To a child: If you have hair on some parts of your head and not on others, and want to make it look like you have hair on all of your head, what would you do?
If a significant number of people would come up with the proposed invention in a short amount of time, it is obvious pretty much by definition of the word.
Frankly, I think the "obvious" answer is "comb hair from one part over the bald spot," no?
I'm pretty sure Eolas' technique was never published in a book because nobody would find it to be worth reading about.
They had a product out in 1995.
I said patents should only be granted for things that are very much non-obvious. We can argue about how obviousness should be quantified or established, but I think it should be a factor when granting the privilege of a monopoly.
Well, do you have a suggestion for a test that's better than the current test for obviousness?
1) It is close enough to being a patent on hyperlinks that BT was willing to assert in court that it was a patent on hyperlinks. While it failed for various technical reasons, it's pretty reasonable to think that the USPTO would have approved a similar patent application that got the technical details for a hyperlink right, had such a patent been filed. So, hyperlinks probably could have been patented even if they weren't. That raises the legitimate question: Does our society really benefit from granting patents on things that trivial?
I don't necessarily agree with that conclusion. Who is to say that the USPTO would have approved a different patent application on hyperlinks or not? That said, the patent was filed in the 1970s. If it got the technical details for a hyperlink right, then they would have invented hyperlinks a decade ahead of Berners-Lee, so why shouldn't such a patent be granted?
Additionally, does society benefit from new innovations like hyperlinks? Absolutely. We wouldn't be having this discussion otherwise.
2) How much money did Prodigy and others pay in legal fees to defend themselves? Fighting bad patents is very expensive, and the benefit to society of publishing an obvious idea is minimal, so why should society grant patents on things that are obvious?
Society shouldn't grant patents on things that are obvious. However, obviousness still must be supported by evidence, rather than gut feelings.
I'm well aware that it wasn't a licensing fee, but that misses the point. Eolas didn't offer a license for $100 or even $250. I believe it was tens of millions of dollars, but I'm not going to spend the time hunting for a reference -- it was, inevitably, some fraction of what they thought they could win in court. The scenario you described, where the existence of the patent benefits both the patent holder and the licensees because the licensees pay less for the idea than it would have cost to develop it themselves almost never holds in reality (I'll assert that without any statistics to back it up). Licenses are often (again, I'm just asserting this, but it makes sense since court awards seem to be based on volume of usage rather than effort to develop) "$X per unit shipped" (or similarly based on volume of usage) rather than a flat fee, so you get Eolas demanding tens of millions of dollars for a few hours of work that you would have rather done (and did do) yourself.
But, on the other hand, they're asking for a small percentage of the billions of dollars you made. For example, in the Microsoft v. i4i trial, i4i was awarded $240 million in damages (and if Microsoft had taken a license rather than going through a full trial, it would have presumably been much less)... During the years that trial occurred, Microsoft earned around $20 billion on Office... each year. It's still a tiny fraction of the income. Frankly, I'd be delighted to pay $200 million in license fees if I was pocketing $19,800 million in revenue.
If the procedure is known, and the tool/technology is known, then the combination is obvious. No such patents exist.
I wish that were true, but it isn't. Here is an example (sorry if it is a bit industry-specific).
1) Publication of a trivial solution has zero value to the public. Why? Because the effort required to find the published solution is greater than the effort to solve it yourself. The relevant patent might use different language, making it hard to find. You may have to read several patents (very tedious) to find the one that is actually applicable. How much time are you willing to spend searching for a solution that is obvious enough that you can do it yourself? When I need to know the integral of some function, it's going to have to be a really hard integral for me to go hunting through a book for it instead of just doing it myself. People don't do searches on the USPTO site to find ways to solve their problems, they do searches to see if they're going to be sued for the solutions they've already come up with.
You're assuming that the sole place someone would publish is the USPTO. That's not true - there are white papers, functional specs, theses, and all sorts of other publications that are possible because of the patent right. Without that right, if the inventor were trying to maintain a trade secret, they couldn't publish any of those documents.
Additionally, in my example above, the company that gets the patent offers a license to the others in the industry. They don't need to search for it, they have a letter in their mailbox. No fuss, no muss.
Need an example? How about BT's patent on hyperlinks? Did anybody learn about hyperlinks from BT? I doubt it. Everyone solved a problem themselves in the obvious way... Look at the claims in the BT hyperlink patent referenced earlier -- there is really nothing for the public to learn from there, just a tool for suing people.
I have no idea why people refer to that as a patent on hyperlinks. Probably just repeating what they've heard from others, without actually reading it. Here's claim one:
1. A digital information storage, retrieval and display system comprising:
a central computer means in which plural blocks of information are stored at respectively corresponding locations, each of which locations is designated by a predetermined address therein by means of which a block can be selected, each of said blocks comprising a first portion containing information for display and a second portion containing information not for display but including the complete address for each of plural other blocks of information;
plural remote terminal means, each including
(a) modem means for effecting input/output digital data communication with said central computer means via the telephone lines of a telephone network,
(b) local memory for locally storing digital data representing at least the first portion of the selected block of information received via said modem means from the central computer,
(c) display means for visually displaying such a locally stored first portion of a block of information and
(d) key pad means connected to communicate data to at least said modem means for manual entry of keyed digital data; and
further memory means being provided as a part of said central computer means for receiving and storing said second portion of the block of information selected by a particular terminal means in response to the selection of the block and
when its respective first portion is transmitted to that terminal means for display, said central computer means utilizing keyed digital data from that particular terminal means of less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of information but nevertheless uniquely indicative of one of the complete addresses contained in said portion of the block of information which contains the first portion then being displayed by that particular terminal means for selectively accessing the part of said further memory means associated with that particular terminal means and for supplying th
...the company wants to license its patents instead of heading to court.
Obviously. Who would voluntarily want to put the fate of their enterprise in the hands of 12 people who couldn't think of a valid excuse of how to get out of (civil) jury duty?
Of course you might think that mediation and arbitration would solve this problem, but if one of the sides has a little to lose, and much to gain, they often will gamble their chances with the jury trial. As a classic example, Apple vs Samsung: a billion dollars to each side is merely pocket change, not much to lose for either one. On the flip side, a couple of bankrupt memory chip companies might need to some stability and predicability just to survive. A patent troll, however, doesn't want their patents accidentally invalidated, so gambling isn't the prefered way to do business...
Not just that, but frequently egos get involved, too. Some people would rather spend a quarter million or more fighting a patent owner who claims they're infringing, than spend a few thousand for a license. Oddly, it's usually the smaller companies who don't have the money to spend on a suit who would rather fight and go into bankruptcy, while the larger companies will make the objective economic decision to negotiate a license. It's particularly sad with trolls, because frequently they just want to show that they have licensees so they can go after deep-pocket companies, so they'd be happy with a very, very cheap license for a small company.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. I am not your patent attorney, and this isn't legal advice. This post is purely for (my) amusement purposes only.
Thanks for the detailed reply. Your explanation for the motivation behind granting patents is interesting, and while different from mine it gets you to the same place -- an invention should be very non-obvious to have enough value to the public to warrant offering a 20-year monopoly in exchange for the publication of the idea.
Again, I don't agree with that "very" bit. First, I don't think there's a good qualitative test to determine whether something is "very" non-obvious or just "kinda" non-obvious or "somewhat" non-obvious, etc. Second, I don't agree that such a test would even be important. Consider a small idea that takes 20 man-hours to invent. It's not a giant groundbreaking idea, so it doesn't deserve a patent? Okay, so the inventor keeps it secret and never publishes his 20-hour idea. Now, what if there are a hundred companies in that industry with a hundred engineers who all have to spend 20 man-hours re-inventing the same idea. That's 1980 hours wasted that could have been spent innovating the next problem, all because the first guy kept it secret and never published. That's horribly inefficient, and is exactly what the patent system is supposed to avoid.
Now, sure, a 20-hour idea isn't worth much in license fees or royalties, but it's still worthy of patent protection. Let those other companies pay a pittance - $100 each, say - to the first company for a license. That company gets their expenses back and then some, everyone else pays less than they'd pay their own engineers to invent it, and everyone's happy.
I'm really not sure what you objected to in my original post, unless you are claiming, like another poster, that the examiner can't "make a case" for obviousness without prior art (since my basic point was that asserting obviousness should be much easier than finding prior art in many cases, again keeping in mind that I think the standard for non-obvious should be pretty high). Maybe that is true under current legal standards, but I think we all know in our guts that most of these "with a computer" patents are obvious, no matter how difficult it is to quantify obviousness.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm objecting to. Just like you can't put someone in jail without evidence because "you know in your gut" that he's guilty, you can't reject a patent application without evidence because "you know in your gut" that it's obvious. In both cases, you need evidence.
Incidentally, I think you may be misunderstanding the definition of the term "prior art," and that that's the key to our disagreement:
If you are going to accept only prior art as sufficient to show non-obviousness, you are going to have patents on obvious ways to utilize a technology every time a new technology comes along since prior art is impossible.
I believe - and correct me if I'm wrong - that you think "prior art" means "some pre-existing technology/documentation/patent/etc. that does everything the claimed invention does." That's not exactly right... That definition is actually "anticipatory prior art" - i.e. prior art that anticipates the claimed invention. If it exists, it's not that the invention is obvious, but that the invention is not new because someone did exactly that invention already.
So, for example, if you tried to patent "a vehicle, comprising four tires and an engine," a car is anticipatory prior art because cars already exist and have four tires and an engine.
"Prior art" actually means "anything in the relevant art (i.e. industry) that exists prior to the patent application". So, for example, the Ford Model T is prior art for Toyota's Prius. So is a horse-drawn carriage, in fact. They don't anticipate the Prius, but they're certainly in the industry, and they're certainly prior. They're pieces of evidence that can be used in an obviousness rejection.
Yeah! And why do we waste so much time in criminal trials? It seems they could save a lot of time looking at evidence if they just took the "guilty" part of the law seriously and threw people in jail right off the bat.
Your analogy seems exactly backwards to me. In criminal law you are innocent until proven guilty. Nobody can (ideally) take your freedom away unless they can make, and are willing to shoulder the expense of making, a compelling case in court against you.
Patents aren't about taking something away from the patent applicant, they are about granting the applicant the special privilege of a monopoly on an invention.
Actually, the analogy is exactly right, for the reason you note - just as a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, a patent application is presumed allowable and valid unless the Examiner proves it not to be:
The examiner bears the initial burden of factually supporting any prima facie conclusion of obviousness. If the examiner does not produce a prima facie case, the applicant is under no obligation to submit evidence of nonobviousness.
Just as a defendant doesn't have an initial burden of proving themselves innocent, a patent application doesn't have an initial burden of showing nonobviousness.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." It does not, as far as I am aware, require Congress to grant your particular patent.
Sure, but once Congress has created by statute an examination and approval process, that examination and approval process must be subject to the due process requirement of the 5th Amendment.
I'm going to assert my opinion that the purpose of patents is to keep people from copying ideas that took substantial work or creativity to develop, since such copying would deprive the inventor of financial benefit for the idea, which would reduce the incentive to innovate. An undesirable side-effect is that patents also keep someone from utilizing the idea if he/she developed it independently (rather than copying), and we live with that side-effect because it is almost impossible to prove that someone copied an idea (unlike copying a book). As such, we require patented ideas to be non-obvious to an expert in the field, so the likelihood of someone else coming up with the idea independently, rather than copying, and suffering the loss of not being able to utilize it due to a patent is small. If that is, in fact, the motivation for the non-obvious requirement, an idea should be very non-obvious to be patentable.
I disagree. Patents are not a reward for an awesome invention, they're a grudgingly granted monopoly in exchange for public disclosure. Inventors don't need an incentive to innovate, because they'll be commercially exploiting their idea anyway. Rather, inventors need an incentive to not keep trade secrets, which hinder society by hiding away useful innovations, forcing others to re-invent the proverbial wheel. This has been the justification for the patent system for the past 500 years.
We require patented ideas to be non-obvious because otherwise we're not getting anything in exchange for the monopoly: if everyone already knows the secret (i.e. it's obvious), then there's no need to encourage disclosure of it. But if it's it not obvious, then we want it publicized, so we grant the monopoly. As such, the test is a black or white one - is it obvious or not? There is no qualitative test of "well, how non-obvious is it?" This is also pragmatic - how do you measure how non-obvious something is?
Given that a patent is a privilege, not a right, and should (rightly) not be granted unless the idea is non-obvious to an expert in the field, why should the USPTO rubber-stamp your
"Our hope is that Ask Patents will reduce the number of patents mistakenly granted for obvious, unoriginal non-inventions, especially around software," said Stack Exchange boss Joel Spolsky in a blogpost about the site... Mr Spolsky said that although US patent clerks worked hard they typically had less than 22.5 hours so spend on each application.
I can understand the USPTO having difficulty finding all prior art with limited resources, but why do they need help determining that something is obvious? It seems they could save a lot of time hunting for prior art if they just took the "non-obvious" part of the patent requirement seriously and dismissed all of the "do X obvious thing with a computer" patents right off the bat.
Yeah! And why do we waste so much time in criminal trials? It seems they could save a lot of time looking at evidence if they just took the "guilty" part of the law seriously and threw people in jail right off the bat.
Oh, wait, because of due process. That's why. In order to make a legal conclusion, like say, "guilty" or "obvious", you need to provide evidence to support that conclusion, like say, "witness testimony" or "prior art". Unless you want to just throw out the Constitution, of course.
I originally found out about this other video after Youtube's content identification system identified *my* video as infringing on *their* video and disabled revenue sharing, that took a month to sort out during which I was unable to monetize my work. (also, I suspect that this possible infringing status flagged my account and resulted in several of my other videos submitted during that period being denied monetization).
Anyway, yes, offended and it cost me a bit of revenue
You should talk to a reputable lawyer in your jurisdiction - this is the sort of case that many would take on contingency, since they may be able to collect attorneys fees and damages, so you may not have to pay any costs.
Additionally, you could talk to your state attorney general's office. If they committed perjury, that's the type of thing that the AG may be interested in. However, prior to doing this, I would talk to that reputable lawyer in your jurisdiction, because ideally, you'd want to coordinate a civil suit and criminal case.
The only real way to lose is to assume that you can't win, so you never, ever try to find out whether your assumption is correct.
Disclaimer: I'm a patent attorney. I'm not your attorney and this is not legal advice.
2) Working very hard (e.g., via amicus filings in cases to which it is not a party) to get the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stop blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions (particularly, Bilski) limiting patentability under the existing patent laws, so that patents that are invalid -- under the standards set by the Supreme Court interpreting existing law -- don't keep getting upheld by the Federal Circuit
You need to go back and re-read the Bilski decisions. The Federal Circuit came up with the machine or transformation test, and the Supreme Court reversed and said that that test is too narrow and that something not tied to a machine could be patentable, as long as it wasn't an abstract idea. In other words, if the Fed. Circ. was "blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions," they'd be rejecting valid patents, not allowing invalid ones.
The total dose of backscatter X rays is low, but it's so concentrated that it might still be a problem. Cancer risk grows superlinearly with exposure, so concentrating exposure to skin effectively amplifies the effects of the small dose. Independent medical researchers are not permitted to investigate these machines, so we don't actually know if they present a problem. We're not all going to die, but it could be that choosing X rays over microwaves will result in a few dozen extra cancer deaths per year, in which case it's a bad move.
The typical response to this is that you get a higher dose of radiation when you fly at cruising altitude for a couple hours than you get going through the machine. That response doesn't answer all of your points, including the concentrated dose as opposed to a lower dose over time, but it hides an important question: if the TSA is saying the machines are "safe" because you're only in front of them for a few seconds, what about the TSA workers? I know we all love to hate on those incompetent and frequently criminal asshats, but they're just the grunts following policy from management and have no options other than quitting, and most of them are pretty unemployable.
However, those workers spend hours every day, five days a week, standing around these poorly shielded machines that have been shown to leak. They don't wear radiation dosimeters, they haven't been allowed to form unions until just recently, and the TSA's response to safety questions is "the public is safe because they don't spend as much time around the machines as, say, the workers". I think it's much more likely that we're going to see a surge in cancer among TSA workers in a few years.
Being a troublemaker, of course, I tell the screener all of this while they're doing my opt-out pat-down.
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
Oh, I remember the Red Dragon Inn well... I was one of the "hosts" for a few years in the mid-90s. But anyway, here's claim 1 of the patent:
1. A computer-implemented method for generating a plurality of personas for an account of a first user of a social network performed on one or more computing devices, the method comprising:
receiving, using the one or more computing devices, information for the plurality of personas from the first user, wherein the information comprises a name, a representation, and a visibility level for each persona in the plurality of personas;
associating the information for the plurality of personas to the account of the first user;
associating a particular persona of the plurality of personas with a second user on the social network, the second user being distinct from the first user;
receiving a selection of one of the plurality of personas from the first user; determining, using the one or more computing devices, an appearance of the selected persona based at least in part on the visibility level and representation of the selected persona; and providing the determined appearance for display.
I've italicized claim elements that I don't remember AOL having. Even if you interpreted the multiple AOL screennames as "a plurality of personas" each having their own "name", there wasn't any sort of representation or visibility level, nor did AOL determine an appearance of the persona based on the visibility level and representation.
So, AOL doesn't anticipate the patent... However, it could potentially be combined with other prior art to show that this claim is obvious. I'd look at Facebook's different visibility settings for profile items depending on how another user is related to you. That's probably a closer place to start anyway.
That only works for business which don't actually produce anything (non-practising entities, aka trolls), where the cost of losing is approximately zero. If you actually make practical use of a patent you hold, and a larger company infringes on it, the chances are that your small company infringes on FAR more of their patents than they do yours.
Then you settle and take a cross-license. It's easy.
And FWIW, the $1billion (preliminary) Apple-Samsung judgement was about design patents and trade dress. Which have little to do with innovation, and everything to do with differentiation (see also: trademarks).
Trade dress is part of trademark law, but design patents are indeed patents, and require novelty and nonobviousness. Although there is significant overlap, they depart in that design patents do require innovation, while trade dress merely requires distinctiveness.
Additionally, only about 80% (by damages) of the Apple-Samsung suit was design patents or trade dress... The remainder was on utility patents.
that's one thing the patent system currently does right, which is giving inventors some protection against being ripped off by predators.
No it doesn't. Unless your legal team and legal budget are bigger than who ever is ripping you off, the current system provides zero effective protection. It has always been a system by the big players (and their lawyers) for the big players.
When the potential payout is huge - see the $1 billion Apple suit, or the half-billion i4i suit against Microsoft - you can find investors who are willing to help pay your legal budget in exchange for a share of the winnings.
If this were an American company suing an American company, the ruling would be done around 2020. Then the damages would be minimized when a new government is sworn in.
... Then litigation may not be the best answer. Damages could only be 100% of your profits at most (and they never, ever are in utility patents - think more like 2%), so if it costs $1.5M to successfully defend the suit but only $50k or less if you lose, then losing may be a better option. And if you actually negotiate a license, rather than going through the suit, it may be much less: Uniloc may just want licensees so that they can point to those license agreements in their suit with Microsoft. It may be wiser to let the big, deep-pocket folks fight.
Disclaimer: I am a patent lawyer, but not a lawyer for any of the companies named. I am not your lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. It merely represents my own opinion and is for (my) entertainment purposes only.
They are suing over 4 patents, two of which have already been ruled invalid. Shouldn't they suffer a significant penalty for knowingly suing over an invalid patent?
I was curious about that, too, so I just looked up the filing documents on PACER. The patents were declared invalid in the Eolas v. Google et al. trial, and Eolas has appealed that decision to the Federal Circuit (which they're allowed to do). This suit was filed with a request to stay all deadlines, pending the outcome of the Appeal in the Google suit.
Basically, this reserves Eolas' filing date for the suit, which may be important for statute of limitations issues or other issues, but it's going to sit there with no requirement for Facebook or anyone else to even respond until the other suit is done. If the Federal Circuit reverses the jury decision and finds the patents valid, then this one can go ahead, and they haven't sued over an invalid patent. If the Federal Circuit affirms the jury decision, then they can amend the complaint to remove the two invalid patents. Either way, Facebook et al don't have to even reply for a year or two.
Wasn't the reason why that 2.4% rate "never before levied to a licensee" because all other licensees have entered patent cross-licensing agreements instead?
Sure, but that directly contradicts the statement that Samsung asked other licensees "for the same amount of money."
Apple's definition of FRAND is (in typical Apple fasion) vastly distorted.
Apple's claim: Samsung wanted more for their patents than any other company has asked Apple in licensing fees. Note: This is NOT a violation of FRAND. Licensing fees for patents are proportional to the value of those patents. Apple said the fees were too much and chose not to pay.
Samsung's claim: Samsung asked Apple for the same amount of money they have asked from other licensees. This is the very definition of the "Non-Discriminatory" part of FRAND.
The metastudy examined several other studies that focused on short-term effects - e.g. whether pregnant women consuming organic food had higher birth-weight babies, for example, or whether men's sperm count was reduced by consuming conventional food. Unsurprisingly, they found no adverse effects - and that is unsurprising, because all of that conventional food is regulated by the FDA, with set maximum limits on pesticides and other toxins. We know that conventional food is non-toxic because we've had regulations in place for decades to ensure it's non-toxic.
But that's all short term, and those regulations are focused on short term toxicity. We don't know whether, for example, people who consume organic food have reduced rates of cancer over forty years. We do know that organic food tends to be higher in antioxidants, and we do know that antioxidants play some beneficial role in preventing cancer, but we're really just beginning to probe the various correlations and causations involved. So, while we can't say yet that organic food is better for you, it's certainly premature to say it's definitely not better.
For example, does it mean that it is like if I have a set of 2 blank pages. I give you one. You go home, I go home. Then later in that day, I write something on my blank page. At this exact moment, the same modifications are applied on your blank page ?
No, more like you have a set of 2 blank pages, and you write "A" and "B" on them. You then seal them in envelopes, shuffle them randomly, and give me one. We go to our separate homes. Later in the day, you open your envelope and see it says "B". You call me up and tell me on the phone that my paper says "A", even though I've not opened my envelope, and magically, you're right!
And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
Ah, found the one you're talking about. There was no mention of "3x faster". Just "really fast". I suppose someone could sit there with a stop watch and time the commercial to complain that sequences were sped up, but then you'd think they'd notice the disclaimer. I also think that someone would be busy complaining about the Jura coffee machine that can pull a thousand shots of espresso in 15 seconds, no?
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype.
Sure about that?
From their apology:
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with a Lumia 920. At least, not yet. We apologize for the confusion we created.
That seems to be an admission that it's not yet in product, but I'll concede that maybe they have some sort of prototype. Why didn't they use that, then?
If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results.
If you need that many qualifiers to bring the idealized version to reality, then no, it's not the same. And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
I'm not sure which commercial you're talking about. Got a link?
Look, I don't even think what Apple is doing in their ads is bad. I think it's fine. They're depicting the function of their product in an idealized setting in a dramatized way to demonstrate its capabilities. I get that. I'm fine with that. But I don't see how that is substantially different than depicting the capabilities of OIS in an idealized, dramatized way to demonstrate the capabilities of OIS on the 920.
Critical difference. Apple demonstrated the function on their product. Nokia demonstrated the function on a completely different product, and implied it was the 920.
How is "unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best" much different or generally less misleading compared to "doesn't actually exist at all"? Nokia 920 has optical image stabilization that improves image quality. This is demonstrated.
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype. Instead, they faked it.
Siri is an AI that responds to voice commands. It doesn't perform exactly like the video but it does what they say. Apple shows iPhone downloading at faster than network speeds over 3G. Of course it doesn't do it just like that, much slower in fact, but it does what they say.
Again, no... Siri does do what the video says and performs exactly like that, under optimal conditions. If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results. It certainly doesn't perform like that under real world conditions, but the phone shown in the ads is a stock phone... quite unlike the Nokia ads.
It's misleading in the same way that Apple's Siri ads or iPhone ads are: show real capabilities of a technology in an augmented or enhanced manner. As the video posted from the 920 shows, the phone is indeed capable of what they claim. Maybe not as good as the larger prototype they claim they were using in the video, but nonetheless very good.
Wat? They don't claim they were using a "larger prototype", they simply confess that it's not a 920 at all. Compare that to this:
But Siri does get it right some of the time, and with a fast enough network connection (like, say, it's connecting to a local server), it could be that fast. Those ads are Siri, albeit Siri at its absolute, unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best. Here, Nokia's not even using a 920 at all. It's not just misleading as in a "shown under optimal conditions" way, but misleading in a "doesn't actually exist at all" way.
Slashdot Mirror
To a child: If you have hair on some parts of your head and not on others, and want to make it look like you have hair on all of your head, what would you do? If a significant number of people would come up with the proposed invention in a short amount of time, it is obvious pretty much by definition of the word.
Frankly, I think the "obvious" answer is "comb hair from one part over the bald spot," no?
I'm pretty sure Eolas' technique was never published in a book because nobody would find it to be worth reading about.
They had a product out in 1995.
I said patents should only be granted for things that are very much non-obvious. We can argue about how obviousness should be quantified or established, but I think it should be a factor when granting the privilege of a monopoly.
Well, do you have a suggestion for a test that's better than the current test for obviousness?
1) It is close enough to being a patent on hyperlinks that BT was willing to assert in court that it was a patent on hyperlinks. While it failed for various technical reasons, it's pretty reasonable to think that the USPTO would have approved a similar patent application that got the technical details for a hyperlink right, had such a patent been filed. So, hyperlinks probably could have been patented even if they weren't. That raises the legitimate question: Does our society really benefit from granting patents on things that trivial?
I don't necessarily agree with that conclusion. Who is to say that the USPTO would have approved a different patent application on hyperlinks or not? That said, the patent was filed in the 1970s. If it got the technical details for a hyperlink right, then they would have invented hyperlinks a decade ahead of Berners-Lee, so why shouldn't such a patent be granted?
Additionally, does society benefit from new innovations like hyperlinks? Absolutely. We wouldn't be having this discussion otherwise.
2) How much money did Prodigy and others pay in legal fees to defend themselves? Fighting bad patents is very expensive, and the benefit to society of publishing an obvious idea is minimal, so why should society grant patents on things that are obvious?
Society shouldn't grant patents on things that are obvious. However, obviousness still must be supported by evidence, rather than gut feelings.
I'm well aware that it wasn't a licensing fee, but that misses the point. Eolas didn't offer a license for $100 or even $250. I believe it was tens of millions of dollars, but I'm not going to spend the time hunting for a reference -- it was, inevitably, some fraction of what they thought they could win in court. The scenario you described, where the existence of the patent benefits both the patent holder and the licensees because the licensees pay less for the idea than it would have cost to develop it themselves almost never holds in reality (I'll assert that without any statistics to back it up). Licenses are often (again, I'm just asserting this, but it makes sense since court awards seem to be based on volume of usage rather than effort to develop) "$X per unit shipped" (or similarly based on volume of usage) rather than a flat fee, so you get Eolas demanding tens of millions of dollars for a few hours of work that you would have rather done (and did do) yourself.
But, on the other hand, they're asking for a small percentage of the billions of dollars you made. For example, in the Microsoft v. i4i trial, i4i was awarded $240 million in damages (and if Microsoft had taken a license rather than going through a full trial, it would have presumably been much less)... During the years that trial occurred, Microsoft earned around $20 billion on Office... each year. It's still a tiny fraction of the income. Frankly, I'd be delighted to pay $200 million in license fees if I was pocketing $19,800 million in revenue.
If the procedure is known, and the tool/technology is known, then the combination is obvious. No such patents exist.
I wish that were true, but it isn't. Here is an example (sorry if it is a bit industry-specific).
1) Publication of a trivial solution has zero value to the public. Why? Because the effort required to find the published solution is greater than the effort to solve it yourself. The relevant patent might use different language, making it hard to find. You may have to read several patents (very tedious) to find the one that is actually applicable. How much time are you willing to spend searching for a solution that is obvious enough that you can do it yourself? When I need to know the integral of some function, it's going to have to be a really hard integral for me to go hunting through a book for it instead of just doing it myself. People don't do searches on the USPTO site to find ways to solve their problems, they do searches to see if they're going to be sued for the solutions they've already come up with.
You're assuming that the sole place someone would publish is the USPTO. That's not true - there are white papers, functional specs, theses, and all sorts of other publications that are possible because of the patent right. Without that right, if the inventor were trying to maintain a trade secret, they couldn't publish any of those documents.
Additionally, in my example above, the company that gets the patent offers a license to the others in the industry. They don't need to search for it, they have a letter in their mailbox. No fuss, no muss.
Need an example? How about BT's patent on hyperlinks? Did anybody learn about hyperlinks from BT? I doubt it. Everyone solved a problem themselves in the obvious way... Look at the claims in the BT hyperlink patent referenced earlier -- there is really nothing for the public to learn from there, just a tool for suing people.
I have no idea why people refer to that as a patent on hyperlinks. Probably just repeating what they've heard from others, without actually reading it. Here's claim one:
1. A digital information storage, retrieval and display system comprising:
a central computer means in which plural blocks of information are stored at respectively corresponding locations, each of which locations is designated by a predetermined address therein by means of which a block can be selected, each of said blocks comprising a first portion containing information for display and a second portion containing information not for display but including the complete address for each of plural other blocks of information;
plural remote terminal means, each including
(a) modem means for effecting input/output digital data communication with said central computer means via the telephone lines of a telephone network,
(b) local memory for locally storing digital data representing at least the first portion of the selected block of information received via said modem means from the central computer,
(c) display means for visually displaying such a locally stored first portion of a block of information and
(d) key pad means connected to communicate data to at least said modem means for manual entry of keyed digital data; and
further memory means being provided as a part of said central computer means for receiving and storing said second portion of the block of information selected by a particular terminal means in response to the selection of the block and
when its respective first portion is transmitted to that terminal means for display, said central computer means utilizing keyed digital data from that particular terminal means of less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of information but nevertheless uniquely indicative of one of the complete addresses contained in said portion of the block of information which contains the first portion then being displayed by that particular terminal means for selectively accessing the part of said further memory means associated with that particular terminal means and for supplying th
...the company wants to license its patents instead of heading to court.
Obviously. Who would voluntarily want to put the fate of their enterprise in the hands of 12 people who couldn't think of a valid excuse of how to get out of (civil) jury duty?
Of course you might think that mediation and arbitration would solve this problem, but if one of the sides has a little to lose, and much to gain, they often will gamble their chances with the jury trial. As a classic example, Apple vs Samsung: a billion dollars to each side is merely pocket change, not much to lose for either one. On the flip side, a couple of bankrupt memory chip companies might need to some stability and predicability just to survive. A patent troll, however, doesn't want their patents accidentally invalidated, so gambling isn't the prefered way to do business...
Not just that, but frequently egos get involved, too. Some people would rather spend a quarter million or more fighting a patent owner who claims they're infringing, than spend a few thousand for a license. Oddly, it's usually the smaller companies who don't have the money to spend on a suit who would rather fight and go into bankruptcy, while the larger companies will make the objective economic decision to negotiate a license. It's particularly sad with trolls, because frequently they just want to show that they have licensees so they can go after deep-pocket companies, so they'd be happy with a very, very cheap license for a small company.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. I am not your patent attorney, and this isn't legal advice. This post is purely for (my) amusement purposes only.
Thanks for the detailed reply. Your explanation for the motivation behind granting patents is interesting, and while different from mine it gets you to the same place -- an invention should be very non-obvious to have enough value to the public to warrant offering a 20-year monopoly in exchange for the publication of the idea.
Again, I don't agree with that "very" bit. First, I don't think there's a good qualitative test to determine whether something is "very" non-obvious or just "kinda" non-obvious or "somewhat" non-obvious, etc. Second, I don't agree that such a test would even be important. Consider a small idea that takes 20 man-hours to invent. It's not a giant groundbreaking idea, so it doesn't deserve a patent? Okay, so the inventor keeps it secret and never publishes his 20-hour idea. Now, what if there are a hundred companies in that industry with a hundred engineers who all have to spend 20 man-hours re-inventing the same idea. That's 1980 hours wasted that could have been spent innovating the next problem, all because the first guy kept it secret and never published. That's horribly inefficient, and is exactly what the patent system is supposed to avoid.
Now, sure, a 20-hour idea isn't worth much in license fees or royalties, but it's still worthy of patent protection. Let those other companies pay a pittance - $100 each, say - to the first company for a license. That company gets their expenses back and then some, everyone else pays less than they'd pay their own engineers to invent it, and everyone's happy.
I'm really not sure what you objected to in my original post, unless you are claiming, like another poster, that the examiner can't "make a case" for obviousness without prior art (since my basic point was that asserting obviousness should be much easier than finding prior art in many cases, again keeping in mind that I think the standard for non-obvious should be pretty high). Maybe that is true under current legal standards, but I think we all know in our guts that most of these "with a computer" patents are obvious, no matter how difficult it is to quantify obviousness.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm objecting to. Just like you can't put someone in jail without evidence because "you know in your gut" that he's guilty, you can't reject a patent application without evidence because "you know in your gut" that it's obvious. In both cases, you need evidence.
Incidentally, I think you may be misunderstanding the definition of the term "prior art," and that that's the key to our disagreement:
If you are going to accept only prior art as sufficient to show non-obviousness, you are going to have patents on obvious ways to utilize a technology every time a new technology comes along since prior art is impossible.
I believe - and correct me if I'm wrong - that you think "prior art" means "some pre-existing technology/documentation/patent/etc. that does everything the claimed invention does." That's not exactly right... That definition is actually "anticipatory prior art" - i.e. prior art that anticipates the claimed invention. If it exists, it's not that the invention is obvious, but that the invention is not new because someone did exactly that invention already.
So, for example, if you tried to patent "a vehicle, comprising four tires and an engine," a car is anticipatory prior art because cars already exist and have four tires and an engine.
"Prior art" actually means "anything in the relevant art (i.e. industry) that exists prior to the patent application". So, for example, the Ford Model T is prior art for Toyota's Prius. So is a horse-drawn carriage, in fact. They don't anticipate the Prius, but they're certainly in the industry, and they're certainly prior. They're pieces of evidence that can be used in an obviousness rejection.
they thought that prior art was so complicated that they skipped it.....
That's as miscarriaged as it gets.
No, that's as misquoted as it gets. The jury said they got stuck on validity of one of the patents over some prior art, so they skipped past the question to return to it later. Specifically, they said they wanted to resolve the easy questions first, and then come back to the hard ones..
Yeah! And why do we waste so much time in criminal trials? It seems they could save a lot of time looking at evidence if they just took the "guilty" part of the law seriously and threw people in jail right off the bat.
Your analogy seems exactly backwards to me. In criminal law you are innocent until proven guilty. Nobody can (ideally) take your freedom away unless they can make, and are willing to shoulder the expense of making, a compelling case in court against you.
Patents aren't about taking something away from the patent applicant, they are about granting the applicant the special privilege of a monopoly on an invention.
Actually, the analogy is exactly right, for the reason you note - just as a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, a patent application is presumed allowable and valid unless the Examiner proves it not to be:
The examiner bears the initial burden of factually supporting any prima facie conclusion of obviousness. If the examiner does not produce a prima facie case, the applicant is under no obligation to submit evidence of nonobviousness.
Just as a defendant doesn't have an initial burden of proving themselves innocent, a patent application doesn't have an initial burden of showing nonobviousness.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." It does not, as far as I am aware, require Congress to grant your particular patent.
Sure, but once Congress has created by statute an examination and approval process, that examination and approval process must be subject to the due process requirement of the 5th Amendment.
I'm going to assert my opinion that the purpose of patents is to keep people from copying ideas that took substantial work or creativity to develop, since such copying would deprive the inventor of financial benefit for the idea, which would reduce the incentive to innovate. An undesirable side-effect is that patents also keep someone from utilizing the idea if he/she developed it independently (rather than copying), and we live with that side-effect because it is almost impossible to prove that someone copied an idea (unlike copying a book). As such, we require patented ideas to be non-obvious to an expert in the field, so the likelihood of someone else coming up with the idea independently, rather than copying, and suffering the loss of not being able to utilize it due to a patent is small. If that is, in fact, the motivation for the non-obvious requirement, an idea should be very non-obvious to be patentable.
I disagree. Patents are not a reward for an awesome invention, they're a grudgingly granted monopoly in exchange for public disclosure. Inventors don't need an incentive to innovate, because they'll be commercially exploiting their idea anyway. Rather, inventors need an incentive to not keep trade secrets, which hinder society by hiding away useful innovations, forcing others to re-invent the proverbial wheel. This has been the justification for the patent system for the past 500 years.
We require patented ideas to be non-obvious because otherwise we're not getting anything in exchange for the monopoly: if everyone already knows the secret (i.e. it's obvious), then there's no need to encourage disclosure of it. But if it's it not obvious, then we want it publicized, so we grant the monopoly. As such, the test is a black or white one - is it obvious or not? There is no qualitative test of "well, how non-obvious is it?" This is also pragmatic - how do you measure how non-obvious something is?
Given that a patent is a privilege, not a right, and should (rightly) not be granted unless the idea is non-obvious to an expert in the field, why should the USPTO rubber-stamp your
"Our hope is that Ask Patents will reduce the number of patents mistakenly granted for obvious, unoriginal non-inventions, especially around software," said Stack Exchange boss Joel Spolsky in a blogpost about the site ... Mr Spolsky said that although US patent clerks worked hard they typically had less than 22.5 hours so spend on each application.
I can understand the USPTO having difficulty finding all prior art with limited resources, but why do they need help determining that something is obvious? It seems they could save a lot of time hunting for prior art if they just took the "non-obvious" part of the patent requirement seriously and dismissed all of the "do X obvious thing with a computer" patents right off the bat.
Yeah! And why do we waste so much time in criminal trials? It seems they could save a lot of time looking at evidence if they just took the "guilty" part of the law seriously and threw people in jail right off the bat.
Oh, wait, because of due process. That's why. In order to make a legal conclusion, like say, "guilty" or "obvious", you need to provide evidence to support that conclusion, like say, "witness testimony" or "prior art". Unless you want to just throw out the Constitution, of course.
I originally found out about this other video after Youtube's content identification system identified *my* video as infringing on *their* video and disabled revenue sharing, that took a month to sort out during which I was unable to monetize my work. (also, I suspect that this possible infringing status flagged my account and resulted in several of my other videos submitted during that period being denied monetization).
Anyway, yes, offended and it cost me a bit of revenue
You should talk to a reputable lawyer in your jurisdiction - this is the sort of case that many would take on contingency, since they may be able to collect attorneys fees and damages, so you may not have to pay any costs.
Additionally, you could talk to your state attorney general's office. If they committed perjury, that's the type of thing that the AG may be interested in. However, prior to doing this, I would talk to that reputable lawyer in your jurisdiction, because ideally, you'd want to coordinate a civil suit and criminal case.
The only real way to lose is to assume that you can't win, so you never, ever try to find out whether your assumption is correct.
Disclaimer: I'm a patent attorney. I'm not your attorney and this is not legal advice.
2) Working very hard (e.g., via amicus filings in cases to which it is not a party) to get the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stop blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions (particularly, Bilski) limiting patentability under the existing patent laws, so that patents that are invalid -- under the standards set by the Supreme Court interpreting existing law -- don't keep getting upheld by the Federal Circuit
You need to go back and re-read the Bilski decisions. The Federal Circuit came up with the machine or transformation test, and the Supreme Court reversed and said that that test is too narrow and that something not tied to a machine could be patentable, as long as it wasn't an abstract idea. In other words, if the Fed. Circ. was "blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions," they'd be rejecting valid patents, not allowing invalid ones.
The total dose of backscatter X rays is low, but it's so concentrated that it might still be a problem. Cancer risk grows superlinearly with exposure, so concentrating exposure to skin effectively amplifies the effects of the small dose. Independent medical researchers are not permitted to investigate these machines, so we don't actually know if they present a problem. We're not all going to die, but it could be that choosing X rays over microwaves will result in a few dozen extra cancer deaths per year, in which case it's a bad move.
The typical response to this is that you get a higher dose of radiation when you fly at cruising altitude for a couple hours than you get going through the machine. That response doesn't answer all of your points, including the concentrated dose as opposed to a lower dose over time, but it hides an important question: if the TSA is saying the machines are "safe" because you're only in front of them for a few seconds, what about the TSA workers? I know we all love to hate on those incompetent and frequently criminal asshats, but they're just the grunts following policy from management and have no options other than quitting, and most of them are pretty unemployable.
However, those workers spend hours every day, five days a week, standing around these poorly shielded machines that have been shown to leak. They don't wear radiation dosimeters, they haven't been allowed to form unions until just recently, and the TSA's response to safety questions is "the public is safe because they don't spend as much time around the machines as, say, the workers". I think it's much more likely that we're going to see a surge in cancer among TSA workers in a few years.
Being a troublemaker, of course, I tell the screener all of this while they're doing my opt-out pat-down.
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
Oh, I remember the Red Dragon Inn well... I was one of the "hosts" for a few years in the mid-90s. But anyway, here's claim 1 of the patent:
1. A computer-implemented method for generating a plurality of personas for an account of a first user of a social network performed on one or more computing devices, the method comprising:
receiving, using the one or more computing devices, information for the plurality of personas from the first user, wherein the information comprises a name, a representation, and a visibility level for each persona in the plurality of personas;
associating the information for the plurality of personas to the account of the first user;
associating a particular persona of the plurality of personas with a second user on the social network, the second user being distinct from the first user;
receiving a selection of one of the plurality of personas from the first user;
determining, using the one or more computing devices, an appearance of the selected persona based at least in part on the visibility level and representation of the selected persona; and
providing the determined appearance for display.
I've italicized claim elements that I don't remember AOL having. Even if you interpreted the multiple AOL screennames as "a plurality of personas" each having their own "name", there wasn't any sort of representation or visibility level, nor did AOL determine an appearance of the persona based on the visibility level and representation.
So, AOL doesn't anticipate the patent... However, it could potentially be combined with other prior art to show that this claim is obvious. I'd look at Facebook's different visibility settings for profile items depending on how another user is related to you. That's probably a closer place to start anyway.
That only works for business which don't actually produce anything (non-practising entities, aka trolls), where the cost of losing is approximately zero. If you actually make practical use of a patent you hold, and a larger company infringes on it, the chances are that your small company infringes on FAR more of their patents than they do yours.
Then you settle and take a cross-license. It's easy.
And FWIW, the $1billion (preliminary) Apple-Samsung judgement was about design patents and trade dress. Which have little to do with innovation, and everything to do with differentiation (see also: trademarks).
Trade dress is part of trademark law, but design patents are indeed patents, and require novelty and nonobviousness. Although there is significant overlap, they depart in that design patents do require innovation, while trade dress merely requires distinctiveness.
Additionally, only about 80% (by damages) of the Apple-Samsung suit was design patents or trade dress... The remainder was on utility patents.
that's one thing the patent system currently does right, which is giving inventors some protection against being ripped off by predators.
No it doesn't. Unless your legal team and legal budget are bigger than who ever is ripping you off, the current system provides zero effective protection. It has always been a system by the big players (and their lawyers) for the big players.
When the potential payout is huge - see the $1 billion Apple suit, or the half-billion i4i suit against Microsoft - you can find investors who are willing to help pay your legal budget in exchange for a share of the winnings.
Domestic company wins.
If this were an American company suing an American company, the ruling would be done around 2020. Then the damages would be minimized when a new government is sworn in.
Samsung has a plant in Texas.
Disclaimer: I am a patent lawyer, but not a lawyer for any of the companies named. I am not your lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. It merely represents my own opinion and is for (my) entertainment purposes only.
They are suing over 4 patents, two of which have already been ruled invalid. Shouldn't they suffer a significant penalty for knowingly suing over an invalid patent?
I was curious about that, too, so I just looked up the filing documents on PACER. The patents were declared invalid in the Eolas v. Google et al. trial, and Eolas has appealed that decision to the Federal Circuit (which they're allowed to do). This suit was filed with a request to stay all deadlines, pending the outcome of the Appeal in the Google suit.
Basically, this reserves Eolas' filing date for the suit, which may be important for statute of limitations issues or other issues, but it's going to sit there with no requirement for Facebook or anyone else to even respond until the other suit is done. If the Federal Circuit reverses the jury decision and finds the patents valid, then this one can go ahead, and they haven't sued over an invalid patent. If the Federal Circuit affirms the jury decision, then they can amend the complaint to remove the two invalid patents. Either way, Facebook et al don't have to even reply for a year or two.
Wasn't the reason why that 2.4% rate "never before levied to a licensee" because all other licensees have entered patent cross-licensing agreements instead?
Sure, but that directly contradicts the statement that Samsung asked other licensees "for the same amount of money."
Apple's definition of FRAND is (in typical Apple fasion) vastly distorted.
Apple's claim: Samsung wanted more for their patents than any other company has asked Apple in licensing fees. Note: This is NOT a violation of FRAND. Licensing fees for patents are proportional to the value of those patents. Apple said the fees were too much and chose not to pay.
Samsung's claim: Samsung asked Apple for the same amount of money they have asked from other licensees. This is the very definition of the "Non-Discriminatory" part of FRAND.
"In his cross-examination, Teece was presented with a letter from Samsung dated July 25, 2011 where the company proposed Apple pay a 2.4% royalty rate to license technology from any of 86 patents. Since the patents in question are deemed standards-essential, they should be licensed under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, but the 2.4% rate was never before levied to a licensee."
And: The lawyer showed Teece a July 2011 letter from Samsung to Apple proposing the iPhone maker pay the 2.4 percent rate to license any of 86 patents. Samsung had never published the rate, and “you have no evidence that Samsung has ever asked any other company for such a rate,” Mueller said.
So, do you have a citation for your claim that "Samsung asked Apple for the same amount of money they have asked from other licensees"?
But that's all short term, and those regulations are focused on short term toxicity. We don't know whether, for example, people who consume organic food have reduced rates of cancer over forty years. We do know that organic food tends to be higher in antioxidants, and we do know that antioxidants play some beneficial role in preventing cancer, but we're really just beginning to probe the various correlations and causations involved. So, while we can't say yet that organic food is better for you, it's certainly premature to say it's definitely not better.
For example, does it mean that it is like if I have a set of 2 blank pages. I give you one. You go home, I go home. Then later in that day, I write something on my blank page. At this exact moment, the same modifications are applied on your blank page ?
No, more like you have a set of 2 blank pages, and you write "A" and "B" on them. You then seal them in envelopes, shuffle them randomly, and give me one. We go to our separate homes. Later in the day, you open your envelope and see it says "B". You call me up and tell me on the phone that my paper says "A", even though I've not opened my envelope, and magically, you're right!
And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
Ah, found the one you're talking about. There was no mention of "3x faster". Just "really fast". I suppose someone could sit there with a stop watch and time the commercial to complain that sequences were sped up, but then you'd think they'd notice the disclaimer. I also think that someone would be busy complaining about the Jura coffee machine that can pull a thousand shots of espresso in 15 seconds, no?
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype.
Sure about that?
From their apology:
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with a Lumia 920. At least, not yet. We apologize for the confusion we created.
That seems to be an admission that it's not yet in product, but I'll concede that maybe they have some sort of prototype. Why didn't they use that, then?
If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results.
If you need that many qualifiers to bring the idealized version to reality, then no, it's not the same. And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
I'm not sure which commercial you're talking about. Got a link?
Look, I don't even think what Apple is doing in their ads is bad. I think it's fine. They're depicting the function of their product in an idealized setting in a dramatized way to demonstrate its capabilities. I get that. I'm fine with that. But I don't see how that is substantially different than depicting the capabilities of OIS in an idealized, dramatized way to demonstrate the capabilities of OIS on the 920.
Critical difference. Apple demonstrated the function on their product. Nokia demonstrated the function on a completely different product, and implied it was the 920.
How is "unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best" much different or generally less misleading compared to "doesn't actually exist at all"? Nokia 920 has optical image stabilization that improves image quality. This is demonstrated.
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype. Instead, they faked it.
Siri is an AI that responds to voice commands. It doesn't perform exactly like the video but it does what they say. Apple shows iPhone downloading at faster than network speeds over 3G. Of course it doesn't do it just like that, much slower in fact, but it does what they say.
Again, no... Siri does do what the video says and performs exactly like that, under optimal conditions. If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results. It certainly doesn't perform like that under real world conditions, but the phone shown in the ads is a stock phone... quite unlike the Nokia ads.
It's misleading in the same way that Apple's Siri ads or iPhone ads are: show real capabilities of a technology in an augmented or enhanced manner. As the video posted from the 920 shows, the phone is indeed capable of what they claim. Maybe not as good as the larger prototype they claim they were using in the video, but nonetheless very good.
Wat? They don't claim they were using a "larger prototype", they simply confess that it's not a 920 at all. Compare that to this:
Just as Siri doesn't get right every time with instantaneous response, and iPhone isn't lightening fast like in the ads.
But Siri does get it right some of the time, and with a fast enough network connection (like, say, it's connecting to a local server), it could be that fast. Those ads are Siri, albeit Siri at its absolute, unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best. Here, Nokia's not even using a 920 at all. It's not just misleading as in a "shown under optimal conditions" way, but misleading in a "doesn't actually exist at all" way.