer. Blaming the device manufacturer for a stupid use of the device is... stupid. It wasn't defective. It worked as advertised. That the user used it poorly is not, in ANY way, Apple's fault.
It sucks that a child died because the driver was a flaming moron, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer of an improperly used tool should be responsible for footing the bill. The driver, on the other hand, should have his wages garnished for life.
TL;DR: The fact that the technology exists and Apple was aware of it is irrelevant. Even the government can't yet agree that this should be prevented in every location in the US. Until they can, Apple shouldn't be held responsible for making a value judgement that's no different than the one the various lawmakers have made when considering this issue.
-- sigs cause cancer.
How do you know they didn't have plans to implement this? That sounds like post hoc ergo propter hoc. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Maybe the person that thought of the idea left Apple, and they couldn't find someone keen to work on it.
Maybe they got it up to a prototype, flaws there were bugs in the implementation, so they abandoned it.
Maybe they are still trying to get it so it works with all vehicles in all 196 countries
Maybe the general lawyers saw some other issue with doing this that would create a liability for Apple, so they advised them not to implement it.
The plantiff in this case is reaching, especially given the implications this will cause for the patent system.
Even if they do win, I would expect that Apple would appeal all the way up to the supreme court, given the problems it would cause. Oh, and when they do, you would see nearly every big company with patents filing amicus briefs to help, given the potential issues it would cause.
You understand what a straw man is, don't you? I will give you a clue. When you use such a straw man every one knows its a worthless post. A worthless argument.
Maybe you need to do some reading and learning.
Forgot one - Maybe they found it had too much of an effect on the phone (battery life, screen usage, heat, etc).
Some people actually need their meds, and some people don't. You start talking crazy when you're off your meds.
Uhhh....
You think people should be able to sue this family because their daughter died in a fatal car crash caused by a man using an *Apple technology* for which *Apple holds* an unimplemented patent that could have prevented said accident?
NO obviously I think no such thing. Also Apple doesn't hold this patent the suing party does.
Talk about victim blaming. (Yes, I am referring to myself "blaming" you--the victim of a school system that failed to teach reading comprehension--with my razor sharp wit.)
1. You have failed to understand what I wrote in the specified context.
2. You have built upon your earlier failure to attack a straw man.
3. You have failed to RTFA as evidenced by incorrectly asserting Apple holds a patent the suing party actually holds.
I was pointing out in an "alternate reality" in which you are able to sue someone for not implementing something it seems perfectly reasonable in the context of that "alternate reality" to also go after parties who in some way make it more difficult to implement that same thing. By patenting the technology suing party has clearly made implementation more difficult.
To make it clear for those compelled to let their assumptions substitute for comprehension I don't believe I currently live in the specified "alternate reality" nor would I ever want to nor do I advocate for any such nonsense.
A lot of them either can't be built due to "Escher-esque" issues, or won't do what the patent claims if built, or contain text such as "given a frictionless bearing..."
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
We're in an age where it's not politically correct to say that an individual is at fault for something. Sure the driver caused the accident but he's not at fault because Apple didn't implement a feature on it's phone. Because the driver couldn't possibly have the self control to not use the phone. It always has to be the fault of a corporation or the government.
For a) Not challenging the patent b) Not licensing it from Apple Yes, it was not an Android phone BUT had they attempted to implement the technology, that would have put market pressure on Apple to follow suit.