Small Spanish tablet maker wins patent attack from Apple - Page 2

They took out the flea, iKol, now it's time to go for the horsefly.

No. I have little interest in biographies. I also haven't watched any of the specials on Jobs, including the event held at Apple HQ. I'll likely get to a couple of the specials, but I'm more interested with the innovations and works of famous people than in the people themselves. Since I am well aware of Jobs efforts having been a long time Apple user too much will be a repeat of information and anything non-technical (aka, about his family life) I simply don't care about as that's his private life, not mine.

Now watch Samsung try to buy Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala for their "patent portfolio."
Might help them to get a peek at iOS 5 source code. (Not.)

But still, that particular takeover would have some entertainment value. Would be really
funny to see Koreans trying to speak Castilian Spanish...

That's why this showed 2 pages and only the first would load. They sent Tachy to Coventry. (See last entry under Later Use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry#Later_use)

Just because you lose a lawsuit doesn't mean the lawsuit was bogus. If Apple's claims were reasonable, although ruled incorrect, this doesn't mean Apple filed a bogus lawsuit. Moreover, Apple probably still has appeal rights, and was fighting in a foreign forum again a local company. In my mind, the competing product looked a lot like an iPad. In the US that would subject a party to possible patent, copyright, and trademark causes of action.

As far as freeze g the product goes, that is the same thing companies in the US are trying to do to Apple and Apple is trying to do to other companies by filing ITC complaints. It is just in some other countries those issues are worked out differently.

There were many tablets released before the iPad. Take this one for example - in stores in the last quarter of 2009

http://www.gadgetfolder.com/boeye-mi...d-powered.html

It pre-dates the iPad but that doesn't mean it is original. That is an iPhone KIRF that clearly violates Apple's design patents.

I'm sure they have lawyers that are smart enough to know how to spell the word "designed"... haha

Agree. There's the small issue of "trade dress," which Apple has used successfully. The (rather ugly) little Spanish xPad does have a wide-screen form factor and more squarish corners than iPad, so maybe they can sneak by. (And Samsung, if you're listening, two words: "square corners.")

We'll see if the Spanish xPad sells in Australia and Germany. No home field advantage there.

Apple no longer have a soul, it was killed and eaten by iGreed. RIP

OMG. That's the textbook definition of "craplet."

Apple must be thrilled that all the wannabes are getting stuck at square one. The hardware design. Easily copied, as we've seen. Lots of xPad wannabes out there.

Step two, which is vastly harder, is the OS design. The general look-and-feel, the API for developers. Hard to copy, but Google has tried mightily. Google is still trying to hammer out all the kinks in Android. All the forks, the fragmented GUI experience, the whole big ugly mess. Microsoft is hoping to avoid all that. Good luck.

Step three, which is vastly harder yet again, is the software ecosystem built around the OS. The app store, the apps, building developer relations etc. This is where Apple's attention to detail helped them succeed. 500k+ apps, over 15 billion apps downloaded, $$$ billions paid to developers. Impossible to just copy. Your platform (hardware + OS) needs to actually be popular. Being popular is hard.

Step four, the holy grail, is an infrastructure that the hardware, OS, and software ecosystem all use to access and purchase content. iTunes, then iTunes Store, and now iCloud are all crucial elements in Apple's infrastructure. Impossible to copy overnight. It took Apple a decade to build iTunes into what it is now, and it will take Apple a decade to build iCloud out to its full potential. iCloud will pave the way for Apple's next decade of innovation.

Have fun trying to fool people with those little craplets, BoEye.

They're ALL from SJ. How can you forget what SJ said about Android? SJ was after any company that uses Android. Apple is not the same w/o SJ and now Apple fans are not the same w/o him too, sighhh...

...Jutht what ith that thuppothed to mean?

...nenyer, neyner, neyner!

...only the trolls are the same, more's the pity!

Ooooo.... I like that idea...

With one slight change: The Coventry users can see their own posts and the posts of all the other Tachys.... and commiserate among themselves

How do you know these things?

I'd prefer whichever of these is the banned one being able to make new posts, hit the Submit button, have everything look fine, but absolutely nothing actually happens.

Let them waste their time writing posts that get deleted the second they're posted.

Apple is the next Microsoft. Kill the competition however small they may be. Sue god for making a fruit and naming it apple plus making it the shape of their insignia.

Apple has the right to protect its IP.

He specifically referred to Android and Google. Not EVERY competitor.

Was iKol banned?

Essentially, but instead of showing his posts with the word banned under his name, he was put on the global ignore list built into vBulletin. basically it means only the mods can see him post and until we made mention of his posts vanishing he wouldn't have known we can't see his posts until he logged out of AI to see why people weren't responding to him.

... but Steve did say:

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

... and this was said when his cancer was quite advanced iirc... in other words, said at a time when Steve was sick but still willing to devote time and energy to go after Android and Samsung.

So I'd say that these lawsuits are mostly Steve... jmho.

[whoops - I see this has been covered (I don't read CJ's posts), plus I thought I was in another thread... this deals with the lawsuit against the Spanish manufacturer which might have just come from Apple legal... as do other trademark infringements (ie - logo related lawsuits) ]

Wait. Can someone explain why Apple would go after this company? Their tablets look nothing like the iPad. I'm glad that little company won.

That's as worthless as Apple beginning to sue that restaurant because their logo was an apple.

I thought he was just kicked for ten days. Is he really wasting his time posting right now?

I think Apple legal was given a broad spectrum mandate and they just stretched it a little too far.

Sort of like the woman at the Safeway who was sent to jail and had her child taken away because she forgot to pay for a $5.00 sandwich while grocery shopping. Sometimes people take their jobs way way too seriously and with little common sense.

You've taken a shot at the biggest fanatical fanboi in the known Apple universe.
You are now classified as 'troll' along with anyone who has hinted that Apple isn't perfect.
Congratulations.

That's what I mean by not being Jobs. He's not going to do the lawyers jobs for them. I figure they were essentially to build a case against Android, something Apple has yet to directly go against Google on.

Which is going to be harder to win as Android matures and evolves into what it should've been in the first place, a mobile OS inspired by iOS.

Aside: I've retired my Steve Jobs reaction images. Thought it proper. Please enjoy my new Tim Cook line of reaction images.

Correct.

Apple obviously doesn't care about companies like this. The strategy is to pick on a little guy, hoping that you can also scare some bigger guys.

A similar proxy war is ongoing against HTC.

maybe the lawsuit wasn't bogus, but the criminal charges are.

Who ever approved that at Apple, was not thinking clearly.... it seems like Steve dies and shit like this happens soon afterwards.

if Apple keeps going after small manufactures, than i will agree, they are becoming a Microsoft, just with a different market to aim at

Still unclear about the "moral damages" mentioned in the countersuit. I mean, you can define "moral" in whatever manner suits your ideology. If you live in a predominantly socialist society, moral might mean to take from the greedy capitalist company and give to the poor local startup. Of course they didn't say that, but then what do they mean by "moral damages"? It's a laughably self-serviing charge.

There are plenty of examples where the idea of what a tablet like an iPad might look, from a hardware perspective, that predate the iPad. Just to name one, "Star Trek: The Next Generation", a TV show from the early 1990's had flat, squarish, touchscreen computers. It was even called a PADD. Apple clearly stole the idea from there!

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD

Or we could even look at Apple's own Newton MessagePad or all of the PalmPilots and other such devices from the 90's and consider the iPad the logical evolution from that form factor.

We can credit Apple with pushing a finger-based, touchscreen, hand held computer into mainstream reality; but I don't think you can credit them with the idea itself.

Theft is theft, why shouldn't white collar criminals go to jail too? After all, what they are stealing is worth a lot more than, say, a car.

For example, maybe if Schmidt, Page & Brin were facing jail time for their many crimes, they wouldn't be so eager to continually steal other people's IP.

Would be a good arguement if images of the LG Prada were not available before the iPhone was announced.

Would be a good argument if interface images of the LG Prada were available before the iPhone was announced.

Unfortunately, this argument has been done to death and the LG supporters are wrong.

And the LG Prada UI was nothing like the iPhone UI. They may have changed a few things around after seeing the iPhone's UI but it's not likely, IMO.

They did used icons, which is what you'd expect on device that uses fingertips for input. Note the LG Prada was not the first device to use icons on a touch display and, most glaring of all, it only allowed a single touch at a time. Not exactly violating Apple's multi-touch capacitance patents there.

Anyone know anything about this NT-K company?

From their website, it looks like Psystar all over again. No sign of any real product, any actual "sales" or any way to buy it if there were, just a few computer-generated mock-ups of computer concepts.

The "NT-K Pad", the one the Spanish customs impounded, was real enough. It looks exactly like any number of iPad lookalike Android-based knockoffs you can buy in the back-street markets of Shenzhen.

And like all of these iPad knock-offs, it looks exactly like an iPad, if you ignore the stretched widescreen aspect ratio and the bulge where all those USB ports plug in. Plus it has a fold-out "stand" that looks like it is made from a bent coat hanger.

Problem is, everyone knows, if you go to Shenzhen you might lay out $100 for one just to try. Until these Catalans came along, no-one actually tried to import and SELL them. These guys are not "heros", they are just high-tech black-market cigarette smugglers.

I find your definition of "exactly like" to be interesting...as in "not at all like". Taking all of your "if you ignore" items into account, you're basically left with: flat, black, and rectangular.

Are you saying that Apple has rights to the flat, black, rectangular form factor for all portable electronic devices? Just like Ford has rights to all personal transportation machines that have seats, a steering wheel, and four tires?