Apple could collect $10 for every Android device sold, expert says - Page 4

I'm saying they didn't have inspiration. Or is inspiration no longer a part of progress?

You're saying they were not inspired by the iPhone.

I'm saying they were ABSOLUTELY inspired by the iPhone.

If not... when exactly did they realize they needed to switch things up? Are you telling me all these companies were on the brink of something new... but Apple just beat them to it? Hardly...

Look at the picture I showed earlier... or in the bottom right of this photo. That's the phone Palm announced just 2 days before Apple announced the iPhone. Clearly they weren't thinking too far ahead. The red Centro was released even later in 2007... as well as more similar models the next year.

What made Palm do this massive transformation into WebOS and the Palm Pre in 2009? Would they have gotten there without the iPhone?

As for the rest of those phones... there wasn't anything on the horizon for them either.

I'm fairly certain Google had plans to put Android on the phones of the day... phones that looked like the picture below.

Then something happened. An entire industry doesn't shift by accident... something must have sparked it. I think it was the iPhone.

It's fine to be inspired by something... just give credit where credit is due.

The difference is that Microsoft no longer have any significant share of the mobile phone market and have nothing to lose. For now. So why not rake in the cash, from mobile phone makers, for doing nothing but having a patent? But do you think for a second that Microsoft would license out key technology to Android if they had any appreciable share of the mobile phone market? If that were the case, why would Microsoft want to sell to their competitors a license to use technology that would make their mobile devices better? Do you see them licensing out key technology of their Kinect to Sony or Nintendo? I'm sure they can rake in some serious cash there, for doing nothing but having a patent. If Sony stole key technology from the Kinect to make their own version of it, don't you think Microsoft would be willing to spend millions in lawyers and court cost to sue Sony? Or do you think they should just offer them a license to use that stolen technology, so they can rake in the cash for doing nothing but having a patent?

Im sorry, how old are you?

It doesn't matter that Apple only has a patent for one way for a touch screen device to detect a multi-touch gesture. What matters is if Android (or the device maker) is using the same way. If so, they have to find another way for their devices to detect multi-touch gestures. And I'm sure there are many other ways. And maybe most of the other ways won't be as good as the way Apple does it. But some where out there is a better way and by Apple not licensing out their patent, some one is bound to find it. That's how patents inspires innovation.

I'm aware of that but as far as I've read anywhere Apple specific gestures seem not to be on any lawsuit platter.

And my comments regarding innovation had to do with people seemingly upset with Android for daring to offer up a multitouch icon based UI despite the fact that the similarities between the two platforms pretty much end there (especially in Android 4.0 where the only similarities between iOS 5 and Android 4 are the notifications and folder creation respectively.

Only problem is that allot of these patents are so vague that almost anything touch screen detection can fall under it. And the patent system is so broke, companies have been doing this for years and now can not? Makes no sense. And this goes for most tech patents. They are so vague it is crazy.

That's wishful thinking. Reinventing the wheel does not drive innovation.

If there is a better way to do things, someone will find it regardless of patent restrictions on the existing approaches.

After reading through yet another of these threads where the fandroids come on and defend intellectual property theft, and other disreputable practices, it simply seems that what they are arguing is that they want an iPhone, they should be able to have an iPhone, but they just don't want to, for childish reasons, want to buy their iPhone from Apple. So much effort spent on justifying stealing other people's work.

On a vaguely related note:
Would Hollywood be willing to license any company that takes their intellectual property and creates DVDs of movies? Or the game publishers license illegal copies of their games?

Just because someone can copy it does not mean it is correct to do so.

There is no way you read the thread if that's what you came to.


You are aware that that doesn't follow right?

You are comparing a finished product, a film to often vague software patents that can be "copied" even if the source code is 100% different.

That's like saying I copied the traditional mousetrap with my mousetrapper that vacuums mice into a cage because it is "an apparatus that baits and traps and/or kills mice"

the idea of a touch screen phone. Have you never heard of an iPaq? I was making calls on a touch screen iPaq in 2003. Funny, apple even copied naming convention from compaq.

Eh. Poor argument...and generally I agree with you but specifically I do not.

You're aware that that doesn't MATTER, right?

Say you have legal ownership of a movie script. It's finalized, it's copywritten, but you haven't made the movie yet.

You're okay with me taking it, making a movie based on it, and giving you no credit nor money nor rights?


You'll want to read the thread to see just how pointless this was to bring up.


Yeah, it's not like Apple released a product two years prior whose name had a leading lower-case i or anything.

I'd say they are failing if you look at the total history of MS where they were and where they are now. Businesses are either improving, standing still or declining and by almost every metric MS doing really well at the last category.

I think Compaq do have prior claims on designing computers on napkins though

What doesn't matter?

You do realized the original iPaq predates iPod. Check your dates. I didn't say 2003 was the original date of the iPaq, just that I was using one in 2003. Also, it seems quite relevant to many of the comments on this thread, showing pictures of phones with keyboards and saying iPhone was some new paradigm. It certainly popularized the concept, as most felt a physical keyboard was necessary, but it wasn't the first. I do recall many people at the time complaining that there was no physical keyboard.

What is a poor argument?

What do you generally agree with and what do you specifically disagree with?

crickets

I wasn't replying to you for that.


I didn't know that. My point, however, still stands.


You can't possibly believe that the iPAQ is in any way similar to the iPhone other than its ability to be held in one hand and the fact that it has a battery.


I recall people complaining that the mouse is a 'gimmick'. Your point? How did anyone do any typing on the iPAQ, anyway? Via stylus?


Lobsters.

Why'd you quote yourself?

You're comparing "method for detailing and outlining a movie" with an actual finished movie. If I wrote an awesome space opera. First of it's kind. And you write one after I do, obviously inspired from my work but nonetheless different you did not STEAL my work or even copy it.

iMac.

Your position on the ipaq and iPhone. Yes touchscreen phones existed pre-iphone but they were different. Hardly comparable except for some details.

The iPhone represented a paradigm shift. A reluctant one apparently since Apple apparently doesn't like that they shifted the entire industry.

And you'd sue if the characters had the same names or if the plot was the same, would you not?

That is a really interesting comment, in that in some ways it goes to the heart of the current situation. Apple must regard bringing about such a paradigm shift as a huge achievement, which leaves one wondering how they would have liked this to play out.

You can't make a shift like that without expecting everyone else to try to follow. Some obviously believe that Apple have since used every legal avenue they could find to try to stifle other companies from following at all. Others believe that they have simply tried reasonably to impede product impersonation. From a business perspective, I suspect that most would agree they would be foolish not to use the edge that patents, trade dress etc. affords them, even if that appears to amount to exploiting obvious flaws in the patent system in general.

If the roles were reversed, and, say, Samsung (or any of the other big players) were in Apple's position, would they be doing things differently?

The point is that there were other phones, be they smart phones or pdas with phone functionality that were touch screen long before the iPhone. And not just the iPaqs but many others.

The fact that Apple popularized the touch screen phone doesn't mean they invented them or that they didn't copy the idea from elsewhere. Many Apple fans seem to believe otherwise, or seem to think that Apple can copy ideas from others, but once they popularize the idea that it belongs to them exclusively.

The unfortunate part is that the patenting system is broken and allows overly broad patents or patenting of obvious things by deep pocketed companies that allows them to attempt to limit competition.

The fact is that Apple took existing ideas and popularized the concept. Once popularized the market for the devices expanded and they were no longer relegated to niche status. Then Android did the same thing, building off not only Apples ideas, but also those ideas which Apple built upon with the iPhone.

I do t remember them even starting until over 18 months after Android appeared. You can send out a letter of notice the very first day a product comes out, and they could have done that when the Hero first appeared on T-Mobile, but they didn't. My company had 43 patents, as we were small, but there were two ti e's when we did move it, both times we sent letters out within the week of finding a violation. The first one stopped, and the second we took to court (and won).

If you are suing to get money, and you're a troll set up for that purpose, you often want to wait to see how well the product will do. But if it's your patent, it's bad to let the other company do well with it as that will make them much more reluctant to let go.

Correct.


Correct.


When Apple owns the patent, it belongs to only who they say it does.


I say less 'popularized', more 'standardized'.


And violating Apple and Oracle's patents in the process, leading to the lawsuits in which they are currently mired. Innovation's wonderful, but you actually have to DO it, not just mooch stuff off others without proper credit.

You left out the part about obvious and overly broad patents and attempts to use this broken system to limit competion.

Correct

There I fixed it for you.

In the overall case of the Android lawsuits, that's a subjective argument.

Sure, we need patent reform. That doesn't instantaneously mean that all patents need reformed or are 'bad'.

I think that's probably what you actually meant. With the number of patent re-examination issues with Oracle's case there's no certainty that any of the asserted patent claims will hold up once the USPTO finishes.

Do you not understand the concept of patents? It seems not. There is nothing that is happening today that hasn't happened in the past. All is the same in the field of patents. Except for one thing; FRAND licensing.

Patents weren't conceived to let everyone use them that didn't own them. Is this not understood? In every field, when an invention is patented, it means "Hands off!". This is always what it meant. It was never meant that bottom feeders could swoop in and steal the use.

When companies like Google serially steal other's IP, and then claim that they are "innovating", that's BS, nothing less.

Some companies make it a business model to license out their patents, and others don't. Both is proper. Technology is so complex these days that R&D for even what seems to be a minor design can cost tens of millions. Why should a company allow others to steal that feature? They shouldn't!

If a new technology comes out, and there are some patents by one or more firms that are required to enable that new technology, then industry agrees that those patents MUST be licensed to one and all as FRAND licenses, at fair and equitable rates. Other than those, all other patents aren't required for the technology to function, and therefor don't have to be licensed at all, or can be licensed for whatever the owner thinks they can get.

So when Apple has usability patents that make an OS more pleasant to use, or more convenient, or more attractive, or more obvious, or whatever, they don't have to license that. Let others figure out a way around it. That's the point to a patent. The developer, or owner gets the benefits, and others are forced to do their own R&D. That's how new tech gets spread around, and upgraded. It's not by stealing what's already been invented.

I just can't understand people who think the opposite.

Patent law is actually very liberal. If you take two patented widgets, and put them together in a way that does something new, you can make, use and sell it. You can even patent it!

There is less wrong with patent systems around the world than there is with the governments who refuse to give the offices enough money to hire enough technically knowledgable examiners to have the time to investigate a patent deeply enough. It's a procedural thing more than a conceptual thing.

I do believe that software patents are important, and should be allowed. I also believe that they should stand for 7-10 years instead of 20. That would clear up a lot of the mess.

There's nothing wrong with inspiration. That's one of the things the patent system is supposed to encourage. But there is a difference between being inspired, and stealing, or blatant copying.

Originality is in short supply, and that's always been a problem.

Totally agree.

Steve Jobs wanted to BURY the Android. And actually, in a cynical business sense, Apple gets a bigger advantage in Market Share and Developers by creating a headache for Google.

I'm sure it would be worth it to Apple to pay $20 for every Android not sold -- just to honor the wishes of Steve Job's ghost.

I assume therefor that you've read most of the two or three million tech patents, and are well qualified to comment? If not, please don't repeat that old canard.

Yet for all the screams about Google stealing IP there's very few cases where patent infringement has been proven. In fact I'll go so far as to say Apple has been found guilty of patent infringement, or "stealing other's IP" as you'd say, as often or more than Google.

The one thing that has come from all the recent lawsuit activity is that Google no longer appears to have a laid-back attitude towards patenting and protecting their own innovations. That's not necessarily either a good or bad thing for the mobile industry, but it's no longer avoidable.

No, but inventing skis is, or the tractor drive, for an example. The point to patents is to do exactly that, force others to come up with other inventions that advance matters. It's not to have everyone else steal or copy said invention, which is what we are seeing in all too many cases.

A patent doesn't copy the idea or concept of trapping a mouse. A patent is for an invention, a specific thing, that traps a mouse. As such, there can be, and are, many patents to do that. That's true for every area.

But, there are times where there is no good way around a patent. In that case, unless that patent is required for the technology, in broad terms to function, it's tough for others. They can't use it unless the originator decides to license it, and they can't be forced to.

In the '50‘s, Honeywell invented the automatic camera strobe whereby the amount of light was regulated by the distance. A pretty simple thing. But back then, their way was the only practical way to do it. A cell measured the light, and a resistor (basically) drained the capacitor when the required amount of light had hit the subject. So simple, it seems obvious. But, of course, no one had thought of it except a couple of engineers within Honeywell, so, obviously, it wasn't obvious.

A number of other manufacturers decided to use this tech as Honeywell was siphoning off much of their business, so Honeywell sued, and won. That's the way it worked, back then, and now. Since that time, the patent expired, and newer tech has come up with much better ways of doing it that don't waste the current. But it took years.

These days, people think that everyone is entitled to what others come up with, and they want it NOW. Well, if you want it now, suck it up and buy that company's product. That's what people did with strobes back then. Honeywell got a lot of business from people who otherwise wouldn't have bought a Honeywell strobe.

MULTI-TOUCH!!!

Besides the Apple Newton predates the iPaq by many years.

You keep bringing up Chinese companies, could you please name these Chinese companies Apple is suing?