Depends on what you're used to. The internals on the Galaxy Nexus -- great. Even nearly nine months later, I'm still happy with it (I'd be happier still, I suspect, if Verizon ever gets off their buttocks and pushes out the JellyBean update. Yeah, I know, I can get it elsewhere). The display is amazing, the battery life (with the larger cell) is great. It looks cool, particularly compared to the now-retro-looking iPhone.
But it's got some issues. My previous phone was the O. G. Droid, which might have been kind of ugly (basically the anti-iPhone, in its day), but it was nearly indestructible. The rubber over metal back meant it didn't break, scratch, or slip from your fingers. The glass was unscratchable.
Galaxy Nexus, meanwhile, is none of those things. The glass scratches... it's definitely a notch or two below Gorilla Glass (which they are using on the SIII). The lack of an SD card slot wasn't a deal breaker, but it should be a no-brainer, too.. that's all of what, an extra $0.50 cost? The plastic case is just that -- plain old plastic. The paint scratches off very easily -- I've resorted to using a thin rubber case, which was pointless with the Droid. Meanwhile, Motorola's RAZR didn't have the display, it has a smaller fixed battery (which they half-fixed by changing it to a larger fixed-battery), but it's freakin' Kevlar over polycarbonate or some-such, Gorilla Glass and sealed against moisture, etc. That's thinking about casework. Samsung.. no so much, though I think the SIII looks like maybe they're starting too.
Of course, with the GN, it's also quite possible that Samsung gave Google exactly what they asked for, and nothing extra. Google, most likely, was primarily concerned about what's inside, this being the ICS flagship device, less so about the physical issues than perhaps a proper phone designer would have been.
As soon as you want to step outside, even for data, it's not quite so easy, and can often be quite a hassle.
Yup. For example... I'm working on a PC, it's got a network issue, can't connect. Needs to fetch me a new driver from the internet. And hey, I have this great thing called a SmartPhone, which is really a pocket computer with persistent network connection. I'll just grab that driver, and... whoa! Easy in Android, not allowed in iOS, at least by default -- it'll only download things it understands (perhaps some 3rd party tools make this work better, don't know about that).
Some folks just want freedom. It may not matter to others. True freedom is like handing a person a scalpel rather than a plastic table knife -- yes, you can cut yourself with it. A few out there may be better off with out it. But most of us, nope -- we want the option to exercise that freedom in any way possible, even if we ultimately don't do things substantially different on Android than iOS on a daily basis.
It did actually involve rounded corners -- that became the focus of many pundits and bloggers, simply because that was such a public thing in Europe, the various "it does", "no it doesn't" decisions over the Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad, the "Community Design" that doesn't look like either one of them, etc.
This was on the table. The jury rejected it -- they agreed with the UK judge: the Galaxy Tab is just not as cool as the iPad:-)
They could have worked out between themselves. But they didn't.
"Working it out" is driven by your motivations.
I had dealings in the 80s on the receiving side of an IBM patent suit (working for Commodore). They hit us up with all sorts of patents. And over 90% were bogus, based on various criteria (doesn't apply, prior art, etc). But IBM's goal was basically eliminating themselves as a target, not taking all of your money or trying to block your product. So they had a flat license fee for 3+ patents. And an inevitable part of that fee negotiation was securing a cross license for your patents. They were pretty nervous about someone coming along with some big patent hammer and going after them.
And there was another concern -- when you know many of your patents are fairly bogus, you never really want to go to court. IBM in the mid-80s had been taking full advantage of the gold rush that was the start of the PTO allowing software patents without having a single examiner "skilled in the art" of software engineering. They had a crazy number of patents, but if they had established a record of lots of patents being tossed out, it would have been publicly embarrassing, and potential to cause all sorts of licensees to re-negotiate. Settling these things out of court keeps the proceedings fairly civil, and very private.
If Apple's still following Steve Jobs plan to kill Android, their goal isn't simple co-existence and getting paid for what they're due, but blocking Android where possible, creating FUD otherwise. This suit began well before Mr. Jobs died, and it was hardly the first -- Apple's been suing Samsung everywhere. And, in general, losing.
And of course, if you don't think you did wrong (or you're very sure your opponent doesn't have a strong case), you may well fight back. That's what got me reading 30+ IBM patents at a time back in the 80s... IBM was after Commodore for the Amiga, which wasn't based on any the IBM PC patents they so easily pressed against most computer companies. Some was also positioning -- IBM was after cross-licensing, and if the Amiga wasn't covered by IBM patents, or perhaps very few, that changes negotiations, or even leads to court cases (you're not going to court to invalidate 100 patents, but you might if you only believe 2 or 3 actually apply, and those have ample prior art).
Gestures are ancient news.... I used an Apollo computer running Mentor CAD software back in the mid 1980s. It supported all kinds of mouse/puck gesture commands... but I'm not sure you could draw an equivalence to one finger or two. Of course, there's the usual chorded-mouse stuff -- gesture with button vs. no button, which kind of does the same thing (the Apollo puck actually had four buttons; they switched to a three-button mouse as standard with the newer systems, by the late 80s).
He's not going to sue TiVo, even though he did more or less patent a TiVo-like device some years after TiVo shipped. I had a series of STBs sold in Germany in the late 1990s that also deliver demonstrable prior art against this guy's patent (Metabox AG). However, according to wherever I snagged hit patent (Google Patent Search?), he's abandoned it -- didn't pay his maintenance fees, more than likely.
Take a look at the section of the stuff released that shows icons. Now, you can argue if Apple has any exclusive right to rounded-square icons... I'm pretty sure early versions of SymbianOS either enforced this, or used it as the standard design-guide stuff. Most "rows of icons" handheld devices have traditionally used the more typical icons you find everywhere, which have an image, transparent background, and no borders. At least as an option.
Looking at just that bit, it's pretty clear that some of the icons on the Samsung devices are damn near identical to those of the iPhone. And sure, there are only so many ways to depict a phone or a calculator. But when you also consider (something they didn't present, at least far as I've seen) that stock Android looks very different, while Samsung's version looks more like iPhone than a Nexus device, you have to conclude that Samsung intentionally copied some elements of Apple's look here. They have a design patent on that. Whether there was demonstrable prior art on that, I don't know, but I do understand why Google was concerned. Not to mention perhaps a secondary concern over fragmentation of the Android UI.
The "rubber-band" or "scroll bounce-back" was also a very well know Apple patent, something you don't find in Android, and something that, IMHO, doesn't belong on Android or any computer system. It's more of that Apple skeuomorphic drek, which I find really annoying (and obviously, all corporations should work to keep me happy with their UI, or at least those I use, like Android). So again, this is something pretty obviously patented (again, no idea of specific prior art here) that Samsung injected into Android... more obvious attempts to copy Apple, it seems.
And then there's the overall gestalt of the device. You can technically implement a dozen copies of things that, alone, wouldn't make any difference. But taken together, even if it doesn't violate a single patent or copyright, the court might define your thing as being in violation of the others' trade dress, under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. Basically, if you make your product look too much like mine, in ways that distinctively define my product, you can be in violation, even without violating a single patent or trademark. They ruled against the Galaxy Tab looking too much like the iPad, but they did rule that a number of phones looked too iPhone-like, either based on Apple's "white" and "black" design patents, or the more general trade dress, not sure about that.
AMD's these days all about performance per Watt.. in that, they may be closer to Intel than if you're just looking at peak performance (where, yeah, Intel's 50% faster, give or take, at least on some work).
For the purposes of dismissing a patent, prior art does not just have to be something similar, but must be something that is, in whole or in part, exactly the same as what's claimed in the patent. If the patent claims a specific processor function that the prior art didn't have, it's not prior art!
Yes, a patent has to be very, very specific. The problem is when the patent isn't specific enough to exclude the prior art. If the patent reads on the prior art, it's too broad. Add to that the fact that software patents don't usually include very specific detail about the implementations (eg, the source code). If I'm patenting a hardware design, I pretty much have to include a circuit diagram of some kind. Software patents used to include source code, but they've allowed that slacken to flow charts and block diagrams, which may well illustrate the algorithm, but not the specific implementation of that algorithm. This is why it's so common to see patents emerge that seem to claim coverage of decades of prior art.
The other thing is that patents, including some in the Apple case, are increasingly written from the perspective of winning jury trials. So there's often far more information in the patent than necessary, to help obfuscate the real point of the patent.
In short, it's increasingly difficult for lay people to understand these. And prior art cuts both ways... if you did write your patent too broadly, it may well be invalidated by prior art, even when that's not what you'd find with a deeper examination of the specific mechanisms involved.
Apple, Android, and Microsoft employees both saw "Minority Report" in 2002. Apple even mentioned "It's like Minority Report" at the iPhone debut event. Of course, Microsoft also did have Bill Buxton and perhaps a few others who had actually pioneered touch interfaces before. Apple bought Fingerworks in 2005, so they did, too, well before the iPhone's launch.
There are plenty of times in history where everyone's pretty much thinking of the same things, at the same time, even if they're developing them independently. Look at the early personal computer industry... Commodore, Apple, Atari, Osborne and Kaypro and all those other CP/M guys. There was lots of flocking -- things moving in the same direction without any specific copying, one to the other. Because they all saw the same predecessors in tech, they all read the same Sci-Fi book, they shared the same culture, etc.
Of course, the '915 patent doesn't specifically patent pinch to zoom. In fact, here's the claim in question:
A machine readable storage medium storing executable program instructions which when executed cause a data processing system to perform a method comprising: receiving a user input, the user input is one or more input points applied to a touch-sensitive display that is integrated with the data processing system; creating an event object in response to the user input; determining whether the event object invoked a scroll or gesture operating by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as gesture operation; responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a windows having a view associated with the event object; and responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of user input.
That should be pretty clear now, eh? Of course, the claim only says what. The body of the patent has to say "how", and if you're doing the same "what" with a different "how", you don't infringe. Software patents are dangerous in that they're often approved at a very high system level, without the real details of the "how" being required anymore (eg, the source code).
Apple's main reason for success was business-related, not technological at all.
They decided that consumers would want a smartphone. As simple as that. They did a good enough job of building a modern smartphone, taking into account things people didn't like about the existing devices (the stylus) and various things they'd see, such as multitouch demos given by other companies. But the seed of the success was tying this idea into their already successful business.
The existing smartphones and PDAs, RIM, Palm, WinMo, they completely rejected the idea that consumers would use such devices -- they were all about business. I had a Palm T|X (later a Treo) years before the iPhone. Not all THAT different. Yeah, it had a resistive touchscreen, so you had to use a stylus or a hard finger press. But had the long 3.5" 320x480 screen, virtually identical to the iPhone. Thin metal case, nearly the same, only slight flared at the bottom to make gripping it easier. Not a huge amount of built-in flash, but you could add 4GB in an SD Card. And yet, even with the same CPU as the original Zune, Palm didn't ship it with media playing software. The business stuff, sure -- even today, ex-Palm users complain about how Palm apps were better than today's iPhone apps (a friend of mine is still angry at the limits of repeat event scheduling in the iPhone calendar, vs the Palm).
In short, there's evolution going on all the time. Apple's revolution was not in hardware, but in marketing.
What do you think the verdict should have been in this case under the current law?
Given what I know of the case (I've read Apple's patents, I know of a bunch of prior art on some things, but I do not, obviously, know how this case was presented to the jury), I would like to have seen Apple's '915 patent either extremely narrowed in scope, or entirely invalidated. It's pretty clear that like many companies before them, Apple's learned to game the system, but at an new level. I read dozens of IBM patents when Commodore was being sued by IBM over the Amiga. Plenty didn't apply. Plenty had obvious prior art. A few probably did apply... and IBM's licensing program made it fairly moot; the price was the same to license 3 or 30,000.
But what I learned out that was just how IBM's patent department had started out as a defense, but became a profit center. And they had learned to push through pretty anything that could be patented, not should be patented. When software patents started being allowed in the 80s, they saw a gold rush. That's why, for example, IBM had a patent on cut and paste between text buffers, applied for in 1984.... long after it was common practice.
Apple's clearly writing patents for trial now. You can pretty much include what you want in the main body, so you have one like '915, which seems very specifically designed to lead a jury into believing that Apple pretty much owns multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom, and a bunch of other related gestures, even though that's not really what the patent says. But it's 52 pages long, and hard enough for an experienced engineer to read and get through. And of course, patents are written in this weird mix of legal and engineering language... having spent lots of time with them, I can't imagine a lay person making much sense of these things. And yet, the patent authors know how these decisions are made... they're not trying to write clearer patents.
With that said, I'd still have found for Apple over Samsung on some of the copying issues. I'm not certain it was illegal, but there's no question they intentionally copied various elements. Apple presented a number of images, showing the iOS home page and icons, versus a couple Samsung home pages plus icons. I'm kind of shocked they didn't drop stock Android in there, too, because that would have illustrated just how much work Samsung put into copying the iOS look. On the other hand, certainly the "rows of icons" look was present in both PalmOS and Newton. They didn't require boxed icons like iOS seems to, but early versions of SymbianOS did (later versions did not). So it's quite possible there's prior art on these, too.
I'm also not an expert on the design patent aspects of the case. So had I been there, I would have done my best to hear the judge's instructions on that aspect.
If you could change the law, what would you change?
My biggest problem with the patent system right now is that the test of obviousness seems to be largely disregarded in the granting of patents. A patent must not be obvious to one "skilled in the art". This clearly means (IMHO, obviously) that there's what most people would consider a real invention here, something novel and clever. This also means that no one NOT skilled in the art is qualified to judge this -- so the 10 or 20 years or whatever it was from the time software patents started being granted to the point at which the PTO had actual software engineers as examiners, those patents should be invalidated. Ok, sure, they're expiring anyway. This also means that an examiner can only examine patents in her specific field -- you can't be an EE examining mechanical patents, you can't be a software engineer examining bio patents, etc. The bar needs to be much, much higher, particularly given the horrible stuff I've seen out there.
I'm not at all against patents -- I'm against bad patents.
You have had a long and interesting career and are responsible for some pretty amazing technology, do you think what you achieved would have been p
Absolutely! If you look at the average NAS or router these days, you'll find the essence of a personal computer. Actually, in the 70s, these would have seemed like personal supercomputers. They're probably running Linux, which these days is a perfectly acceptable OS for desktops, servers, appliances, and supercomputers... which tells you that they're all fundamentally the same kind of thing, just used for different applications.
But it's deeper than that. The first time someone figured out a decent way to do external HDD or Flash storage, MAYBE that was patent worthy. The next time, the idea of external storage (or any other thing) is already obvious to one skilled in the art, because of the existence of that first one. So you might patent some very innovative new way to do this thing (eg, a novel circuit implementation), but you're not going to be able to patent it as novel at the system level.
One of the big problems with software patents is that they bypass this differentiation. In the early days, just as you'd have to include a circuit with a hardware patent or a very detailed drawing and functional description on a mechanical patent, you had to include the source code. At some point, the courts started allowing flow charts and other abstractions. So nearly all software patents are very close to being system-level, not implementation level. It's very easy to claim them against a whole field, rather than just the very, very specific way they work.
Actually, I don't entirely disagree with the verdict.
Yeah, there was crazy prior art on '915, and possible some others. But it's also pretty clear that Samsung intentionally wrote their replacement home screen and other add-ons to look like the iPhone. Android doesn't do bounce-back, Android doesn't require rounded-square boxes around icons, etc. So there was definitely intent to copy. Whether any of the patents making that a real case stand up, though, you'd definitely have to have heard the case in-person. Could be that the foreman prevented proper discussion of prior art. Could be that Samsung just screwed the pooch on presenting it well.
I'd show him my patents, then. And point out that I also did patent defense (while at Commodore), so I not only know how to write one (I've written several, actually, both mine and for others), I know how to critically examine one against prior art. And I know the real meaning of "obvious to one skilled in the art", not the one the patent examiners often use, just to avoid work.
Of course, Apple would have DQed me in jury selection.
Actually, the guy seems to have abandoned the patent, at least that what the patent search I did showed. Even if he did basically patent existing technology from the 70s, and TiVo, and a few other existing things, he didn't have any way to make money on such an obviously bad patent. Waste of time and money, unless he just wanted a wall decoration.
But it sounds like he's definitely of the opinion that prior art doesn't really matter much. Or he's got a complete misunderstanding of how prior art should be applied to existing patents, rather than how one might squirrel their way around the prior art when writing a patent.
Actually, that's not true. Yes, the claims are used in court. But the full description of the patent, not the claims, are the basis for the PTO's approval or rejection. The claims are simply checked for accuracy -- are they properly descriptive of what's contained in the main body of the patent or not. Examiners will often reject claims for inaccuracy, since they're usually written with intent of making the patent seem overly broad, should it come to litigation.
This demonstrates pretty clearly that Hogan either doesn't understand prior art, or is very clever about misleading the PTO about prior art.
One basic fundamental principal of all Patents (well, all utility patents... I have no idea what they're smoking over on the Design Patent side of things, but I'd like to try some, given a long weekend) is that of not being "obvious to one skilled in the art". The PTO's never been very good with this anyway, since every applicant tries to convince them they've invented something profound, when it's usually pretty ordinary. And obvious. Of course, one fundamental failing of the PTO, particularly at the dawn of software patenting, was the complete lack of examiners "skilled in the art" well enough to even correctly judge this level of obviousness.
One major point of failure is "X, but on Y". So personal computers have had removable storage at least since the PET 2001 by buddy had in 1977. Probably a bit before, but I can personally verify that one, having loaded and even written the cassette tapes myself. Given that pretty much every advanced set top box designed is a somewhat specialized personal computer (having designed personal computers for 11.5 years and STBs for 6, you can trust me on this), there's absolutely nothing not obvious to one skilled in the art about adding any kind of removable storage to an STB. In fact, I had one in the late 1990s that did USB, if not SD cards (in fairness, the original SD Card wasn't released until 2000, and no one would really want to use flash memory for video back then anyway, it was simply too small). Same goes for smartphones, tablets, etc.
Which means the invention might still be patentable, but it has to be implemented in a really unique way -- you need a real invention, not just copying the PC schematic over to a slightly different personal computer design and calling that an invention. But the patent files are full of things everyone did for years, with "on a smartphone", "on the internet", "on a tablet", whatever, pretty much just tacked on. And most applications are terrible about including the obvious prior art everyone knows about, even though that's a filing requirement. Even if it's not patented. I've written a few patents, analyzed dozens for various purposes (prior art, actual infringement, etc)... it's a heinous mess, overall.
And largely not because of clowns like Hogan, but because large companies learned to work the system, years back. They've mastered the art of getting nothing through the system, then claiming it covers everything. And they know, it's regular rubes will be judging the patents in court, much of the time. Look at Apple's '915 patent, which some people think covers all of multi-touch, pinch to zoom, and probably anything anyone's ever done with a touchscreen. But in the legal brew-ha-ha with Elan, the ITC determined that Apple's stuff was very, very specific to the way they did it, wasn't infringing on Elan, and neither were Elan's patents infringing on Apple... though Apple settled for paying them $5 million (pocket change) and a cross-licensing agreement. Given the VAST amount of prior art on touch (going back to the 60s) and multi-touch (early 80s), it's impossible to believe Apple really has anything fundamental here (see http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html). But Apple knows that's rarely brought up in these kinds of cases... and it looks like Hogan did what he could to mislead the regular rubes, perhaps far worse than if know-nothing-specifics were on the case.
While true, it's better than being judged by an idiot who doesn't understand the law, but misunderstands it with such force, he convinced the other 11 to follow along.
What a twit! It's not simply that my set top boxes did this (Metabox AG) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the simple fact is, a set top box is fundamentally a personal computer you put in your livingroom . Many actually even run the same OS... we ran OS/2, then an in-house Amiga-like OS, TiVo famously ran Linux. If a personal computer already did a specific thing, doing exactly that same thing on an STB (or smartphone, tablet, net book, smart toaster oven, etc) fails the mandatory test of obviousness.
Three quarters of Apple's vast cash horde is being held offshore to avoid US taxes. So I suppose they are paying some tax, but less than a quarter of what they rightly owe. What a fine American company.
Could be you just don't like music all that much. I find new music constantly... even help a bit of it come to life, funding the occasional Kickstarter project, writing the occasional song myself (no need to force those on you, either, I'm sure you'd find them suck-worthy, too).
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Depends on what you're used to. The internals on the Galaxy Nexus -- great. Even nearly nine months later, I'm still happy with it (I'd be happier still, I suspect, if Verizon ever gets off their buttocks and pushes out the JellyBean update. Yeah, I know, I can get it elsewhere). The display is amazing, the battery life (with the larger cell) is great. It looks cool, particularly compared to the now-retro-looking iPhone.
But it's got some issues. My previous phone was the O. G. Droid, which might have been kind of ugly (basically the anti-iPhone, in its day), but it was nearly indestructible. The rubber over metal back meant it didn't break, scratch, or slip from your fingers. The glass was unscratchable.
Galaxy Nexus, meanwhile, is none of those things. The glass scratches... it's definitely a notch or two below Gorilla Glass (which they are using on the SIII). The lack of an SD card slot wasn't a deal breaker, but it should be a no-brainer, too.. that's all of what, an extra $0.50 cost? The plastic case is just that -- plain old plastic. The paint scratches off very easily -- I've resorted to using a thin rubber case, which was pointless with the Droid. Meanwhile, Motorola's RAZR didn't have the display, it has a smaller fixed battery (which they half-fixed by changing it to a larger fixed-battery), but it's freakin' Kevlar over polycarbonate or some-such, Gorilla Glass and sealed against moisture, etc. That's thinking about casework. Samsung.. no so much, though I think the SIII looks like maybe they're starting too.
Of course, with the GN, it's also quite possible that Samsung gave Google exactly what they asked for, and nothing extra. Google, most likely, was primarily concerned about what's inside, this being the ICS flagship device, less so about the physical issues than perhaps a proper phone designer would have been.
As soon as you want to step outside, even for data, it's not quite so easy, and can often be quite a hassle.
Yup. For example... I'm working on a PC, it's got a network issue, can't connect. Needs to fetch me a new driver from the internet. And hey, I have this great thing called a SmartPhone, which is really a pocket computer with persistent network connection. I'll just grab that driver, and... whoa! Easy in Android, not allowed in iOS, at least by default -- it'll only download things it understands (perhaps some 3rd party tools make this work better, don't know about that).
Some folks just want freedom. It may not matter to others. True freedom is like handing a person a scalpel rather than a plastic table knife -- yes, you can cut yourself with it. A few out there may be better off with out it. But most of us, nope -- we want the option to exercise that freedom in any way possible, even if we ultimately don't do things substantially different on Android than iOS on a daily basis.
It did actually involve rounded corners -- that became the focus of many pundits and bloggers, simply because that was such a public thing in Europe, the various "it does", "no it doesn't" decisions over the Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad, the "Community Design" that doesn't look like either one of them, etc.
This was on the table. The jury rejected it -- they agreed with the UK judge: the Galaxy Tab is just not as cool as the iPad :-)
They could have worked out between themselves. But they didn't.
"Working it out" is driven by your motivations.
I had dealings in the 80s on the receiving side of an IBM patent suit (working for Commodore). They hit us up with all sorts of patents. And over 90% were bogus, based on various criteria (doesn't apply, prior art, etc). But IBM's goal was basically eliminating themselves as a target, not taking all of your money or trying to block your product. So they had a flat license fee for 3+ patents. And an inevitable part of that fee negotiation was securing a cross license for your patents. They were pretty nervous about someone coming along with some big patent hammer and going after them.
And there was another concern -- when you know many of your patents are fairly bogus, you never really want to go to court. IBM in the mid-80s had been taking full advantage of the gold rush that was the start of the PTO allowing software patents without having a single examiner "skilled in the art" of software engineering. They had a crazy number of patents, but if they had established a record of lots of patents being tossed out, it would have been publicly embarrassing, and potential to cause all sorts of licensees to re-negotiate. Settling these things out of court keeps the proceedings fairly civil, and very private.
If Apple's still following Steve Jobs plan to kill Android, their goal isn't simple co-existence and getting paid for what they're due, but blocking Android where possible, creating FUD otherwise. This suit began well before Mr. Jobs died, and it was hardly the first -- Apple's been suing Samsung everywhere. And, in general, losing.
And of course, if you don't think you did wrong (or you're very sure your opponent doesn't have a strong case), you may well fight back. That's what got me reading 30+ IBM patents at a time back in the 80s... IBM was after Commodore for the Amiga, which wasn't based on any the IBM PC patents they so easily pressed against most computer companies. Some was also positioning -- IBM was after cross-licensing, and if the Amiga wasn't covered by IBM patents, or perhaps very few, that changes negotiations, or even leads to court cases (you're not going to court to invalidate 100 patents, but you might if you only believe 2 or 3 actually apply, and those have ample prior art).
Gestures are ancient news.... I used an Apollo computer running Mentor CAD software back in the mid 1980s. It supported all kinds of mouse/puck gesture commands... but I'm not sure you could draw an equivalence to one finger or two. Of course, there's the usual chorded-mouse stuff -- gesture with button vs. no button, which kind of does the same thing (the Apollo puck actually had four buttons; they switched to a three-button mouse as standard with the newer systems, by the late 80s).
He's not going to sue TiVo, even though he did more or less patent a TiVo-like device some years after TiVo shipped. I had a series of STBs sold in Germany in the late 1990s that also deliver demonstrable prior art against this guy's patent (Metabox AG). However, according to wherever I snagged hit patent (Google Patent Search?), he's abandoned it -- didn't pay his maintenance fees, more than likely.
I understand the Google concern.
Take a look at the section of the stuff released that shows icons. Now, you can argue if Apple has any exclusive right to rounded-square icons... I'm pretty sure early versions of SymbianOS either enforced this, or used it as the standard design-guide stuff. Most "rows of icons" handheld devices have traditionally used the more typical icons you find everywhere, which have an image, transparent background, and no borders. At least as an option.
Looking at just that bit, it's pretty clear that some of the icons on the Samsung devices are damn near identical to those of the iPhone. And sure, there are only so many ways to depict a phone or a calculator. But when you also consider (something they didn't present, at least far as I've seen) that stock Android looks very different, while Samsung's version looks more like iPhone than a Nexus device, you have to conclude that Samsung intentionally copied some elements of Apple's look here. They have a design patent on that. Whether there was demonstrable prior art on that, I don't know, but I do understand why Google was concerned. Not to mention perhaps a secondary concern over fragmentation of the Android UI.
The "rubber-band" or "scroll bounce-back" was also a very well know Apple patent, something you don't find in Android, and something that, IMHO, doesn't belong on Android or any computer system. It's more of that Apple skeuomorphic drek, which I find really annoying (and obviously, all corporations should work to keep me happy with their UI, or at least those I use, like Android). So again, this is something pretty obviously patented (again, no idea of specific prior art here) that Samsung injected into Android... more obvious attempts to copy Apple, it seems.
And then there's the overall gestalt of the device. You can technically implement a dozen copies of things that, alone, wouldn't make any difference. But taken together, even if it doesn't violate a single patent or copyright, the court might define your thing as being in violation of the others' trade dress, under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. Basically, if you make your product look too much like mine, in ways that distinctively define my product, you can be in violation, even without violating a single patent or trademark. They ruled against the Galaxy Tab looking too much like the iPad, but they did rule that a number of phones looked too iPhone-like, either based on Apple's "white" and "black" design patents, or the more general trade dress, not sure about that.
AMD's these days all about performance per Watt.. in that, they may be closer to Intel than if you're just looking at peak performance (where, yeah, Intel's 50% faster, give or take, at least on some work).
For the purposes of dismissing a patent, prior art does not just have to be something similar, but must be something that is, in whole or in part, exactly the same as what's claimed in the patent. If the patent claims a specific processor function that the prior art didn't have, it's not prior art!
Yes, a patent has to be very, very specific. The problem is when the patent isn't specific enough to exclude the prior art. If the patent reads on the prior art, it's too broad. Add to that the fact that software patents don't usually include very specific detail about the implementations (eg, the source code). If I'm patenting a hardware design, I pretty much have to include a circuit diagram of some kind. Software patents used to include source code, but they've allowed that slacken to flow charts and block diagrams, which may well illustrate the algorithm, but not the specific implementation of that algorithm. This is why it's so common to see patents emerge that seem to claim coverage of decades of prior art.
The other thing is that patents, including some in the Apple case, are increasingly written from the perspective of winning jury trials. So there's often far more information in the patent than necessary, to help obfuscate the real point of the patent.
In short, it's increasingly difficult for lay people to understand these. And prior art cuts both ways... if you did write your patent too broadly, it may well be invalidated by prior art, even when that's not what you'd find with a deeper examination of the specific mechanisms involved.
The '826 patent wasn't part of the case.
Apple, Android, and Microsoft employees both saw "Minority Report" in 2002. Apple even mentioned "It's like Minority Report" at the iPhone debut event. Of course, Microsoft also did have Bill Buxton and perhaps a few others who had actually pioneered touch interfaces before. Apple bought Fingerworks in 2005, so they did, too, well before the iPhone's launch.
There are plenty of times in history where everyone's pretty much thinking of the same things, at the same time, even if they're developing them independently. Look at the early personal computer industry... Commodore, Apple, Atari, Osborne and Kaypro and all those other CP/M guys. There was lots of flocking -- things moving in the same direction without any specific copying, one to the other. Because they all saw the same predecessors in tech, they all read the same Sci-Fi book, they shared the same culture, etc.
Of course, the '915 patent doesn't specifically patent pinch to zoom. In fact, here's the claim in question:
That should be pretty clear now, eh? Of course, the claim only says what. The body of the patent has to say "how", and if you're doing the same "what" with a different "how", you don't infringe. Software patents are dangerous in that they're often approved at a very high system level, without the real details of the "how" being required anymore (eg, the source code).
Apple's main reason for success was business-related, not technological at all.
They decided that consumers would want a smartphone. As simple as that. They did a good enough job of building a modern smartphone, taking into account things people didn't like about the existing devices (the stylus) and various things they'd see, such as multitouch demos given by other companies. But the seed of the success was tying this idea into their already successful business.
The existing smartphones and PDAs, RIM, Palm, WinMo, they completely rejected the idea that consumers would use such devices -- they were all about business. I had a Palm T|X (later a Treo) years before the iPhone. Not all THAT different. Yeah, it had a resistive touchscreen, so you had to use a stylus or a hard finger press. But had the long 3.5" 320x480 screen, virtually identical to the iPhone. Thin metal case, nearly the same, only slight flared at the bottom to make gripping it easier. Not a huge amount of built-in flash, but you could add 4GB in an SD Card. And yet, even with the same CPU as the original Zune, Palm didn't ship it with media playing software. The business stuff, sure -- even today, ex-Palm users complain about how Palm apps were better than today's iPhone apps (a friend of mine is still angry at the limits of repeat event scheduling in the iPhone calendar, vs the Palm).
In short, there's evolution going on all the time. Apple's revolution was not in hardware, but in marketing.
What do you think the verdict should have been in this case under the current law?
Given what I know of the case (I've read Apple's patents, I know of a bunch of prior art on some things, but I do not, obviously, know how this case was presented to the jury), I would like to have seen Apple's '915 patent either extremely narrowed in scope, or entirely invalidated. It's pretty clear that like many companies before them, Apple's learned to game the system, but at an new level. I read dozens of IBM patents when Commodore was being sued by IBM over the Amiga. Plenty didn't apply. Plenty had obvious prior art. A few probably did apply... and IBM's licensing program made it fairly moot; the price was the same to license 3 or 30,000.
But what I learned out that was just how IBM's patent department had started out as a defense, but became a profit center. And they had learned to push through pretty anything that could be patented, not should be patented. When software patents started being allowed in the 80s, they saw a gold rush. That's why, for example, IBM had a patent on cut and paste between text buffers, applied for in 1984.... long after it was common practice.
Apple's clearly writing patents for trial now. You can pretty much include what you want in the main body, so you have one like '915, which seems very specifically designed to lead a jury into believing that Apple pretty much owns multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom, and a bunch of other related gestures, even though that's not really what the patent says. But it's 52 pages long, and hard enough for an experienced engineer to read and get through. And of course, patents are written in this weird mix of legal and engineering language... having spent lots of time with them, I can't imagine a lay person making much sense of these things. And yet, the patent authors know how these decisions are made... they're not trying to write clearer patents.
With that said, I'd still have found for Apple over Samsung on some of the copying issues. I'm not certain it was illegal, but there's no question they intentionally copied various elements. Apple presented a number of images, showing the iOS home page and icons, versus a couple Samsung home pages plus icons. I'm kind of shocked they didn't drop stock Android in there, too, because that would have illustrated just how much work Samsung put into copying the iOS look. On the other hand, certainly the "rows of icons" look was present in both PalmOS and Newton. They didn't require boxed icons like iOS seems to, but early versions of SymbianOS did (later versions did not). So it's quite possible there's prior art on these, too.
I'm also not an expert on the design patent aspects of the case. So had I been there, I would have done my best to hear the judge's instructions on that aspect.
If you could change the law, what would you change?
My biggest problem with the patent system right now is that the test of obviousness seems to be largely disregarded in the granting of patents. A patent must not be obvious to one "skilled in the art". This clearly means (IMHO, obviously) that there's what most people would consider a real invention here, something novel and clever. This also means that no one NOT skilled in the art is qualified to judge this -- so the 10 or 20 years or whatever it was from the time software patents started being granted to the point at which the PTO had actual software engineers as examiners, those patents should be invalidated. Ok, sure, they're expiring anyway. This also means that an examiner can only examine patents in her specific field -- you can't be an EE examining mechanical patents, you can't be a software engineer examining bio patents, etc. The bar needs to be much, much higher, particularly given the horrible stuff I've seen out there.
I'm not at all against patents -- I'm against bad patents.
You have had a long and interesting career and are responsible for some pretty amazing technology, do you think what you achieved would have been p
You should read the actual patent and case file. It was his personal patent, something he did on his own time, "as a hobby".
Absolutely! If you look at the average NAS or router these days, you'll find the essence of a personal computer. Actually, in the 70s, these would have seemed like personal supercomputers. They're probably running Linux, which these days is a perfectly acceptable OS for desktops, servers, appliances, and supercomputers... which tells you that they're all fundamentally the same kind of thing, just used for different applications.
But it's deeper than that. The first time someone figured out a decent way to do external HDD or Flash storage, MAYBE that was patent worthy. The next time, the idea of external storage (or any other thing) is already obvious to one skilled in the art, because of the existence of that first one. So you might patent some very innovative new way to do this thing (eg, a novel circuit implementation), but you're not going to be able to patent it as novel at the system level.
One of the big problems with software patents is that they bypass this differentiation. In the early days, just as you'd have to include a circuit with a hardware patent or a very detailed drawing and functional description on a mechanical patent, you had to include the source code. At some point, the courts started allowing flow charts and other abstractions. So nearly all software patents are very close to being system-level, not implementation level. It's very easy to claim them against a whole field, rather than just the very, very specific way they work.
Yup... it sure sounds like the Foreman is giving testimony. That ain't allowed.
Actually, I don't entirely disagree with the verdict.
Yeah, there was crazy prior art on '915, and possible some others. But it's also pretty clear that Samsung intentionally wrote their replacement home screen and other add-ons to look like the iPhone. Android doesn't do bounce-back, Android doesn't require rounded-square boxes around icons, etc. So there was definitely intent to copy. Whether any of the patents making that a real case stand up, though, you'd definitely have to have heard the case in-person. Could be that the foreman prevented proper discussion of prior art. Could be that Samsung just screwed the pooch on presenting it well.
I'd show him my patents, then. And point out that I also did patent defense (while at Commodore), so I not only know how to write one (I've written several, actually, both mine and for others), I know how to critically examine one against prior art. And I know the real meaning of "obvious to one skilled in the art", not the one the patent examiners often use, just to avoid work.
Of course, Apple would have DQed me in jury selection.
Actually, the guy seems to have abandoned the patent, at least that what the patent search I did showed. Even if he did basically patent existing technology from the 70s, and TiVo, and a few other existing things, he didn't have any way to make money on such an obviously bad patent. Waste of time and money, unless he just wanted a wall decoration.
But it sounds like he's definitely of the opinion that prior art doesn't really matter much. Or he's got a complete misunderstanding of how prior art should be applied to existing patents, rather than how one might squirrel their way around the prior art when writing a patent.
Actually, that's not true. Yes, the claims are used in court. But the full description of the patent, not the claims, are the basis for the PTO's approval or rejection. The claims are simply checked for accuracy -- are they properly descriptive of what's contained in the main body of the patent or not. Examiners will often reject claims for inaccuracy, since they're usually written with intent of making the patent seem overly broad, should it come to litigation.
Right.
This demonstrates pretty clearly that Hogan either doesn't understand prior art, or is very clever about misleading the PTO about prior art.
One basic fundamental principal of all Patents (well, all utility patents ... I have no idea what they're smoking over on the Design Patent side of things, but I'd like to try some, given a long weekend) is that of not being "obvious to one skilled in the art". The PTO's never been very good with this anyway, since every applicant tries to convince them they've invented something profound, when it's usually pretty ordinary. And obvious. Of course, one fundamental failing of the PTO, particularly at the dawn of software patenting, was the complete lack of examiners "skilled in the art" well enough to even correctly judge this level of obviousness.
One major point of failure is "X, but on Y". So personal computers have had removable storage at least since the PET 2001 by buddy had in 1977. Probably a bit before, but I can personally verify that one, having loaded and even written the cassette tapes myself. Given that pretty much every advanced set top box designed is a somewhat specialized personal computer (having designed personal computers for 11.5 years and STBs for 6, you can trust me on this), there's absolutely nothing not obvious to one skilled in the art about adding any kind of removable storage to an STB. In fact, I had one in the late 1990s that did USB, if not SD cards (in fairness, the original SD Card wasn't released until 2000, and no one would really want to use flash memory for video back then anyway, it was simply too small). Same goes for smartphones, tablets, etc.
Which means the invention might still be patentable, but it has to be implemented in a really unique way -- you need a real invention, not just copying the PC schematic over to a slightly different personal computer design and calling that an invention. But the patent files are full of things everyone did for years, with "on a smartphone", "on the internet", "on a tablet", whatever, pretty much just tacked on. And most applications are terrible about including the obvious prior art everyone knows about, even though that's a filing requirement. Even if it's not patented. I've written a few patents, analyzed dozens for various purposes (prior art, actual infringement, etc)... it's a heinous mess, overall.
And largely not because of clowns like Hogan, but because large companies learned to work the system, years back. They've mastered the art of getting nothing through the system, then claiming it covers everything. And they know, it's regular rubes will be judging the patents in court, much of the time. Look at Apple's '915 patent, which some people think covers all of multi-touch, pinch to zoom, and probably anything anyone's ever done with a touchscreen. But in the legal brew-ha-ha with Elan, the ITC determined that Apple's stuff was very, very specific to the way they did it, wasn't infringing on Elan, and neither were Elan's patents infringing on Apple... though Apple settled for paying them $5 million (pocket change) and a cross-licensing agreement. Given the VAST amount of prior art on touch (going back to the 60s) and multi-touch (early 80s), it's impossible to believe Apple really has anything fundamental here (see http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html). But Apple knows that's rarely brought up in these kinds of cases... and it looks like Hogan did what he could to mislead the regular rubes, perhaps far worse than if know-nothing-specifics were on the case.
While true, it's better than being judged by an idiot who doesn't understand the law, but misunderstands it with such force, he convinced the other 11 to follow along.
What a twit! It's not simply that my set top boxes did this (Metabox AG) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the simple fact is, a set top box is fundamentally a personal computer you put in your livingroom . Many actually even run the same OS... we ran OS/2, then an in-house Amiga-like OS, TiVo famously ran Linux. If a personal computer already did a specific thing, doing exactly that same thing on an STB (or smartphone, tablet, net book, smart toaster oven, etc) fails the mandatory test of obviousness.
Three quarters of Apple's vast cash horde is being held offshore to avoid US taxes. So I suppose they are paying some tax, but less than a quarter of what they rightly owe. What a fine American company.
Could be you just don't like music all that much. I find new music constantly... even help a bit of it come to life, funding the occasional Kickstarter project, writing the occasional song myself (no need to force those on you, either, I'm sure you'd find them suck-worthy, too).