I do not doubt they could terminate a contract with a court order in hand. Or that they could terminate the contract regardless and deal with the consequences later. But there are usually consequences to terminating contracts unilaterally. One example was the recent HP vs Oracle case where HP sued Oracle for stopping to provide Itanium versions of the Oracle Database despite being obliged by contract to support the system.
A monopoly doesn't need to control 100% of the market. It just needs to have monopoly power by controlling a large chunk of the market and being able to direct the market at will.
Yes, exactly. But bear in mind that the Prada was actually a slide phone with a hard keyboard.
Wrong. That was the Prada II. The original Prada K850 phone referenced in the patent was not a slide phone and did not have a hardware keyboard. The patent also references the Samsung phone which was barred from entry as evidence.
Actually you cannot terminate a contract without getting hit by penalty clauses or getting sued. What you can is to no longer grant any contracts in the future.
The Webkit browser used in the iPhone is based on KHTML. Do you honestly think Apple deserves to be paid billions for "innovating" that? As cellphone processors and memory got better people started work on supporting better operating systems and larger apps on them. IBM did R&D on running Linux in cellphones and wrist watches a long time before Apple even started thinking about making a cellphone. The on screen QWERTY keyboard in addition to the dial pad was an obvious extension which happened once screen size and resolution were high enough. Apple may have a case with certain elements of Samsung's Touchwiz infringing their UI copyright but neither is it worth billions nor it is all that fundamental. Apple copies the Android UI as well.
The LG Prada had a capacitive touch screen just like the later iPhone. You are also wrong to assume you cannot use a resistive touch screen with your fingers. It just takes more effort and is less usable since the display is pressure sensitive.
As usual Apple fanatics think no one else could design a black rectangle with rounded corners. The LG Prada was announced in 2006 and had a similar design. Why didn't Samsung copy that? Of course they just had to be copying Apple because only Apple is worth being copied. In my view the design was going to happen eventually and did happen. Patenting a flat screen? All LCD screens are flat! There were a lot of resistive touch screen phones in the market. There were even some capacitive touch screens in the market. You seem to believe it is easy to come up with a prototype in a month and ramp up production in 5 months but it is not.
For all I know Samsung could have been copied the LG Prada (LG is one of Samsung's main competitors) which announced in 2006. I doubt they were copying the iPhone.
Since the government (actually Congress) grants the right to patent they can also lift it if they think it is in the interest of the public good. This has happened in the past. For example there was so much litigation in the aerospace sector in the beginning that when WWI broke out the US was reduced to flying foreign manufactured airplanes. The US airplane sector was utterly obsolete and decrepit thanks to the Wright brothers suing everyone which even tried to make an airplane. In Europe they simply ignored the Wright brothers patents and made airplanes and the technology improved much more quickly. After that the US government forced US airplane manufacturers to join a patent pool so no manufacturer could stamp out the others.
He is probably talking about the lawsuits after Steve Jobs came back to Apple. Apple used to sell their operating system to hardware manufacturers which sold Apple compatible clones such as UMAX, Power Computing and others. First thing Steve Jobs did when he came back was to tear the contracts to increase profits even if the platform lost market share.
You are assuming Google won't spin out Motorola eventually with a royalty free license to their cellphone patents after the Apple lawsuits cease and their balance sheet is clean. In which case it wasn't a mistake. This way they got Motorola's patents.
Duh. I have downloaded Android apps from code.google.com to a smartcard and installed them in my Android device. There are also apps in sourceforget.net which you can get that way.
You probably gave him an used iPhone which has an additional cost of $0. Not to mention that in the US they have these funky phone purchase schemes where you "pay" $99 to get an iPhone and you don't pay less per month if you bring your own phone to the deal. It used to be that the barrier to entry for programming was nil. In fact personal computers of the 80s like the C64 actually booted directly to a BASIC interpreter console. Now you have to get development tools. With the iPhone its even worse since you need the development tools (paid) and to pay for deploying the application similar to the game consoles market.
Actually ScummVM is supposed to be able to run Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. You can always run the games under DOSBox as well. You need to own an actual copy of the game however.
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I do not doubt they could terminate a contract with a court order in hand. Or that they could terminate the contract regardless and deal with the consequences later. But there are usually consequences to terminating contracts unilaterally. One example was the recent HP vs Oracle case where HP sued Oracle for stopping to provide Itanium versions of the Oracle Database despite being obliged by contract to support the system.
A monopoly doesn't need to control 100% of the market. It just needs to have monopoly power by controlling a large chunk of the market and being able to direct the market at will.
Zilch. They don't pay for my applications if they use them either. There are paid markets for Android as well in case you were wondering.
What would be interesting would be to compare later versions of the UI to see how the changes were implemented.
Try looking at phones not in Apple's slides. If you look at non-Samsung phones the trend is even more visible. The Mio A701 is one example.
A patent is not instantly made public after being filed. Duh.
Wrong. That was the Prada II. The original Prada K850 phone referenced in the patent was not a slide phone and did not have a hardware keyboard. The patent also references the Samsung phone which was barred from entry as evidence.
Sharp also manufactures Android cellphones. It is only a matter of time until they get in Apple's little black list as liable to be sued.
Actually you cannot terminate a contract without getting hit by penalty clauses or getting sued. What you can is to no longer grant any contracts in the future.
Uh isn't that what click to scroll does? I think IE had that feature before.
Xerox sold the Xerox Star. Xerox sued Apple for infringement.
There are no good guys in that lawsuit in case you did not notice.
The Webkit browser used in the iPhone is based on KHTML. Do you honestly think Apple deserves to be paid billions for "innovating" that? As cellphone processors and memory got better people started work on supporting better operating systems and larger apps on them. IBM did R&D on running Linux in cellphones and wrist watches a long time before Apple even started thinking about making a cellphone. The on screen QWERTY keyboard in addition to the dial pad was an obvious extension which happened once screen size and resolution were high enough. Apple may have a case with certain elements of Samsung's Touchwiz infringing their UI copyright but neither is it worth billions nor it is all that fundamental. Apple copies the Android UI as well.
The LG Prada had a capacitive touch screen just like the later iPhone. You are also wrong to assume you cannot use a resistive touch screen with your fingers. It just takes more effort and is less usable since the display is pressure sensitive.
As usual Apple fanatics think no one else could design a black rectangle with rounded corners. The LG Prada was announced in 2006 and had a similar design. Why didn't Samsung copy that? Of course they just had to be copying Apple because only Apple is worth being copied. In my view the design was going to happen eventually and did happen. Patenting a flat screen? All LCD screens are flat! There were a lot of resistive touch screen phones in the market. There were even some capacitive touch screens in the market. You seem to believe it is easy to come up with a prototype in a month and ramp up production in 5 months but it is not.
For all I know Samsung could have been copied the LG Prada (LG is one of Samsung's main competitors) which announced in 2006. I doubt they were copying the iPhone.
Since the government (actually Congress) grants the right to patent they can also lift it if they think it is in the interest of the public good. This has happened in the past. For example there was so much litigation in the aerospace sector in the beginning that when WWI broke out the US was reduced to flying foreign manufactured airplanes. The US airplane sector was utterly obsolete and decrepit thanks to the Wright brothers suing everyone which even tried to make an airplane. In Europe they simply ignored the Wright brothers patents and made airplanes and the technology improved much more quickly. After that the US government forced US airplane manufacturers to join a patent pool so no manufacturer could stamp out the others.
He is probably talking about the lawsuits after Steve Jobs came back to Apple. Apple used to sell their operating system to hardware manufacturers which sold Apple compatible clones such as UMAX, Power Computing and others. First thing Steve Jobs did when he came back was to tear the contracts to increase profits even if the platform lost market share.
Apple was already under regulator scrutiny a couple of years back because of the iTunes store in case you did not notice.
You are assuming Google won't spin out Motorola eventually with a royalty free license to their cellphone patents after the Apple lawsuits cease and their balance sheet is clean. In which case it wasn't a mistake. This way they got Motorola's patents.
Duh. I have downloaded Android apps from code.google.com to a smartcard and installed them in my Android device. There are also apps in sourceforget.net which you can get that way.
You probably gave him an used iPhone which has an additional cost of $0. Not to mention that in the US they have these funky phone purchase schemes where you "pay" $99 to get an iPhone and you don't pay less per month if you bring your own phone to the deal. It used to be that the barrier to entry for programming was nil. In fact personal computers of the 80s like the C64 actually booted directly to a BASIC interpreter console. Now you have to get development tools. With the iPhone its even worse since you need the development tools (paid) and to pay for deploying the application similar to the game consoles market.
Actually ScummVM is supposed to be able to run Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. You can always run the games under DOSBox as well. You need to own an actual copy of the game however.
This is UNIX vs VMS all over again.
I got a working C64. Just not the patience to wait 15 minutes for a game to load.