Google argues popular Apple patents are de facto standards essential - Page 6

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 


One could also argue that if you want to use my car and I won't let you, that when you take it and drive cross country, I forced you to steal it. After all, cars are way too critical to be held only for the use of one person.
It would be a really stupid argument, and it wouldn't get you very far in court, but you could argue it.

Hey but I'd only use your car to lend it to other people for free.

Then I'll give you a cut, how many percent do you want?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian Huitson 

I hope Google wins this, because the ramifications are huge.

Imagine cheap medicines because patented medicine can now be copied cheaply and help solve the worlds health issues

Imagine cheap food because bio tech patents can now be copied cheaply and help solve the worlds food supply issues
I am sure the greater good of world health and food supply is a more noble cause than consumer popularism and this move will release all these patents for the better good.

 

Yeah and pigs will fly that week as well.

 

It won't happen.

While I appreciate somehow your point of view because I have some insights in the health care and charity business, I have to say that there's no way to equate these issues with smartphones and the related patents.

Cheap or free music, movies, games are entertainment and not part of public welfare although the old Roman "bread and games" might suggest it.

The game is about disrupting a healthy market by subsidizing (ads).

I read often "competition is good". Subsidies are a tool to abrogate free market prices by their nature.

They are about eliminating competition and not about the opposite.

Beside insuring the necessary standards for health care, safety, education, infrastructure etc. societies need to operate I have never seen cross subsidies doing anything good to a market in the long run.

To suggest that smartphones and their technology should be part of the common good isn't acceptable because in my experience free movies aren't a replacement for education and smartphones can't cure cancer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hill60 

 

Hey but I'd only use your car to lend it to other people for free.

 

Then I'll give you a cut, how many percent do you want?

I'd like $1.000/day, plus you accept liability for any accidents or other damages that occur while you are driving it, and pay for any rental cars I need because I don't have use of it. Or, will that just force you to steal it again?

Apple is so mean forcing Google to steal iOS when they originally wanted to steal the Blackberry. Why can't Apple just leave Google alone and stop forcing them to break the law. Tim Cook is just as mean as Steve was. Poor Google.

But, as Chairman Page says, "In People's Republic of Googlestan, all your technology are belong to us... and books... and Yelp reviews... and everything are belong to us. Don't be evil. Peace out."

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredaroony 

So Apple didn't invent it or use it in any of their products first but they did make it better so they should get a patent for it? Please tell me you aren't really saying this.

If someone invents a manner for interacting with a device using a touch screen they deserve a patent on that. If someone else comes along and invents a different and markedly superior way to accomplish the same thing with better results, then yes, I'd say they deserve a patent for it.

For how many years did mobile phone manufacturers sit on their asses with no useful innovation beyond tacky variations on case design? Apple revolutionized the mobile industry with their first iPhone, which was ridiculed by all their competitors only to eventually be copied by them. These lazy, greedy and talentless companies don't have the right to just swoop in and blatantly copy Apple's innovations after years of contributing nothing of value to the market.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich 

 

I'm quite familiar with Intellectual Ventures. They sign agreements with patent holders or buy patents outright en masse or form patent consortiums to exploit to the fullest their property.

 

All companies exist to make a profit. That is their only real requirement. Not to employ people, not to make society a better place by making huge donations to charities, not to improve the quality of life... none of that. They are doing it right. They make huge profits, it is 100% legal and it is done in a very, very smart way. And you know what is the side benefit to their rampant, disgusting capitalism? People are employed. Huge donations can be made. Quality of life improves. Wow. Think about that.

 

Of course the patent and copyright systems are constructs... legal constructs. Property rights are still rights and a society that widely recognizes property rights seems to be a rare and diminishing thing. Rights are inherent, which means they cannot be given or taken from you. A legal system helps to enforce the rights you already have. In that way, the individual is as powerful as the biggest companies on Earth.

The fact that you support and admire Intellectual Ventures' business model places you at the most extreme position of this discussion. This company and its business model are despised by a tremendous majority. The laws need to be changed to prevent this misuse of patent law - as it is clearly a violation of the law's prime objective - to encourage innovation, not to enrich corporate leeches who add zero value.

I think I'm done debating this with you and you have revealed your position to be that of an extremist who values one sleazy company's ability to make a huge profit over policies that benefit the market as a whole - and that means companies and consumers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


Why is it when Apple invents something people bring up the silliest examples of prior art like a photo frame, a video mockup of what the future might hold, Star Trek, or some early hominid tablet found in a cave in Southern France, but when it comes to Google prior art all of a sudden has so little meaning that an actual feature (note, not even a product) that was on devices of the same type in the same time frame means nothing?

Because:

1.   Everybody's always pickin' on Apple.

2.   Everybody who doesn't hate Google is a hypocrite.

jragosta wrote:

Of course patent trolls don't exist. It's a silly made-up term used by people who don't understand patents OR business.

You are defending the patent system as it exists today under the apparent premise that anything that is legal is correct and desirable, so long as it's profitable for someone. Never mind the impact to the market as a whole or to consumers. 

The CONCEPT of copyrights and patents is not natural. These are not an inalienable rights.  As I wrote previously it was an ARTIFICIAL construct created with the sole intent of encouraging innovation. In other words, we created this artificial notion that someone's work can be protected from copying for a limited period of time - in other words, a monopoly - with the express intent of encouraging people to create and invent things, which benefits the market and society as a whole.

What we have today, and what companies like Intellectual Ventures are doing, goes entirely against this concept. Fortunately, the rest of our nation does not share your selfish Ayn Rand-esque philosophy of every man for himself and f*** the rest of the country.

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppetry 


That's the spirit - just move the goal posts and hope no one notices. This whole stupid exchange started with you stridently attempting to argue that he should not have an emotional response to a company (originally Google, then it moved on to MS) unless he were personally affected by them. So, now you are conceding that he was affected, but that it was his problem?

Muppetry, your mistake is in trying to be logical and consistent - shame on you! :) Consider the source of this whole silly thread. 

The wonderful thing about this commenting system is how it allows you to block the people who appear to delight in being contrary, antagonistic jackalopes. The ol' "fredarooney" has earned a special place in this list. Technology can be quite handy at times. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppetry 


Clearly struck a nerve there, and fully according to pattern - when he totally runs out of ideas he wheels out the block list. Maybe one day he will put Appleinsider on the block list and the torture will be over.

A hit! A palpable hit! :) I'm sure it won't be too long before "the fredster" pulls out yet another alias so the fun can continue. Maybe there could be a contest - see who can detect his latest alias the soonest?

People who think that Apple should license patents and make money are not seeing the point here. Apple's strategy revolves around putting a unique product in the hands of the consumer. Apple tries to set itself apart from competitors products. Licensing out the patents and making a mint off of licensing fees might sound nice on paper. But in the long range, it's contrary to Apple's strategy of building a unique device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


What a stupid argument. The right to drive a car is an artificial construct too. Let's take away your right to drive (starting when you finally turn 16). Better yet, money is an artificial construct. Let's take away all your money. Better yet - just send it to me since you don't believe in artificial constructs.

He/she wasn't arguing that it is invalid just because it is unnatural, but that if it doesn't work correctly anymore then maybe it is time to re-examine it.

I understand the motivation behind these laws, but they leave me uneasy sometimes (which might be due to lack of a deeper understanding of the issue). I plan to make money developing software. I basically just don't want either of these to be true:

(a) I'm asked by a client/employer to help patent something which is so simple (to me and other developers) that it is embarrassing to "own" it (hopefully "non-obviousness" is high enough a standard to eliminate this), or so quick-to-invent that "protecting" it takes unnecessary resources away from moving on to bigger and better things, or so complicated that it might be unnecessary to patent anyway--- just understanding it and being able to incorporate it first has a competitive advantage in itself.

or

(b) I legitimately develop something, with good intentions, and am told to stop or be punished for something which I couldn't have foreseen (or which would have been unreasonable to foresee if I dedicate my time/resources to development), just because someone else got there first. That, to me, would seem like running a marathon- except when one runner gets a few steps ahead, he/she turns around with a gun and tells the other runners "Look, I took these few steps before you, therefore you cannot advance until I say so"
 

I'm at the early stages of forming an opinion, I guess- but these things haven't been adequately resolved in my mind. (Maybe they never will)

Quote:

Originally Posted by AbsoluteDesignz 
Does Apple have a notification center without Android?

iOS certainly did. If people are going to keep repeating idiocy, they shouldn't expect respect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


Your argument is simply begging the question along with hasty generalization. You are arguing that defending IV is bad because IV is bad. Then you argue that everyone knows that IV is bad.
Neither argument holds up to scrutiny. In reality, what IV is doing is completely legal and ethical. They buy property from willing sellers and they then have the right to do whatever they want with that property. If I sell my widget factory to a real estate broker, do you have the right to move in and start making widgets if the broker doesn't immediately rent it to someone? Obviously not. So why would intellectual property be any different?

Because intellectual property is different. Intellectual Vultures is a patent troll, gaming the system with unimplemented patents. They are the poster boy for patent reform and mucking up what is a good thing for those who actually play by the spirit, not just the letter, of the rules. They contribute absolutely nothing to society in exchange for the grant of property, given for the purpose of advancing society. They are leaches, sucking the life blood out of innovation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 

 

Because intellectual property is different. Intellectual Vultures is a patent troll, gaming the system with unimplemented patents. They are the poster boy for patent reform and mucking up what is a good thing for those who actually play by the spirit, not just the letter, of the rules. They contribute absolutely nothing to society in exchange for the grant of property, given for the purpose of advancing society. They are leaches, sucking the life blood out of innovation.

They contribute a way for inventors, particularly smaller one's with less resources, a way to monetize their inventions, while taking on most of the risks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anonymouse 


No, this is not, "one of the reasons for the current mess." The "current mess" as you call it came about because Google is lazy, ruthless and unethical, and has, over the years, methodically stolen other people's IP, created cheap imitations of other peoples products, and given them away for free in order to destroy the market for those seeking profits through selling innovative products, so that Google can earn advertising revenues off the backs of the people who did the actual heavy lifting.
They followed this exact strategy with Android, initially copying market leader RIM, but quickly shifting their copying efforts to iOS when it became apparent that Apple had created something revolutionary and unique with the iPhone.
So, the "current mess" came about because Google wasn't interested in investing the effort to attempt to develop something new and unique themselves, but intentionally created a cheap knockoff of iOS to be given away for free in order to make the smartphone market commercially unviable for anyone else. So far, because Apple has been able to stay so far ahead of them, and fended them off to some degree with legal challenges, they've been unsuccessful in destroying the market. Now they want the government to change the law and reward them for their lack of original work by making their chief competitor's original work public domain property.
Apple creates. Google steals and destroys. The difference between the two companies could not be starker. Without Apple's original work, Android as it is today would not even exist, because Google would not have had anything to copy it from. If Google is worried they can't keep Android viable without infringing Apple's IP, they should either do the hard work to develop an alternate paradigm for the smartphone, like Apple did*, or they should drop out of the market. What must not happen is that Google be rewarded for being lazy and dishonest.
* Apple didn't whine that RIM's technology should be made public domain, they created something wholly new that surpasses it. There's no reason other than laziness and lack of genius in their engineers that Google couldn't do the same. The iPhone paradigm is not the only viable smartphone universe. It's just the only one we know today and that Google's limited imagination can conceive. Android is not an achievement of Google, it's an indictment of them, and an embarrassing example of their complete inability to do anything original.

Very nicely put.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hill60 

 

They contribute a way for inventors, particularly smaller one's with less resources, a way to monetize their inventions, while taking on most of the risks.

What they do is create a cottage industry for creating meaningless patents that aren't intended to be implemented, but only used for extorting money out of companies who develop successful products.

These activities violate the intent of patent law and contribute absolutely nothing to the advancement of society. Intellectual Vultures has no intention of ever bringing any product to market. They are the problem with patent law that needs to be reformed and gives patents a bad name among those who can't distinguish between legitimate patent defense, such as in Apple's suits against Android, and leaches like IV who are gaming the system.

As I wrote earlier, and this is particularly true with software patents, if you can't produce an implementation, if there's no concrete definition of the invention, then it's not really possible to distinguish between an invention and an idea. (And, anyone who can't produce an implementation of a software system isn't an inventor, they are simply filling out patent applications.) The way to stop this nonsense, this gaming of the system, is to go back to a patent system where for a patent to be issued, an implementation of the patent must be submitted. This solves 2 problems that tend to put companies like IV out of business: 1. By requiring an implementation it makes it more difficult to shape shift the meaning of the patent into whatever target the troll wants to go after, by making the invention unambiguous. 2. It puts patent writers (as opposed to actual inventors) out of business and allows the law to better serve the purpose it was created for.

I have long argued that this would be the outcome.

When you can sue for one patent and ban a product that is compliance with thousands of other patents and that patent is for all intents and purposes essential to the success of the product in a given product category...well at that point, it's time to discuss whether those patents are de facto standards.

Lawmakers will not and should not tolerate giving any company a de facto monopoly based on a single patent like slide-to-unlock....especially if the holder of that patent argues that a single press is a zero-length slide and that the patent is broad enough to cover any action on the lockscreen.  If the patent is going to be that broad, it should be licensed.

This goes not just for Apple, but for Google, MS, etc.

It will go along way towards reducing patent trolling and frivolous lawsuits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetz 

I have long argued that this would be the outcome.

 

When you can sue for one patent and ban a product that is compliance with thousands of other patents and that patent is for all intents and purposes essential to the success of the product in a given product category...well at that point, it's time to discuss whether those patents are de facto standards.

 

Lawmakers will not and should not tolerate giving any company a de facto monopoly based on a single patent like slide-to-unlock....especially if the holder of that patent argues that a single press is a zero-length slide and that the patent is broad enough to cover any action on the lockscreen.  If the patent is going to be that broad, it should be licensed.

 

This goes not just for Apple, but for Google, MS, etc.

 

It will go along way towards reducing patent trolling and frivolous lawsuits.

Utter nonsense. All Google, et al. have to do is change Android and their phones to not infringe. Should be a no brainer in the instance you cite. There's no monopoly, de facto or otherwise, just some lazy dishonest companies like Google who don't respect the law.

Of course it's broken.  The system is so frakked up, This American Life had to devote an entire show to the subject.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

You're probably one of the patent trolls we're talking about.  Or someone who represents them.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 

Of course patent trolls don't exist. It's a silly made-up term used by people who don't understand patents OR business.