Apple loses patent-infringement trial over Cover Flow, Time Machine - Page 2

I never use CoverFlow, either, and don't know anyone who does. They could easily drop it, IMO, and few would notice.

Patents are an odd beast, at best.

Reuters and Bloomberg are reporting that the jury awarded 208.5 million for each violation (3patents in question). I am shocked this isnt picking up greater news. It has real potential to move the stock, even though I am sure it will be tied up in appeals for a while.

coming in on a Friday night is exactly the best way to minimize press coverage.

If ever forced to pay the 600 million assuming the figures are correct and it is indeed 3 x the figure quoted (and not each Mac sold !!) it would not impact AAPL I'd have thought as it is a small number in the scale of things.

TimeMachine is far more useful if I had to choose.

I think that any case where a patent is enforced for a plaintiff that has no products on the market, special consideration must be given to the defendant. If the plaintiff has not acted upon the patent, and is not actively or passively selling a product that incorporates the patent, there can be no damages, or at the vey least damages cannot be fairly determined.

This Texas Court is nothing more than a cottage industry created around our poor legal system. There must be federal oversight of these courts to shut down these corporate shakedown operations.

Seems like it is indeed easier to ask for forgiveness, than persmission...

Funny how people who have no idea what they're talking about seem to be the loudest.

Academic researchers have the right to use even patented ideas for legitimate research. Nothing illegal about that.


WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

First, patents do not protect ideas. They protect specific implementations of ideas. You can't patent an idea.

Second, the entire patent system is premised on the need for inventors to get rewarded for their invention - even if they can't afford to commercialize something. If commercialization were a requirement, it wouldn't take any time at all before all the small inventors were out of business. A very legitimate use of the patent system is for someone to invent something and then sell it to a large company who has the ability to commercialize the invention. It was NEVER the intent of the patent system to require commercialization.

If the patent office changed and required commercialization, small inventors would be eliminated entirely, at least from any inventions that cost a significant amount to commercialize.


Apple will make a simple economic decision on the cost of appeal vs. paying the license fee. It is very difficult to win a patent appeal.

The problem with this case (I've read the patent, apparently unlike a lot of the people posting here) is the very general nature of the patent. It is actually very close to patenting an idea rather than an implementation.

There is a strong argument for obviousness, as well - the idea of ordering things based on the time when they occurred is VERY obvious. However, that's a determination of fact which is almost impossible to appeal. You can generally only appeal based on the judge or jury's interpretation of the law.

I’m with everyone else, I never use CoverFlow. It doesn’t get in the way on my Mac, but I wish I could it off on my iPhone when I accidentally turn my iDevice whilst in the iPod app. Note: Rotation lock doesn’t work as it affects the entire system, not just the iPod app.

My company lawyers always told me that! Then again lawyers have a vested interest in that approach

Interesting how Apple actually does amazing things with these ideas.

I have to disagree with you. A $600Million dollar decrease in earnings would have a big negative effect at least in the short term.

Um, yeah, that/s why I posted this:

I am not an accountant but I would not have thought paying a fine is treated as a loss in earnings, rather a one time hit. In a company dealing in multiple billions it is not a vast amount (although a boat load of money a agree). However I agree short term losses in stock value may well occur since even a false rumor about Tim Cook or Steve Jobs does that. There seems to be a lot of investors that don't do much in depth analysis.

It was stated elsewhere (Bloomberg) that the jury awarded 281.5 million for the violation(s) and the proceeding BEGAN on September 27, which I think is ridiculous even for notorious East Texas.

The fact that his company was incorporated/registered in Tyler, Texas does seem to indicate (to me at least) that this patent-trolling through and through.

Now, if the whole point is sorting data items by DATE, I really can't see how this was upheld. The human mind has sifted/recalled events by chronological order since oh, before the pyramids. (see? I just sorted items by date, sue me!) Not to mention the many file systems that predate this patent.

P.P.S. He stated he no longer controls the patents but he thanked the lawyers for their 'brilliant performance". Methinks if he sold off the patent, he is evidently starved for money, which in turn supports the troll argument.

I am guessing as this is your second post since 2006 you have some knowledge in this subject or are at least fired up . I tend to agree with you. I am baffled how one who no longer holds / owns / controls a patent can sue anyone for said patent! Or does it mean he sold the marketing rights but still owns it maybe?

OK... I can't see how coverflow got involved in this but:

Time Machine is a way of displaying documents in a versioned repository (or backup). It lets you look at the same document over time, and the display is very similar to that patent.

My assumption at looking at the patent is that they researched a system that would keep track of document changes over time, and also allow searching across documents. A very likely case considering this is a problem in many companies, and software like Documentum is made to try and work with it.

In most repositories, you get to try and look at a revision log, this patent and time machine save time by showing a screenshot of the document (which is MUCH better than documentum, subversion, and other standard Version Control Systems).

The patent DOES look like Time Machine. It's the combination of that LOOK with the usage of a document versioning system. (over time means the same document at different times, not sorting files by date.)

First of all, Cover Flow and Time Machine, as well as Quick Look are composed of two single words, i.e., separated by a space.

It is interesting to hear such negative comments about Cover Flow and Time Machine since both are so integrated, along with Quick Look, that without each other, neither works. I can't imagine not appreciating their value.

Imagine going into a music, grocery, book, video or any store for that matter, and even a library, if all the contents were brown bagged/wrapped or just listed on a wall, labelled simply for example, by name, author, date of publication/manufacture.

Personally, I have millions of files, many of which over the past 30 years are named the same. My main cataloger for over 2,000 CDs/DVDs, 300 DAT Tapes, 4 back-up hard drives and 5 Macs at home is CDFinder. That, along with Spotlight, Time Machine, Cover Flow and more amazing, Quick Look are god-sends. Especially managing 10 to 50 GB medical databases.

Imagine as well if all your movie DVDs didn't have a picture on the label.

We use a form of Cover Flow everyday of our lives in virtually everything we do. As my wife has told me many a time, 'list' view alone just doesn't work.

By the way, what the hell is "timescape"?

Patents such as this are ludicrous, it falls under the obvious invention category that isn't patentable. I bet the guy who patented sorting documents by alphabetical order is really making a ton of money!

I dont think anyone is suggesting they want the code separated out from their OSes, just that some dont find the feature useful.


Imagine having to do a complete inventory of a music. grocery, book or video store by using an a swiping motion and having to look at an image instead of using its name or metadata/ISBN/UPC. Imagine if Dewey didnt invent the decimal system but the index card CoverFlow system to locate books. That would take much longer on all counts. That is the point with me, and probably with everyone else on this thread. For items that we own we are much more likely to know what we want and want the fastest access to it, thus making CoverFlow less than ideal for iPod, iTunes and Finder.


For your catalog that sounds like a great fit, but I dont think many fall into that category.

Note: I use Cover Flow-like search history in Safari. In fact, its the primary reason I still use Safari over Chrome. This works for me in Safari because I know I the look of a page more than I know the name of the page -AND- have a very large history of pages going back years as I never delete my history.

Understood, but the problem here is that a company that wants to protect itself cannot really pick and choose which patents to protect.

If you take the "Oh, it's just some Granny making a few bucks", then sure enough, some corporation will start marketing Granny's iPod holders.

And so on, and so on, and so on...

LOL. I would never have guessed this is only my second post (here); I'm opinionated, and read here often enough, but usually GMTA: some other poster has already eloquently expressed a comparable viewpoint.

Me, I read the Bloomberg article first and my immediate reaction was "Wait- he/they got a patent for WHAT!? Seriously?". I then ran across this article and thought the specifics of the other article might be helpful.

In closing, I SHOULD be more incensed than I am; but frankly, I'm no longer fazed at these shenanigans. If this hearing did indeed take 4 days I'm hoping that fact is incorrect and it was filed in 2008, actually started in 9/2009 then I certainly expect Apple to appeal the ruling and the patent, even if $281M were 'chump change.'

I have a feeling it is neither chump change nor acceptable-in-principle to Apple.

Chronological order is now patented?

This guy is a tool if he was hurt by not being acknowledged. Really, ordering things by time has been done forever. It's a natural way to organize.

It was called a JUKE BOX.

Perhaps they should sue Wurlitzer too...

Is it me, or could his drawing pass as the desktop from Mac OS 6?

The Professor did not bring the suit. He sold the rights to the patent to a patent trolling company that does nothing except try and find companies that it can sue which might yield a win.

trolling for patents. Its a country wide shame.

Just a thought.
en

The Key to a patent being valid is that it expresses a unique approach to something. And here we do have a pictoral layout showing the time machine style presentation for items. FINE

If the Professor went to Apple and they kicked him to the curb rather than paying him some money and recognising him, FINE they should pay.

But its about companies that pay a small amount for many patents, then sit and wait for someone to have a functional product and try and sue them for millions and millions.

Patent trolls, bad..... People coming up with ideas and patenting them, good.

Just a thought,
en

David Gelernter wrote a paean to Apple for the NY Times Op-ed page, when Apple was a doomed company in the 90's. The article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/11/op...p=7&sq=&st=nyt

Here's a snippet:

"Macintoshes had no commands. They felt like cars without steering wheels.

"Gradually it sunk in: Apple had embodied in this unassuming machine the most elusive equation in the technology world: Power plus simplicity makes elegance. Apple has done more than any other company to make technology beautiful."

Why isn't it illegal to file patent suits in this Kangaroo Court unless you actually live in Tyler County, Texas??? What a crock!!! There is so much corruption in the U.S. legal system that the whole country has grown accustomed to the stench of it!

I agree on all points and glad I helped get you to 3 posts

Being a professor implies one thing. Persistence to finish the doctorate. That's it. Everything beyond that isn't because of the title professor, it is because of the person. And those first tier schools you mention don't only take the plenty smart, they take those who had good grades, which again is far more about persistence in doing the grind-work of homework and test prep than actual intelligence.

+1 !!!

You're kidding. Apple had patents on Cover Flow?


To be honest, I never really did use it that much when I was on my Mac.

Wow.

The internetz is such a wonderful thing. It is simply amazing to behold its ability to enable folks like you to inhabit a world about which you know nothing!

And, where did you find facts to back up assertions like these?

I agree with both sentiments.

I used coverflow for a couple of days after it originally came out. After that, pretty much never. And, while patents create the incentive to innovate, they can also paradoxically, stifle innovation by others.

He probably meant this little trick on windows.. Press the Windows key and Tab at the same time, and you'll see what he meant.

I have a totally cool idea for time travel I'm thinking of patenting. I expect to get acknowledged for my invention, too, by the first person to implement a time machine, becuz I really wouldn't know how to build one myself.

Who would ever ever suggest that? Let me reassure you that Spotlight is my primary search start. Name, contents, file kind, etc., in that order. Smart folders…tons of them.


Or that? My main search engine pulses a library of over 20 million files. And without Cover Flow.


Bull. As in order, then Cover Flow, (along with Quick Look), is an optimal tool to help enhance and finalize search strategies.

This is even more applicable today as hard drives are now being offered in the terabyte range. Thousands of images, photos, videos, etc., are being viewed continuously and to suggest we are much more likely to know what we want and simply type in a file name, let alone meta data and we can't even spell the name as simple as Cover Flow, is questionable.

I might add that it seems that a number of decisions are made by simply skimming over 'new' innovations. As the first response to the iPad, iPhone, Sherlock, iTunes, etc., etc., has evidenced.

1) You are the one that suggested a "music, grocery, book, video or any store for that matter, and even a library,

2) I use Quick Look, just not Cover Flow, expect for the previous example given which doesnt look to be Cover Flow itself though probably using the same underlying technology.

3) I cant understand why you would have a problem with use not using Cover Flow. Its great that you find this to be a great resource, but I dont. I have under 300 songs in my iTunes folder right now and know exactly what song I want without the need for the album cover to find it. Why is that a problem for you?

4) I have terabytes of video stored and have yet to need Cover Flow to because I have organized them into folders, with proper names and metadata, as previously stated. This would do nothing but slow down my searches if I looked for items by this methods, as previously stated. Its great that it works for you and no one is saying you are wrong to use it, as previously stated. So why exactly do you take issue with others not needing it? Why do you think it hurts the usefulness you find from it?

5) The idea that you are bothered by the compressing Cover Flow into CoverFlow when you have to know Apple uses camel-case on many of its products kind of says something about your obsession with this, which points to a lack of objectivity in this matter. Are you really questioning whether weve ever used fLOW-qUICK or lOOK-qUICK because of the exclusion of a space? Re-ally?

I might not use CoverFlow that much, but I don't know where I'd be without Quickloook and icon previews.

As for Time Machine, it seems to be the best implementation of its kind.