Google backs HTC in what could be 'long and bloody battle' with Apple - Page 5

Agreed. Some of the best applications on the iPhone are Google's services. Maps and search is just the beginnining. In the end, in a world of cloud computing, people are far more likely to be loyal to a company that offers the best web based and cloud computing services than the company that makes the tool that lets you access these services.

It won't kill the iPhone if Google pulls out. But there's no doubt it'll hurt. And that goes for Google too. As for Bing, iPhone fans can sing its praises, but the rest of the world will keep right on using Google. Seriously, who's going to actually stop using Google on anything bigger than a phone/iTouch? Even iPad users will most likely keep using Google search from the web (vs. an app). And since its the use of the search engine that makes it better all the time, Bing will always be relegated to second-rate status.

I don't think anyone can argue with the point you just made, but the underlying fact still remains is that the courts still need to determine if what they say is true.

Multitouch for zooming in and out on pictures is the main thing that sticks out in my mind, and it might be enough to bring them to court over, but it's also something that can be artificially limited within the software and won't necessarily keep the phones from being sold in the US (which is what Apple's goal is, isn't it?)

I find it silly though to keep a phone from being sold in the US because of something so technical, and so trivial, that users might not even notice if it was there or not.

Did you read the linked article? Palm's got patents that could do serious damage to Apple too. I think it's entirely feasible that Google would just buy Palm to use the IP as canon fodder to do as much damage to Apple's IP portfolio as possible. Who cares if they destroy Palm's patents in the process? Google being a fan of open source won't really care who copy's any of Palm's ideas vis-a-vis mobile operating systems. But for them the damage done to Apple in such a move could well be worthwhile.

Who knows? Maybe Apple will get to Palm first and either buy 'em out for the IP or start a pre-emptive IP war on that front.

You can't patent an idea.

You can patent a method of implementing that idea, as Apple has done and as Apple has alleged that HTC has copied.

Obviously Apple's implementation was sufficiently different to prior art, that the patents were granted.

I swear we had this conversation a few months back lol. If you could patent an idea, people would be rushing to patent flying cars, and teleporters, and edible soda cans and whatever else people think the future would be made up of

Here, read the article for yourself that details the Xerox case:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/bu...e+xerox&st=nyt

Apple was accused of copying the design of Xerox's Star operating system, on which Xerox had copyright protection. Problem was Xerox waited 7 years to file and the judge determined that was too long a period to wait to bring a claim of copyright infringement. As the US Copyright office clearly states, you don't have to have a "registered" copyright to be protected, you automatically have copyright protection just by creating something. However registering makes it easier to enforce in court because it is an additional record of when the content was created. With copyrights, unlike patents, you have to vigorously defend them. The last article I read suggested you need to act within 6 months on a publicly distributed item that infringes your copyright to get protection from the court.

For some reason you seem stuck on "code". I said design. You can't copy code, only algorithms. If you write '<input type"button" />' and I write the same, it doesn't mean I copied your code - it's a standard tag in HTML, part of the programming language. However, if you create a program that performs a certain function unique to your application, it is usually pretty easy to tell whether I copied your program's design by the way I implement it in my program. In this case Apple copied the "Look and feel" of Xerox's system. You can't patent look and feel, but you can copyright it and that is what Xerox went after Apple on, though too late.

What idea is it that you moonbats keep referring to?

So you read a book making this claim, yet the book fails to mention the actual legally binding documents between Apple and Xerox dealing with $1 Million pre-IPO shares given to Xerox in exchange for Apple to view their ideas?

Xerox made > $100 million when the stock went public. They didn't think Apple would be around long, so they sold all their stock the moment they could.

Their assumption was wrong.

One can always file a Freedom of Information request to figure out what happened between Apple and Xerox.

I'm sure there were many side deals made in those days. Like I said, companies flew pretty loose with IP in those days. However, the key word there is "look" not "copy". Is it as much Xerox's fault their IP was "adopted" by others, absolutely. The whole point of discussing the Xerox case and the present case was to show the difference between copyright protection and patent protection. You guys keep calling Xerox's creations "ideas" but it wasn't just an idea, they had and licensed an actual product based on the prototype Apple's engineers saw.

I'm sure some people on the forum didn't mis the point. But you certainly have. (By the way my remark was: "Your 'on this site', so does that mean your an Apple fan-boy? ").




No you missed the point again, my argument differs.


Didn't you read the question mark?


Ha, I see your problem. I used an argument to invalidate your statement. I didn't say that you said that I stated my remarks as a fact.
My reasoning indicated that it wasn't valid to negate my statement and use it against me (you did make a mistake in negating it, but thats not really the point now).


If the claim is that it is common knowledge that Apple copied code from Xerox, then It must be easy to get this information, because it is common knowledge and obviously someone in the past has found the evidence and published it (in some way or the other).
If this information cannot be found easily then it is certain that this isn't common knowledge and as a consequence invalidates his statement.
And I can assure you that it is quite possible to find copied code within large codebases. And to have it examined by experts and be used as evidence in court cases.


No, not at all.


Wow, that must be some kind of record.
But seriously, I didn't intend to be rude. And I think you shouldn't look at it like that.

J

At least we are going somewhere - so Apple has not necessarily stolen what they claim to be their creation. Now as to copying, the fact is that Xerox lost its case in court. Unless we are privy to the transcripts of the case (these are public if you wish to dig deeper), we cannot decide here whether there is merit to the case of the case of Xerox, and whether Apple has indeed made enough derivative innovations that would make its creation novel enough from the prior work.

As I argued above -- it is the intent of patent law to protect the invention of others but also to foster further development of prior technologies. So, copying or borrowing ideas from others, to be the foundation of succeeding inventions is encouraged and legal. If Apple simply copied the scripts and design of Xerox, that is another story.

Another issue as to your set of facts above. There is a rule in debates or exchange of ideas, Secondary information, such as those from newspapers are not necessarily accepted as facts. As reputable as NY Times might be, I have come to know that sometimes their reporters or writers do not know what they are talking about sometimes or are not immune to their own prejudices. I even cited inaccuracies in their technology articles. One of the authors even wrote to me because he did not fully understand the error, even after I explained the error in answer to his email.



I would encourage you therefore to stick to the present case, to bolster your allegations of the present. Past history may matter, but sometimes it obfuscates your argument.


Again, I would encourage you to use original sources. Surely, you can cite an online copy of the patent law. But, correct me if I am mistaken. As far as I know, while the laws governing patents, copyright and trademark may be covered by the same act of Congress. How they work are entirely different.

Copyright. It has to be in public domain (published), or an "application" sent to the Patent Office to have any protection. The public has the right to know and access to records of prior creations.

Not all published work are copyrighted. For example, the contents of the telephone book is not protected by Copyright. [This issue has been litigated already.] However, the design of the presentation may be copyrighted.

Computer codes may be copyrighted but it has to be published or submitted to the Patents Office. If Apple simply copied the entire computer code or significant parts of it, then it would be a violation. If the Xerox scripts were not under copyright protection, even if Apple copied the entire code, they are not technically in violation of the law. As far as I know, Xerox did not win their case. What exactly happened we both do not know based on the information you presented to bolster your argument.

Another limitation of the copyright. It is the content of the copyrighted material that is protected. However, the idea there is not. Also, an idea is not patentable. As such, a derivative creations or invention from copyrighted materials can be patented, without violating the copyringted material (assuming no scripts were copied verbatim, if it was a computer program).

Trademark. Any design, name or creation must be registered to be protected by a trademark.

Patent. We and others already explored this. It is not against the law to build upon prior inventions, to get a derivative patents for ones own unique creation.

Reverse engineering is a common practice. If HTC or any of those creating iPhone clones can demonstrate a novel discovery or investion to achieve the same stuff that Apple did with the iPhone, then they may well have a case. On the other hand, Apple's application, if I remember the posts oof the patents posted here and in other sites, they also ennsured protection of the totality of the look and feel
that resulted in the unique interaction of a user to the iPhone. That totality may be protectedd by a trademark.

If you are familiar with the language of patent application, apart from the prior technologies section, anyone that applies for a patent would attempt to include encompassing (primary) claims and more specific (derivative) claims to define the creation or invention. So, even a single patent,. once approved can affect the patents of future derivative inventions and creations.

CGC

CGC

Page not found. Do you have another link?


Being accused of something and proof of the claim is not the same to me. So I assume there is no proof.


All I can say is that copyright is about an exact copy, for example a paragraph from a book, or a part of code that is exactly (of nearly exact because only some names are changed) the same.
It is maybe possible to patent an algorithm, but thats the same as patenting an idea.

J.

Many patents involved are generic OS patents which may go far beyond the Linux-as-used-by-Android but perhaps to general Linux as well which will be a huge income potential for Apple, if Apple does win this case. Microsoft was threatening the Linux in a similar manner before.

It seems to work now. And I think the following quote from the article explains it all:

'The Xerox complaint seems to confuse the distinction between ideas and expression; copyright protects expression, not ideas,'' said Stacey Byrnes, an Apple spokeswoman. ''Apple intends to prove in court that the audio-visual expressions in the Lisa and Macintosh interfaces were wholly original to Apple and duly registered with the copyright office.''

J.

Dude, I'm honestly not going to read any of that LOL.

Arguing for the sake of arguing is dumb. My point has been made clear, and is a valid one. Anything beyond that is just nonsense.

I SAY GOOD DAY SIR

And you know that because you are poor fellow's... foster parent? School psychologist? Shrink? Priest?

If Opera Mobile was such a usable browser, how come it has continually failed to register any real presence in NetApplications or AdMob metrics? If you know of some metrics that shows its use, be sure to let me know.

Opera Mobile was nice and functional as a browser (props to them) but without multi-touch, it's just not used by many people. Part of it certainly is the lack of distribution, but then that just means that carriers and handset makers found little consumer desire for them to bundle it in.

Yes, that's the guy. I don't know him personally, but he writes many published books and is an invited speaker to many mobile gatherings across many nations.

So I'd say he's much more of an expert than you, about whom I know nothing.

And in which phone were they implemented before 2007?

The same can be said about the desktop version and the poor market share doesn't meens that it wasn't a good a full featured browser.

Bad memory, Opera mobile user-agent string is like the one from the desktop browser

I'm with you on that one.

I also have feeling competition is catching up faster than Apple is progressing. One of Apple's problems, the way I see it, is that it's development is actually limited by their own rules and rigidly set borders of what is allowed and what is not - something competition (part of it, at least) isn't limited with.

A year ago, Apple was untouchable with iPhone. Same time this year, Android platform, while not as polished as iPhone, already has some advantages, and Windows 7 Mobile can turn out to be heavy weight contender as well.

And somehow, I don't see iPhone OS (or iPhone itself) geting that much different with version 4. I wouldn't expect 3rd party multitasking, full GPS navigation included, Flash... I can't see them making any huge changes in the GUI as well, nor breaking iTunes-only syncing limitation. I hope I'm wrong and Apple actually will surprise us with some fresh, unexpected and exciting/useful new features, but... I just don't see that happening.

I'm not saying Apple is really scared, but they are definitely more... aware of competition at present, and being able to slow them at least is not bad strategy - purely from business side of view, of course.

Well, actually, you can. Microsoft stole and copied Quicktime code back in the 90s and was caught - leading to the "investment" in Apple in 1997 upon Jobs' return.

And recently, Microsoft was caught stealing code again overseas somewhere - it was determined that the MS subsidiary's code was exactly the same as that used by a small company. I think Ballmer apologized. I'm sure someone on this forum can provide the link.

The validity of a patent isn't decided until its tested in court. This is one of the reasons why the current patent laws are so stupid.

But my original point was that the iPhone was revolutionary in the mobile space partly because of its UI - including the UI that made its browser truly usable.

So I have no disagreement that Opera Mobile was a full featured browser - but its UI made it not something that anyone went out of their way to buy and use. Which limited any "revolutionariness" it would have in the mobile marketplace.

You keep pointing to this and it's wrong. This is a paper on hand gestures, not finger gestures, not multi-touch and really has nothing to do with the iPhone, any multi-touch phone, or Apple at all.

For all intents and purposes, the people that "invented" multi-touch and gesture based computing were the FingerWorks people. To imply anything else is to misdirect or dissemble.

These guys now work at Apple, and their names are on some of the patents in question. Period.

Bing and Bing Maps.

Since Win Mo 7 seems to be quite a bit different from iPhone experience (or at least has much less conflicting points compared to Android), I'd say it is reasonably safe bet.

But is that the leadership we really want - based on suppression of other ideas and implementations..?

Good luck cat herding.

Search.

Why don't you google it?

Apple made two revolutionary steps in the mobile arena - the first being multi-touch smartphone with usable browser and iTunes ecosystem, and Apple control of features, sales/marketing/distribution, and warranty service (very much in US, less so in other countries where there are fewer Apple Stores), and the second being the App Store.

On the first, the competitors are catching up with multi-touch smartphone with browser. But none have the iTunes ecosystem. Nor the control (except for Palm and the Google Nexus One). Some competitors have arguably moved ahead in navigation, social networking integration, multi-tasking.

On the second, Android is getting apps into its store (though still fewer added per day relative to Apple) but the fragmentation problem hasn't been solved.

What would be revolutionary as a next step at either the consumer level or the developer platform level? Or will it just be evolution? No one seems to know what's in iPhone 4.0.


Just about any patent lawsuit against a competitor would have the side effect of slowing down the competitor, IF (and it's a BIG IF) they actually thought they might be infringing.

Nokia sued Apple. I don't think it's because Nokia is "threatened" or "scared" but because at a minimum, Nokia thinks there's a reasonable probability that Apple is infringing (especially since Apple isn't paying them any licensing fees, but there are other circumstances that we don't have to get into here.) If Apple doesn't think they're doing anything wrong (i.e,, we're not paying because Nokia is trying to charge us more than FRAND rates as they agreed with the standards bodies), Apple will just continue to do what they planned to do - no slowdown whatsoever.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j...uchscreen.html
wasn't a phone, but it wasn't an apple innovation either. That video was posted in 2006, and while it may not be what we're looking for in regards to this discussion, it's enough proof that devices inevitably would have ended up with multitouch. Apple's claiming it as their own stems only from being able to get to the technology first.

At least, that's my deluded take on things


lmao

Heck, I read it last year! If Mr. Patel did a search on Newton patents, dollars to donuts, there will be many patents that PalmOS is encroaching upon. The only point he was making was that many of the big and foundational companies treat patents like nuclear weapons, and that businesses are generally at a detente in the courtroom because of it.

Yes, Apple is playing big here.


Look, patent wars or "underhanded business" dealings are an unsavory part of reality that destroys our hopes and dreams of just world. That includes copying of IP, design, whathaveyou. I would prefer Apple to create better and better products rather than do this just like everyone else.

But the idea that Palm could out-duel Apple in a patent war is juvenile, as are 90% of the commentary out there regarding patent validity and who is right or wrong. You don't think Apple doesn't have patents that'll counter Palm's patents? Really? You think Google would survive unscathed? You do as you said it, but it's highly doubtful. It's going to be a mess.

That would be one heck of a good move by Google. ( I doubt that they have the balls to do it ) Apple has most likely violated some of these silly types of patents that Palm owns. I also suspect that is why Apple did not sue Motorola. I'll bet they could file a few suits against Apple as well.

I am not saying the suits would ( or would not ) be valid, but they would probably be as valid as the claims made by Apple against HTC....

One more thing to note here. Currently there is absolutely no proof that HTC has violated anything. Just because you are sued, does not necessary mean that you are guilty.... Many people here are making the assumption that these are valid defend able patents. It may or may not be true

As has been amply pointed out, no.

The problem is - Bing is still a distant second in terms of usability and results (probably a much farther 2nd in terms of user adaptation). If the Bing all in one app is any indication of MS search services taking over the iPhone, the consumers will have much to lose.

Ugh, I hate it when people use this as an example. Note that Apple's granted patents don't include anything shown in that video. Nothing. There is only one thing in that video that it shares in common with the iPhone: speed. The multitouch, shadow tracking technology wasn't it. People were amazed by the speed of UI. He probably had a nice x86 machine with a nice CPU. Apple did it with hardware 10x less powerful on a 3.5 inch screen using a totally different multi-touch technology and shipped it for millions of people to use.

Moreover, it cheapens the work that Apple did. Apple was doing it concurrently to when Jeff Han was doing it, was limited to mobile CPUs and GPUS, and designed and built an actual real live product. It took real-hard, innovative work to do it. They had to design upteen UIs (Jeff Han did zero). They had to master the integrated work to actually get the iPhone to display as fast as it did. That's basically as difficult as it gets in project engineering. UI objects move in the iPhone UI as if they are stuck to your finger. On mobile hardware! That's a tremendous integration of screen technology, algorithm/software design, software optimizations, CPU/GPU choices, battery optimizations. The virtual keyboard design, the whole thing with its speed, dynamic hit targeting, and word correction is still unmatched. The dynamic hit targeting for UI buttons is still unmatched. If Apple didn't get the keyboard right, I bet you the iPhone wouldn't have taken off and the state-of-the-art cell phone design would be the QWERTY candy bar or slider.

Han's work has its applications, mostly in presentation style environments. They are not similar to iPhone at all. If it was so innovative, why doesn't HTC, Palm etc use screens with light projection and shadow tracking for their multitouch technology? They should invest in miniaturizing the technology. Even something like the horizontal swipe. The T-Mobile G1 used a 9 point grid with a user defined swipe pattern about those points to unlock the screen. That was interesting. In the Nexus 1, the unlock screen is basically a simple horizontal swipe, but slightly curved. Um, basically like the iPhone. Did Google/HTC really have to do that? They could have, say, used a vertical swipe? 2 fingers? A button? Buttons? Hardware based buttons? Kept the G1 style unlock design?

[edit]Had the time to go back and look in more detail at Jeff Han's multitouch hardware. "Shadow tracking" is unfair as that implies a light source in a certain way. It's "frustrated total internal reflection." Light is fired between two sheets (edge lit). When fingers, hands get closer to the sheets, it distorts the internal light and it shines out of the sheets. A rear mounted camera captures this and software interprets this. A rear projector displays the image on the sheet. I only thought of it as shadow tracking because that is essentially what the software is doing, but for those multitouch systems it really was a light source casting a shadow onto a screen and a camera tracking the shadows. Concept is the same, Han is just using a different technique to create high contrast "finger touches" as it touches the screen.[/edit]

Actually, I've been pleasantly surprised with the Bing iPhone app. Burns battery like no tomorrow, but the maps are good. It found an SSA building for me while the iPhone Maps app pointed me to an empty field. It seems to me either Apple is using old Google map tiles, Google doesn't update them as often, or Bing simply has newer maps.

Indeed. John Sculley can be held accountable for that since he was CEO at the time of the signing, not sure if he actually signed it though. That Apple suit may have turned out different if Sculley did not sign that license contract and Apple would be a much different place today.

They probably have newer satellite captures. Google did recently update my area's maps, showing a finished building where a construction site used to be. I'm guessing satellite sweeps are a bit sporadic.

But I do think Nokia is very worried, considering their market share decline. Couldn't they call out "patent infringement!" before? Did they really need 3 years to sort out what is Apple "infringing"? Or were they just not worried (enough) at the beginning of iPhone to call for, presumably, very expensive lawyer team?