There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken?
I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. If Apple isn't entitled to patent protection for it's discoveries, I'd argue nobody is.
Which is a fine argument to make, but we should leave Apple out of it and say that even when a company uses the system as it was intended to be used, the system is broken. If Apple's victory over HTC is scary, the real conclusion is that all patents are scary, even those that protect companies doing actual research and who sell actual products.
Meanwhile, I think that Google are the actual villains. Do they spend billions dismantling the patent system? No. Do they spend billions protecting their partners from lawsuits? No. What they do is aid and abet other companies to violate patents, and then they shrug their shoulders and sell a few more text ads for Viagra or ambulance chasing lawyers.
I think the current system is inconsistent, totally broken and unfit for purpose for various reasons that have been discussed at length. But even accepting the law as it stands, it is very clear that the obviousness test is not applied correctly.
I have read some software patents (not this one) and all of them were completely obvious to me. They do not have to be obvious to a judge, they have to be obvious to "one of ordinary skill in the art". That's exactly what I am.
All of the above is not Apple's fault and I don't blame them for patenting what is essentially the context menu. But it is Apple's choice to use patents in a defensive way or to act aggressively against their competitors.
Yes they are a for profit company and it is their right to act in that way. But it is a very short sighted decision that hurts the profitability and innovative power of this entire industry. It is also short sighted because being seen as a nasty, destructive force that deems it appropriate and necessary to act in ways that are seen as unfair and anticompetitive by almost everybody can be the downfall of the mightiest companies as Microsoft and IBM can attest to.
You lost me at the last paragraph (otherwise a really nice argument). Launching into a tirade against Viagra ads doesn't do much for your case IMO. I suppose making a multi-billion dollar bid for relevant smartphone-related patents isn't doing enough for your partners? Google never really tried to "make" these phones. You could argue that Samsung, HTC, et al. "fell for it" without realizing all the legal ramifications riddling the platform now that they're fully invested in it. However, while I'm sure Google didn't buy Android based on altruistic impulse, you make them out as a villain straight out of a James Bond movie, "we'll create a 'open' mobile OS based on Linux to sell more Viagra ads. mwahhaha".
Provided these patent claims are valid and honored, from this point on the only end game I can see is the big platform companies racing to acquire more and more obscure patents to play a game of chicken, until they reach a point of mutually assured destruction of "you can't make phones, I can't make phones so there".
> Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products.
Apple actually does comparatively little spending on R&D when contrasted with the likes of Microsoft or even Google. [1] When it comes to design, it's well known that Apple is of the mentality that good design is something recognizable and, that being the case, they don't invest in human-computer interaction research. [2]
As the government has found out, R&D dollars spent is not the best way to rate the output. To put in programmer terms, we have all seen projects that spent a lot of money on developers and shown no more than a 5 person team would have had. The companies process (and desire) in patent making is an important item also.
Apple is in comparatively less markets then Microsoft and Google so it would make sense that they could spend comparatively less then Microsoft & Google in R&D.
I don't see how [2] says anything about whether Apple invests in HCI research. Whether they do market research or customer research is a completely different matter.
But with respect to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products.
How do you feel about the MS attacks against Android? I find it odd that so many have come out in support of Apple, but against MS. MS has taken a much softer position (licensing fees vs injunctions) and frankly the Apple patents are no stronger than MS's in these cases. In fact, I think that one of Apple's patents have prior art in Windows Mobile.
Personally, I've come around to believing that we should end SW patents (if you can actually separate them from patents at all), but as long as they're on the books a public company that isn't utilizing them to the best of their ability is violating their fudiciary duty.
Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products.
The patents are broad enough to affect any smart phone and many other mobile devices. Context-specific actions based on local data[1] and real-time data processing[2].
The first question isn't whether or not Apple is a troll (they are clearly not), the question is: are they using patents in an anti-competitive manner. Do they have valid IP claims whose cleverness deserves protection from copycats or is this just kneecapping the competition?
Both patents cover technology that is obvious (today, they were filed 10 years ago). Neither has anything to do with what makes the iPhone special. And they are targeted at Apple's biggest competitor. So the most obvious conclusion is that this is a strategic move by Apple using IP that has no real merit.
To reiterate: This isn't using the patent system as it was intended. Apple isn't protecting the Apple-ness of their products from copycats. They are using their strong patent portfolio against competitors with weak patent portfolios.
They are using the patent system exactly as it has been setup. You can argue about the system, but they are definitely not acting as patent trolls here. If the patent was too trivial, then expect HTC to argue for patent invalidation - exactly as the system was setup.
If you don't like the patent system, I have a sympathetic ear. I have issues with it as well. I've yet to see any proposals for an alternative, though, and an alternative would require amending the constitution.
If you're going to abuse the system to push competitors out of the market, you can do this with every competitor. Apple has not sued RIM, Palm, Microsoft, or any of the feature phones that -- from an abusive, overly broad perspective-- infringe on Apple patents.
Apple has only sued the people who took the iPhone design and replicated it. Apple is going after the cloners, not the competitors.
Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone.
It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.)
Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone.
There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions.
Calling this "abuse" communicates to me that you think when it comes to software, people should be able to copy whatever they want.
I think that's bad. I think google should have innovated, and if they aren't willing to do so, then I don't think the should be able to just outsource their R&D to Apple and get the results for free.
The purpose of patents is to open the kimono and let everyone know what you've done. Apple did this, which gave google a heads up for starting their own innovations. This is good for innovation because it means companies don't have to start from scratch. It isn't a license to just copy the patent and not innovate.
Calling this "abuse" communicates to me that you think when it comes to software, people should be able to copy whatever they want.
If by "copy" you mean "create products with similar functionality without copying code", then essentially yes. Otherwise we'd end up with one spreadsheet, one browser, one touchscreen phone, and we'd still be on Friendster.
The first iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. The LG was announced on December 12, 2006. Your timeline seems to be a bit off.
> I made a good, rational argument, but since I'm not in agreement with the hive mind, it is currently sitting at -1.
So two people downvoted you. Let me explain how voting works on HN: A comment which the initial readers dislike will be downvoted, because they tend to express their opinions through downvoting rather than argument. Then, over the next few hours, the rest of the people on HN will show up, read your comment, and vote on it based on whether they think it presents a "good, rational argument". This happens all the time - comments drop down to -1 or -2, the submitter freaks out about hiveminds, and then when the rest of the people on HN get around it reading it it gets upvoted. Calm down.
Also, due to UI issues, it's aggravatingly easy for iPhone users to accidentally vote on a comment. I've become incredibly paranoid when reading HN on my phone these days just because I've accidentally driven so many commenters ballistic with random downvotes. Getting mad over one or two votes just doesn't make sense, even less than getting mad over HN votes in general makes sense.
(Incidentally, and ironically given the subject matter, this problem doesn't seem to exist on Android. I wonder if Apple has a patent on forum rage.)
I don't understand how Apple proponents can claim on one hand that iOS is vastly superior to Android but on the other that similarities between the two systems pose an existential threat to Apple's ability to innovate. Either execution counts or it doesn't. If Android is outselling the iPhone at similar price points it's obviously doing more than just copying. What's worse, the patents with which Apple is actually litigating are trivial.
The defenses I hear of the patent system remind me a lot of defenses I hear for American drug policy. At this point the evidence is overwhelming that current U.S. patent law does more to stifle than to foster innovation and this is going to hurt American global competitiveness in the long run.
Look towards iOS 5, you could easily say Apple outsourced their notification system R&D to Google. And that is the problem with software patents. Everyone borrows bits from here and there, sometimes there is just one obvious way of doing things, sometimes there is parallel inspiration. As long as peope aren't actually stealing code or intentionally trying to deceive customers, it is a pretty large grey area.
So is your argument that patents are ok, and a functional entity suing a patent violator is ok, but this specific patent is not ok? Or that patents are ok, but using them to push competitors violating the patents out of the market is not ok? Or that patents altogether are not ok?
So if Apple are against software patents (IIRC this is their official stance) then that leaves us having to believe what they say and not what they do.
BTW, why is it Google's responsibility to "spend billions dismantling the patent system"?
Apple is definitely not opposed to patents. I remember slides from the original iPhone announcement touting how much they patented their multitouch system (which apparently wasn't that well considering how I don't see those patents in any of their suits).
At the same time Steve Jobs is openly and repeatedly quoting Picasso's "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU for one example) which directly contradicts the "let's monopolize ideas" trend.
They say often whatever is convenient and aligned with profit motif at most times and the truth some times.
Apple (i.e. Jobs) publicly talks about how many ideas they have monopoly on to scare competition, reassure analysts and because it the current legal system it is a great advantage. That's the profit motive speaking.
At times, when talking about necessity of stealing other people's ideas, Jobs speaks the truth because we all know that everything we build is an improvement on something else. Once we patent everything, there will be nothing to build on. No ability for new people to disloge incumbents by improving on what they did in the past and therefore no incentive for incumbents to improve. Why spend effort improving things if you can collect just as much money by selling the stuff you did 5 years ago?
These patent stories get more and more ridiculous by the day. We need a major software patent amnesty event to just wipe the slate clean. Patents were originally for protecting tinkerers and original thinkers from getting their ideas ripped off by some corporation. I love myself too much to read through the meat of the patents but it sure sounds so vague and general to software in general. Any idiot who took CS101 could dream up a parser that auto-recognizes a phone number and make it clickable. I mean scrolling, like really? Do I need written permission from Steve Jobs to implement it on a touch device? So now we wait until year 2050 before we see it on anything other than a iPhone? I wonder who will be winning then, oh right probably Apple because now they cornered all the hologram related patents with their trademark "no touch" interface in iOS 21 and OSX Sea Lion while the rest of the companies were busy getting sued.
We need to rethink software patents. Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil. Software, especially UI innovation with all the metaphors drawn from the physical world is nothing like inventing the cotton gin. Sure we need to reward the the innovators but Apple engineers, brilliant though they may be, are intellectual slaves who don't own their own thoughts. Whoever actually came up with these things for Apple isn't retiring early that's for sure.
All this is great but smart companies are going to flock to countries where saner laws prevail or even the wild wild east like China where nothing is safe but at least they can focus on innovation and not second guess the ideas coming from their own engineers brains.
> Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil.
You were on a roll, saying people shouldn't have to innovate, then suddenly you worry about hampering innovation.
Which is it? You want to be able to copy freely instead of innovating, or you want innovation to be protected?
Many comments in these threads seem to think Apple woke up one day in 2007 with the completely obvious idea of an iPhone. That's not how it happened.
Apple had been researching hand held computing since the 80's, bringing the most advanced handheld anyone had ever seen to the market, and iterating the ideas of how the software should work and the usability of that software, in directions quite different from those pursued by others such as Palm or PocketPC focused on limited capabilities more in line with what that era's hardware could actually pull off.
The market wasn't ready for Newton then, but its ideas seeped into engineering consciousness, making its innovations seem "obvious" later. Eventually, physical technology caught up with Apple's ideas, enabling the iPhone and iPod touch.
The Johnny-come-lately copycats are close enough already without their copies having to be "slavish". Whining about this or that feature they can't copy isn't becoming. If inventing's so easy, invent something better that everyone else will complain, after they see it, is obvious.
Or, have the foresight or folly to go spend nearly two decades pouring money and hard work into a product the market isn't ready for, build a huge portfolio of research-driven ideas supporting making the product, finally bring a product to market that for the first time just "feels" to everyman it works exactly the way such a product should work, and then see how you feel about that twenty years of investment being protected.
Arguably, making something feel obvious is an art. What's not obvious is that obviousness can take so much work.
Where did I say people shouldn't have to innovate? My main gripe is with broad patents on software metaphors. You certainly have a point that Apple has every right to bear the fruits of their years of research and hard work. But what do you know, they already are because they redefined the smartphone market and are leagues ahead of the competition. Their mastery of intuitive and elegant interface design just can't be copied. Copycats can only do so much by emulating functionality. I find Android severely lacking and love my iPhone but shutting them out with patent suits isn't going to give them an an economic advantage beyond what they have for creating a fundamentally better product and it's going to be bad for consumers if we have to wait for these patents to run out before we can see competitive devices or buy devices that are perennially more expensive and inferior due to licensing fees.
I just find the legal framework in place for copyright and software patents out of touch with reality and far from ideal. It just seems that with the way the system currently works, science fiction writers should have a mountain of patents covering the next hundred years if only they would do the paperwork and pay the legal fees. We'd still be stuck in a pre-industrial society if we had current patent laws in the 18th century.
And Apple was in a position to make those investments in the first place because they profited handsomely from copying wholesale the fundamental ideas of the Mac UI. Now that the tables are turned they want to change the rules of the game.
Android brings more than enough innovation to the table to justify its existence. If anything Apple is borrowing more from Google now than vice-versa.
This argument is based on repeating an easily debunked falsehood.
Apple did not 'copy wholesale the fundamental ideas of the Mac UI'. They paid Xerox for a license to commercialize the technology via a stock deal, and then they spent significant effort refining it to make a consumer product.
So Apple really just wants other people to play by the same rules they do.
> They paid Xerox for a license to commercialize the technology via a stock deal, and then they spent significant effort refining it to make a consumer product.
You are the first person I've ever heard make that claim. The only support I've found for that statement is a throw-away sentence in Wikipedia's article about a lawsuit between Apple and Microsoft, which does not appear to be supported by the document cited. So, do you have a citation for that?
The New Yorker[1] has one of many references on the internet, but the price was 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock at $10 per share. The visit happened (over the protests of some at PARC). There are some side comments about the visit in "Triumph of the Nerds“.
Well then, you were entirely correct. I suppose that my search was both fairly cursory and didn't include all of the right search terms. I find it very surprising that this is the first I've heard of it, though; the "apple stole from xerox" meme is really entrenched, to the point that I never really doubted its truth.
I think it's fair to say that Xerox seriously undervalued their IP, but that was a well documented failing of their management who didn't see the potential that Jobs did in personal computing.
Arguably we're fortunate that he struck this deal and brought these ideas into production much more effectively than Xerox was doing.
On the same note, look at the differences in the actual manipulation of the UI elements between the Macintosh and the Xerox workstations. The differences are very interesting.
"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of all Google Android phones and tablets."
Yawn Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this tripe yet?
As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or settling).
Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything.
Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the results of your theory, and it's not pretty.
> Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price?
No.
To be worth while, investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even produced by the same factory) matching quality.
Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original or copy.
(A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100% of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are relatively rare.)
> doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?
No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the streets during the original marketing push.
"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important.
Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws.
Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable.
For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.
Your points are valid and should not be down voted! Come on guys, that isn't how this community works. :(
I completely agree with you in regards to how things /should/ be. But it goes without saying, we aren't living in that perfect world.
I don't think the ultimate impact of this ruling is going to be the banning of "all Google Android phones and tablets." I imagine in the worst case scenario HTC, et al, have to fork over some money to license the patents.
HTC has bought S3 graphics, which has successfully gone after Apple at ITC. ITC has found Apple infringing on two S3 graphics patents (final verdict in November). Now, HTC has been found infringing on two Apple patents (final verdict in December), will it force the two companies into cross licensing.
17 year software patents make absolutely no sense. The computer world changes fast (insert Moore's Law, etc.). 17 years ago, the Web was tiny. Most people didn't have cellphones. "Broadband" was a 19.2kbaud modem.
If we're going to have software patents, there should be a separate category for them; and they should be limited to, say, 5 years tops.
This will serve nothing but encourage patent trolls and big corporations to invest more and more in ridiculously broad patents. Apple sues others, patent troll sues Apple and others, some other competitors dig out obscure patents and start sueing; someone gonna benefit from this, but definitely not entrepreneurs or customers.
I really think Apple needs to take a page from Google's book here and adopt the 'don't be evil' philosophy.
This is very disappointing to me because I see Apple like a tennis player who can tell you where he is going to hit the ball, yet still beat you there every time. I think they should welcome the competition and view copycats with pride. You don't get it right all the time.
I'm sure it was nice viewing Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 with pride. It was probably wonderful being proud of Bill Gates trademarking the term "PDA" after hearing John Sculley use it in a talk. It's probably pretty flattering to see Google switching from designing Android as a blackberry clone to designing it as an iPhone clone.
To paraphrase a joke from the last depression: $5 and some pride gets you a nice cup of coffee at starbucks.
If you actually ever used a Xerox desktop of the era you'll see that Mac OS was markedly simpler to use than Xerox's UI, and had all kinds of improvements over it (overlapping windows, drag and drop, a menubar than benefited from Fitt's Law).
Everyone steals ideas, but simply coping is pathetic.
That they tried to exert too much control over their platform and lost out to competitors who could offer more choice and better value? Yes the same thing has happened here, but the answer is not for Apple to abuse the legal system as a substitute for competing on the merits of their product.
The first patent is described as a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data," which Apple says applies, for example, to tapping a phone number and being prompted options to call or look it up on the web.
So they have basically patented the context menu. How broken can a patent system possibly become before it crashes an entire economy?
You must examine a patent based on the specific claims, not the title. Many people make this mistake and assume the patent is much broader than it actually is.
Every patent is different, but the patent system is broken all the same.
Does not mean no patents make sense (although I have yet to see one in software in algorithms; but meaningful hardware patents are not unusual). The system needs to be completely rethought. As of now, the software patent system is not only easily abused, but itself is an abuse of common sense.
This is a good thing to keep in mind, but in this case, the patent really does appear to be about that vague as far as I've been able to find anyone explainng. The only difference from the title is that the patent requires the contextual action to have been automatically generated based on the content (it does not, however, detail any method for this "automatically generate" step).
It seems to me that Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb ought to be prior art, but maybe there's a technicality I'm missing, because that seems like a big one for the lawyers to miss.
Apple's claim does sound pretty broad and the court apparently found their claim to be legit.
I have not read a single software patent (and I have read some, if not this one) that was not completely obvious to me, and I am "one of ordinary skill in the art".
Not only big, the biggest one. But given increase in costs (MS tax, now Apple tax, tomorrow who knows) at some point it could be more cost effective for HTC to stop paying anyone and just not sell in the states. WO patents are much harder to get and very expensive to keep, so no big problem there.
On the other hand, Nokia was the largest global handset seller at a time virtually nobody in the US market knew what it was. Ignoring the US market is viable, and the US market isn't for everyone. Look how many car manufacturers have tried and failed to make a go of it. (At least Americans can pronounce Nokia. Peugeot didn't stand a chance.)
I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a market.
If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a company would care about: profits.
The U.S. market is kinda shrinking (relatively, at least). Do you think the new, rising economies are going to embrace these U.S. rules?
From a purely selfish point of view (European software developer) I say bring it on, saddling U.S. software companies with these ridiculous rules should eventually make my life easier competing against them. I'll quite happily infringe these "patents" and sell my good outside the U.S.
Not really. China is possibly the biggest market and if cost factor is factored in, India is perhaps the second biggest market for smart phones. The middle class in both these countries far exceed the entire population of the US. While they may not be able to afford a 600$ smartphone, they can definitely afford a 200 - 300$ one. HTC may as well focus on this segment and make cheaper smart phones. To hell with Apple and it's patents.
Someone mentioned that the patents are from 1994 and 1996. So Apple is winning this battle in the smartphone industry, with something they had way, way before iPhone. How is that fair?
"Development of the Apple Newton platform started in 1987 and officially ended on February 27, 1998."[1] "HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou."[2]
Apple's been investing in mobile usability (e.g., recognizing and acting on structured data with a tap) for a very long time. That an iPhone has a phone attached to it is arguably a secondary characteristic.
I think Steve is particularly pissed about Android. Consider that Eric Schmidt stayed in the board of Apple during the development of the iPhone without declaring a conflict of interest while Google were secretly developing Android. I imagine that apple vs android is personal.
Basically google had a head start because of this inside information.
I don't get it, isn't licensing the whole point of software patents.. sharing IP with the world and receiving royalties in return ? So how can Apple refuse to license the patent to HTC ?
The purpose of patents is to share the IP with the world, in return for a period of exclusivity. The decision to licence the technology in return for money is entirely down to the patent holder.
In particular there is no requirement that patents be licensable on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, nor that what society at large pays for access to the invention is less than it would have cost to have each competitor independently recreate it. Terms this generous should only be offered for inventions we're confident wouldn't have existed otherwise for any price. We shouldn't be enabling massive rent-seeking for straightforward improvements.
Why do we not see video game patents? Why don't we see, for example, Rockstar patenting "a mechanism for allowing a character to navigate a three dimensional space" and then suing the hell out of everyone else?
One of the patents is for registering regular expressions to extract telephone numbers and contact information out of documents. This is a stupid patent for several reasons:
#1 It's bloody obvious. Pretty much everyone reinvents it (Microsoft Smart Links anyone?) SMS->Extract Phone number, etc
#2 It's so bloody obvious that there is prior open-source applications prior to 1996 that have this feature (turning phone numbers in web documents into clickable action links/context actions) I will say no more, but I have one in my possession.
#3 It's bloody LAME! Really Apple, you want consumers to not be able to use ANY Android device based on the ability to turn text links into actions that was originally issues for the NeXT Desktop? Is that really the competitive advantage between the iPhone and other devices, that it has phone number detection in text documents!?!?
Apple has proven with this that they are a patent troll. Are they suing over iPhone exclusive inventions, like multitouch, proximity sensor, using accelerometers to detect orientation, the "Swipe to Unlock" stuff and all of the things we saw in the original Jesus Phone presentation?
No.
They are trying to hurt competition over something developed for the desktop in 1996.
Multitouch was not an iPhone invention, though I'd believe details of how they did it were. (Or anyway inventions of the company they bought before starting the project.) And using accelerometers to infer orientation -- wasn't that what accelerometers were invented for in the first place? (With other applications like triggering airbags coming later? I'm not sure but that's the impression I'm under.)
I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996, and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a phone number or a date in an email: it automatically detects it and gives me contextual choices, such as move the phone number into my address book (automatically extracting the sender's name), or create an appointement based on a piece of text that says "let's talk tomorrow at 3pm".
I'd say it's pretty smart. I can't guarantee it had never been done before 1996, but if I had come up with that at the time, I would have felt happy to file a patent for it.
That being said, that patent is not critical to Android. Worst case, you can't auto-extract phone numbers and emails from random text. Big deal.
Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be
structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as
"See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing.
Since that software is from 1992, it would definitely be prior art.
it's a completely trivial idea and apple just happens to be the clown that handed in their paper work first. or bought the stamped paper work from whoever. i've lost a lot of respect for apple for trying to leverage this patent.
1. HTC and Moto were both sued by Apple concerning same two patents. Hence alleged infringement in OS.
2. If alleged infringement is in OS than Google might have a way in to the proceedings to invalidate patents on OHA members behalf..ie not what Apple wants to face.
3. HP by its purchase of Palm has similar patents, hence why Apple never went after Palm or HP.
Considering the way Google is currently shredding Oracle patents in the invalidation processes I have a feeling that Apple may be in for a surprise. why? Why do you think MS has been so careful not provoke any OEM to challenge them to a lawsuit? Its called do not expose patents to the opportunity to have them invalidated or narrowed in claims.
MS is currently extorting $15 per handset from Samsung for patent licenses, so perhaps they haven't provoked an OEM or challenged them to a lawsuit, but then again, perhaps they have.
Ah, I sense sarcasm. I suppose without explanation, my comment is too harsh, and I come off as an Apple hater.
Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to hate.
In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better spent on innovation or solving real problems.
Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking.
I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players.
On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led to very real and significant innovations.
Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators and executives in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did the competitors suddenly jump into action.
The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that Apple has done - not less.
Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation', and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide value.
But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.
These mostly absurd laws are intended to protect consumers not corps. Feeling protected yet? And why is the ITC deciding what devices we can use? Who are these people accountable too?
May be so. But how does this comment help to create an interesting discussion?
Don't take it personally, please. But HN has always been great because of good comments. I'm not saying I've always contributed well, but let's try. :)
I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. If Apple isn't entitled to patent protection for it's discoveries, I'd argue nobody is.
Which is a fine argument to make, but we should leave Apple out of it and say that even when a company uses the system as it was intended to be used, the system is broken. If Apple's victory over HTC is scary, the real conclusion is that all patents are scary, even those that protect companies doing actual research and who sell actual products.
Meanwhile, I think that Google are the actual villains. Do they spend billions dismantling the patent system? No. Do they spend billions protecting their partners from lawsuits? No. What they do is aid and abet other companies to violate patents, and then they shrug their shoulders and sell a few more text ads for Viagra or ambulance chasing lawyers.