Open source community 'hopelessly confused' by Apple-HTC suit - Page 2

That's just the thing though this is standard practice. This is how the patent system is supposed to work. What's astonishing, really, is the fact that these other guys failed to do due diligence in the first place and shipped product that tramples on somebody else's (in this case, Apple's) patents. What's even more surprising is the fact that, when confronted with this, those guys didn't alter their product or (more reasonably) just license the innovations from Apple. They had many opportunities to avoid a lawsuit, but they passed them all up. Which makes me wonder if they even have lawyers.

The whole purpose of the patent system is to protect inventions and innovations that, in retrospect, seem blindingly obvious. Lots of armchair lawyers have opined that this patent or that one isn't novel enough *but the fact remains that Apple was the first to think of things that now seem self-evident. And they invested a heck of a lot of time and money to think of them, so they're seeking protection through the system that's been in place for centuries for situations just like this one.


I have only the vaguest awareness of what "Ubuntu" us, but stipulating for sake of argument that you're right and that product also infringes who is Apple supposed to sue, exactly? Linux is a bunch of kids in basements. It's the IP equivalent of a botnet. Merely tracking them all down would be a huge investment of time and money, much less filing suit against all of them.


Agreed. I think that's the source of at least some of the grief about Apple from bloggers and on forums and stuff. I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush or anything, but I think we can all agree that the "gimme gimme" mentality does exist on the Internet, even if it's from a quarter that's small but highly vocal.

Then "the community" is pretty stupid - Apple was pretty clear at the iPhone launch what they considered valuable and what they would defend. Anyone who is really paying attention wasn't caught off guard. The people "caught off guard" are hopeless idealists that feel there should be no patents or protection for innovation, and while that sounds nice it's just not practical.

When ad-hoc groups of people start kicking out kit like an iPhone I might pay attention more to arguments for the abolition of patents. But the problem is something like an iPhone takes an increadible amount of work to produce with the polish and useability that it has. Open Source projects have a reputation for looking at the end user experience last - and while it has gotten better, the core ethos for Open Source is still "scratch and itch you have" and the people with the skills to write their own code to scratch their own itch are generlaly not who you need to polish a product so that a non-technical person can use it.

OpenSource has it's place, and commercial software has it's place. While patents can be abused, what we need are sane reforms of the system - not wholesale trashing of it. There is validity in providng protection and financial rewards for innovation.

Otherwise something like Andrew wouldn't need the financial funding of someone like Google to make it happen - it would just happen as the radicals like Stallman would love for you to believe. That's just an unrealistic fantasy....

NIce to know, thanks for that info, I have faith Apple know what they are doing and I wish them success.

Here's the latest:

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Nokia Oyj, the worlds largest maker of mobile phones, asked a U.S. judge to throw out Apple Inc.s claims that it is trying to monopolize the wireless technology market and seize access to iPhone technology.

Apples antitrust and breach of contract allegations are implausible and are designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokias intellectual property, the Finnish company said yesterday in papers filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.

I'm sure he can just email me the code. That would be selfish and evil of him not to do that.

What's hypocrytical? Why does everything have to be a binary yes/no or bad/good?

If the concepts that Apple used for the iPhone were so obvious how come, as a TOTAL OUTSIDER, they were the first to produce an iPhone? How come all the other "innovation" that people want "competition" to drive Apple with happend AFTER the iPhone?

What's hypocrytical is those calling from innovation against the one company that drove real innovation in the smart phone market.


"people" are upset because Apple came out of left field as a total newcommer and took over an entire market segment. Worse, they didn't "play by the rules" - they aren't focused on checklists, features and geek-oriented concepts, they are focused on those loathsome end users and "normal people".

It's techie class warfare and it's getting a little tiresome. Bunch of insecure geeks whining...

Here's what Nokia is doing:

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Nokia Oyj, the worlds largest maker of mobile phones, asked a U.S. judge to throw out Apple Inc.s claims that it is trying to monopolize the wireless technology market and seize access to iPhone technology.

Apples antitrust and breach of contract allegations are implausible and are designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokias intellectual property, the Finnish company said yesterday in papers filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.

The really ironic thing about the number of people beating up on Apple is they're claiming that somehow Apple is stifling innovation.
- Try to remember what a phone meant before the iPhone. Try to remember how you worked it.
- Apple changed everything with the iPhone. It's popularity is an indication of how much of an improvement it was over everything else in almost every way (blackberry keyboard lovers may disagree on the keyboard point).
- These innovations took time and human ingenuity to develop and Apple paid to do that with no guarantee that they would be paid back. They took a risk on a good idea. It paid off.
- Now Google has come out with Android. It's pretty much a copy of the innovation that Apple came up with in the first iPhone.
- Google didn't come up with Android because it thought the world should have an Open Source choice to Apple's product. They came up with Android because Google makes its money from advertising and almost nothing else.
- Search drives people to Google's advertising on the desktop
- Search on the desktop is leveling off which is problem for Google's future growth
- Most observers feel that the next big growth area for advertising is on mobile phones
- If Apple overwhelmingly controlled the smartphone market they could cut off Google from Advertising if they so choose, eg, maybe Bing woud offer more to Apple or Apple would decide to take on the advertising themselves as in through sponsored apps where Google (depending on the FTC's decision on Admob) has no presence at all.
- Google developed Android (and bought Admob if it goes through) as a strategy to keep their revenues growing and make sure they weren't hostage to Apple.
- And of course in developing Android they had Apple's iPhone as a model to copy to sort out the many difficult problems of making a smartphone which Apple had to think through during its orignal development. Android only had to copy or modify Apple's hard work. There's some innovation on the Android but its not disruptive innovation the way Apple's innovation worked with the iPhone.
- And of course the presence of Android as an open source "free" alternative meant that the phone makers could suddenly compete with Apple in the smart phone market without doing any of their own development. No innovation there.

So how exactly is Apple stifling innovation by suing HTC for what ever patents they think they can justify to protect the market share and profits they hope to reap from their hard and innovative work? It seems to me that these other firms will drive out any real innovation in their copy and make it cheaper mentality as we see throughout the PC/windows world, 10,000 me-too products which all basically suck because nobody wants to put in any innovation except to beat costs down through distribution models like Dell or sell cheap plastic things which have the durability of ice in a warm climate.

God bless the blogosphere. Anything for a buck. Wait, that's what they're blaming Apple for

Apple has always been about control. It's nothing new. However it's not for control for the sake of control as many try to imply - they are anal retentative about control because they are focused on the end user experience. You can't have a good end user experience if there is total chaos - witness the Windows ecosystem.


Your absolutely right. The iMac, Mac OSX, the iPod and now the iPhone succedded because Apple instilled fear and intimidation and not through innovation and bringing something new and different to market.



Seriously? Did you even re-read your post out loud after you typed it?

Most sane post in this entire thread and well worthy of repeating.

Excellent!

http://industry.bnet.com/technology/...st-plain-dumb/


Android gaining steam, while not at Apple's marketshare they certainly are gaining (and even exceeding) on features

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events...r_Market_Share


Come on, they have every right to defend their IP but it doesn't mean they should use them offensively.

And for people to say HTC doesn't have any IP is a bit shortsighted seeing as they've been in the phone game long before Apple.

Yeah! Those bastards!

Not quite true. I had a Palm Treo on Verizon which had not been crippled in any manner.

Apple has done some good things, but your example is not one of them.

I wanna make something really clear here, 'cause I think I'm the one who introduced the word "hypocrisy" into this particular discussion:

I, speaking for myself, absolutely don't think Apple is being hypocritical, or anything like it. What I was saying was that I get the feeling there are people out there who see Apple giving away source code on the one hand, and filing patent infringement lawsuits on the other, and declare that to be hypocritical. Just for the record, I think these people are wrong. But I'm engaging in a little armchair psychology here, since the article that launched this thread was kind of about people's mindsets.


I don't know how widespread it is, but I've definitely seen that attitude. Do you guys know about "tall poppy syndrome?" It might be something that's only talked about where I live. But the basic idea is that when somebody becomes too successful, people start to resent him. Oh sure, he's a nice guy, he loves his family, he volunteers at the soup kitchen, but he's just too good at whatever it is he does. He's makin' us look bad.

I think there's a lot of that attitude toward Apple. And understandably so, really. I mean, here's this company that for years was an outlier at best, and they come along and make this bizarre thing called an "eye-pod," and next thing you know everybody and his sister owns at least one and often a couple. Then they make their very first phone ever, and it's the greatest phone in the history of the world, and it totally revolutionizes the phone market as well as opening up whole new markets on the side. Oh, and they're also the #1 online retailer of music, despite publicly stating over and over again that they have no interest in the music business.

Apple's that annoying jerk from high school who was all-state in football, captained the swim team, dated the head cheerleader and still managed to graduate valedictorian. They make it look easy, and we resent the heck out of them for it.

Well. Not all of us. But at least a few very vocal people.

(Microsoft, on the other hand, is the socially awkward president of Future Business Leaders of America who sits in the cafeteria by himself at lunchtime and can occasionally be heard mumbling ominous things about how someday they're all gonna pay.)

Before my iPhone, I had a Palm Treo. It did many things better than the iPhone. On balance, the iPhone is better, but the Treo still beats it in some areas.


Are you aware that for every iPhone that a consumer buys, three other consumers choose a different smartphone?


Given that Apple "controls" barely a quarter of the smartphone market, this seems pretty far fetched.

Gotcha and I agree with your analysis.


Pretty wide spread with people who aren't shy about sharing their opinions


Yup. Ironically lots of those people are the ones calling for others to provide competition to Apple to force Apple to innovate.

Talk about having a backwards world view


If we give them their red stapler back do you think we will be safe?

Thank you for a rational exchange and discussion. What a breath of fresh air!

A humble request to all you fanbois clucking how Apple is right in this... please explain in a little more detail how in your opinion e.g this specific part of the lawsuit is right:

Apple is claiming that HTC phones that DON'T have swipe to unlock infringe on Apple's swipe to unlock patent.

Where did you think the ``Gang of Four'' got this famous Design Pattern from? They published it from a patent by NeXT. The entire Gang of Four book is a well-known design patterns book from guys tipping their hats to NeXT.

Some of the Patents are also regarding Apple's Taligent [aka Pink] patents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent

Patent #5,519,867:

I'm not sure what things your Treo did better than an iPhone but I do notice that the relative market share of the iPhone and Treo's. The point wasn't about individual differences in something that was useful, the point was that Apple revolutionised the way people interact with their phones and other companies are trying to ride on their hard work and innovation. My point was about innovation. If Treo is your idea of innovation, so be it.



Of course I'm aware of that. The smartphone market is rapidly undergoing seismic shifts caused by what the iPhone is and how one operates it and that both the size of the smartphone market and the iPhone's share of it are growing rapidly. And if you include Palm's "Pre" OS and Android and Microsoft's dumping of Windows Mobile 6.5 for their new mobile OS you can see that they understand the point about what the future is for smartphones. This is the effect of Apple's innovation. I don't know what market percentage Apple will control when all this levels out but I suspect "iPhone like" phones will almost completely replace the older smartphone OSs like Symbian et al.


What Google is/was afraid of is that the iPhone could eventually have the market share of the iPod. You disagree? Fine. I don't find the threat of Apple domination in the face little or no competition far fetched at all.

They way I read this is that Apple is going to vigorously defend their revolutionary products and hard work in regards to the device(s) that have redefined what a phone, music player, reader, etc. is.

They got scr3w3d by M$ ripping off MacOS the last time, and I don't think they're going to let that happen again.

Gah. Here we go again. Every time there's an article on the HTC lawsuit, we get all these internet armchair lawyers, huffing and puffing about how a brief gloss on the points of contention give them enough information to definitively state that they have no basis, that they're obvious, that they are negated by prior art, that next thing you know Apple will try and patent the idea of a screen, or a keyboard.

Maybe we could have a big, bold faced sticky at the head of all of these postings, explaining that IP patent suits hinge on specific implementations, that the particulars of those implementations are likely beyond the grasp of 99% of the people posting here, and that a single sentence descriptive phrase in no way constitutes the entire case being made for a particular piece of IP.

So if you see "Object Oriented User Interface" or the like, please, for the love of God, spare us yet another burst of outrage over Apple's overreaching attempts to patent the very air we breath, and know that there is a great mass of technical particulars regarding how this particular implementation of this particular iteration of something that might be briefly described as an "Object Oriented User Interface", that it's that particular implantation which is at dispute, and not some broad idea of the entire category.

People. Please. I beg of you. Be less stupid.

I agree that it is their right, but apparently I didn't manage to include that idea in my post

The thing I mostly miss is the ability to use a stylus when it is a better choice than a fingertip. The finger is a blunt tool and a stylus is more precise.

There's other stuff too, like battery life, but it's been a while since I used the Treo.

And BTW, WRT to market share, the Treo is no longer being manufactured, AFAIK.

This is an issue known on the whole planet, though it might have different names.


Nice metaphor! Most people don't see them working their asses of, but I think that we have some really hard working guys over at infinite loop.
The other thing is that they are not afraid to throw old stuff out of their software / hardware, which gives them a huge advantage over MS, because they try to be backwards compatible for a long time.
Finally, they are driven by guys who want to use the stuff themselves, and this can be huge factor in motivation to do it right, that and the some people on a higher pay level willing to spend time and money on it. Furthermore they have enough imagination to come up with a cool way of how to use the stuff.

Could have ended right there, and it would be nearly as accurate of an article.

Of course, Apple has no interest in licensing any of its patents and would rather shut down the competition than enable them by licensing technology. Apple is not like Nokia or Qualcomm who sue companies to get them to pay licensing fees and royalties. This lawsuit is not about generating revenues from royalties for Apple, it is about their technology and their desire to dominate the field. If they have to enforce their patents by legal means then so be it.

If Apple wins this lawsuit, then handset manufacturers will have to design innovative workarounds and develop new technologies, and pull these products from store shelves. If Apple does prevail, then the only companies that will be able to compete with them in the short term will be Microsoft and Nokia due to their massive patent libraries. HTC will be in serious trouble and Google will have to scamper to acquire companies to gain freedom to operate via their patents. It could set Android back several years and give Maemo/Meego a huge boost.

Going to the ITC is a common scheme used by lots of companies nowadays because it usually acts sooner than going through the courts. Note Nokia went to the ITC. It's not Apple unique. Like it or not, the ITC has taken on the task of resolving patent disputes.

Apple has only initiated lawsuits of any kind against three companies in the last ten years Burst.com, Psystar, and HTC. (Burst would've sued Apple if Apple hadn't acted first.) Burst and HTC are patent-related. Psystar is copyright related.

During those same ten years, they've put a ton of resources into innovating for iTunes, iPods, iPhones, iPads, OS X, iPhone/iPad OS, iMacs, Macbooks, iLife, iWork, Apple Stores, and that includes buying other companies who were innovating. So I don't really see that they are "becoming a company that wants to succed through fear and intimidation more than one that wants to succeed through innovation." I think they're finally tired of other companies just copying their innovations. If they could figure out a way to sue MS for copying the Apple Store, they probably would've.

im an apple fan BIg time and for a logn tiem even before teh trolls jump on the apple tree
when the other companies been grinding the heck out of apple in court no hard anyone defended apple now you fake ass bitch ass trolls are allover teh comp that give you pc and the option to have cool stuf

so back off pups freaking haters

Well, patent 6,259,446 was filed in 1992, only 2 years before the famous "Design Patterns" book was published, so it's reasonable to assume that the patterns described in the book were being used widely some time before, certainly before the patent filing. The whole idea of the design patterns book was to formalize ideas that many people had been using in one way or another for a long time. In any case, that patent is about menu systems and not about the Observer design pattern. Just because it is referenced in the later patent does not mean that you can use its dates to check for prior art!

Hmm. That raises an interesting question.

The law says that the first person or company to invent something is entitled to a 20-year monopoly on that invention, as long as they agree to fully disclose all the details in their patent application.

That's what the law says, and it's not a new law by any means. But is the law out of step with public opinion? In the last couple decades it seems like we've grown accustomed to technology and stuff moving at a really fast pace. Does patent law need to change to reflect that? Or on the other hand, are we in the middle of a temporary technological boom, analogous to what I gather from watching the Discovery Channel the biologists call the "Cambrian explosion?"

A limited monopoly on a new invention seems totally fair and reasonable to me; I'm not one of those guys that says a company doesn't deserve the chance to make bank from its innovations. But is 20 years the right amount of time?

I really don't know for sure what I think. I'm inclined to say that the 20-year patent period has worked very well for centuries, and we shouldn't go changing it willy-nilly just because things started happening really fast in the 1990s. But I'm not confident that that's right.

I'd really like to hear what you guys think.

I'm sure Apple patents goes a lot deeper than just the "idea". Since the "idea" existed before the patent was granted. Apple's patent actually applies to a specific way in which this "idea" is implemented. Now, if there's only one way to implement this "idea", then it was obvious and no patent should have been granted. However, if there's dozens or hundreds of different ways to implement this "idea". With some methods being better and more efficient that others.Then Apple has every right to get a patent on way they're implementing it. Microsoft, Oracle and other software companies may have their own patents on the way they do it. In which case, Google should have found their own way of doing it. Or get a license from some one that already found a way. Instead of "stealing" some ones elses way. If this proves to be the case.

Do you have any evidence of that?

Apple is getting sued left and right. What this suit amounts to is leverage against such suits from Nokia et al.

If that is so, that is exactly what is wrong about the lawsuit, at least if you believe all the articles written about it and the clucking fanbois. They all say that Apple has a patent on the very basic ideas and nobody else has the right to implement them in ANY WAY or they deserve to be sued.

Why don't you provide PROOF of this?

It should only take you a few years.

HTC knowingly pushed further and further into mimicking the iPhone.

Now they know where the boundaries are they should go back a few steps to where their Android phones were before then INNOVATE their OWN methods of doing things.

Will Google step in?

Now they are facing possible antitrust action from the FCC over the AdMob acquisition.

Revenue from 75 million iPhone OS devices > revenue from Android devices.

The iPad is coming I'm sure Google also wants a slice of that pie.

I think your impression is being driven by the way the information about the suit has been presented to you, which is to say, irresponsibly and sensationalized. Then again, it wouldn't "sell papers" if the dry facts were communicated, right?

This is the Intarwebs! Are you new here?

Try this one: http://www.brucebnews.com/2010/03/ipad-aspect-ratio (Answer in the comments!)

In which way is mimicking the iPhone?

They don't call 'em "freetards" for nuthin'.