Most definitely a troll...... I think these guys got their companies mixed-up: that drawing looks more like the original Excel than Numbers. In fact, the only similarity with any Apple product is that it looks more Mac OS 6-ish than it does Windows. Apple should sue this company for copying Apple's IP.
Definitely not Mac OS 6-ish. Thats Windows 3.xx.
... at night.
... at night.
What you know is that they filed a suit right now. You don't know how long it took for them to become aware of the application or investigate it. Beyond that you may have had communication between the two companies. This did not necessarily sit in stasis. You only here about it when it progresses to the point of litigation. Trademarks are totally different. They are not something that is typically licensed out as you would with IP. You're just completely off base here.
Most definitely a troll...... I think these guys got their companies mixed-up: that drawing looks more like the original Excel than Numbers. In fact, the only similarity with any Apple product is that it looks more Mac OS 6-ish than it does Windows. Apple should sue this company for copying Apple's IP.
You misinterpreted the nature of the article. This isn't necessarily a design patent. It doesn't matter how it looks. The cited IP relates to how it works. The styling is something that's included for reference, but you're not looking at an entire claim in the form of an illustration. If you want to read the whole thing, look for the words "what is claimed is". I'm not exactly an expert on this, but some of the opinions on this thread are based on extremely levels of misinterpretation or unverified assumptions.
I'm with jragosta and wizard69 on this one. Tarring firms with the overused "patent troll" brush is silly and misleading.
"patent trolling" is nothing more or less than "intellectual property arbitrage." That is, some firms are in the business of acquiring IP assets that are undervalued and then generating revenue from them. In many cases, the original owner/creator of that patent is not in a position to make use of it and is unable or uninterested in doing the work of finding licensees for the patent. Someone else steps in and does that.
I don't have a problem with that part at all. It's no different from me selling you land I no longer have an interest in developing and you develop it. Or perhaps because I'm not a real estate developer land I inherit that I don't develop should be given to the first random squatter than comes along and build on it? Is that what people mean when they say they hate patent trolls?
The problems with the system are:
1. patents being granted for vague, obvious things that do more to hinder innovation then encourage it.
2. courts/juries that make poor decisions when faced with adjudicating IP cases (in many, most?, cases because a layman has no business trying to try such cases).
3. when intellectual property arbitrage specialists use thuggish, gotcha tactics to generate revenue from their patents. If I were to use the term patent troll at all, it would be for this subset of firms that use these tactics. For example, rather than reaching out to a company as soon as they identify a possible patent infringement and offering to license their IP, they watch and wait for years until the product becomes successful and thing spring forth asking for big bucks. THAT's what I find unfair. If you know I'm doing something wrong, and you a) don't tell me about it and b) don't do anything about it, then you are choosing to give up some of your rights to sue me later. At least that's how it should be. In the least you shouldn't be able to get compensation for that period when I was using your IP with your knowledge and your implicit consent (as evidenced by your complete inaction).
It was Loderunner, not loadrunner.
Awesome game, two colours black and white, and Daleks, lots of daleks.
Used to play it on my Mac Plus.
"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.
"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.
Patents just cause harm to small developers, but it's totally harmless to big companies. The patents game is the game they play. So don't call it "patent troll", it's just another game in the season, and they're well fitted to play it. So, I'd say "good move" to the business who started this, and "now it's your turn" to Apple. Yes, it's a boring game, though.
It was Loderunner, not loadrunner.
Awesome game, two colours black and white, and Daleks, lots of daleks.
Used to play it on my Mac Plus.
Actually Lode Runner (2 words) by a company called Brøderbund not Borland. There was a color version and even an Xbox version.
See the true definition of a patent troll guys?
Well in their case they forgot to file for a patent at all.
Not quite ...
Full story is here: http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm ... but here's a snippet:
Exactly! good Analogy.
You failed to state what is ridiculous. I don't see anything ridiculous about it. Apple might be infringing a patent and someone sued them to ask the court to determine infringement. Why is that ridiculous. Apple knows that when it sells products it might be infringing patents, which is why it has a team of lawyers and outside counsel to determine the best way for the company to deal with the patent and/or Apple's infringement.
What is ridiculous is for the media and ignorant techies to think that high tech companies shouldn't have to deal with potential patent infringement.
Your wrong. In order to get a patent, you have to enable someone to make and use the invention. See 35 U.S.C. section 112.
Secondly, engineers come up with ideas all the time that they can describe how they want it to work but don't actually have the skill to "code it up." That was probably true for many of the invention Steve Jobs made. The fact that someone doesn't write code doesn't mean they can't conceive of the functionality that make a product work better. The patent system grants patents to the people that conceive of the invention, not the people that manufacture or sell it. And for good reason. Building the factory and sales team to sell a product doesn't do any good if you don't have a product to make and sell.
What you suggest would ruin the patent system. If someone created something and didn't have the resources or market position to manufacture or sell their creation, they would be left empty handed. And obviously they would stop creating.
Your suggestion is like saying we shouldn't let authors sell the rights to their books to movie producers. Instead, let's force the authors to make the movies themselves. After all, author rights are to individuals. (in fact author rights come from the same clause of the U.S. constitution as inventor rights).
Was VisiCalc patentable over the prior art? If so, in what way? Just because VisiCalc predates Excel doesn't mean there were features of VisiCalc that were patentable. You would have to know what the prior art was at the time VisiCalc was created and then determine that VisiCalc included features that were not in the prior art.
Obviously the features claimed in this Apple lawsuit are not found in VisiCalc or it wouldn't be patentable.
Without commenting on the current case, due to lack of knowledge of the specifics....
Patents are granted for a very specific purpose, to incentivize innovation. Companies that collect patents for no purpose other than to wait until someone produces something they can cash in on pervert that purpose. They do have the legal right to sue under current patent law, but that doesn't make them any less patent trolls. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
So, the concept of a patent troll is entirely valid and points out what is probably the main problem with current patent law: that it allows this sort of gaming the system that siphons money from companies that are innovating to companies that have no intention of innovating, which is contrary to the purpose of the law, as laid out in the US Constitution.
You're arguing for a free market and invoking enforced monopolies to support it?!
Good to see your sophistry has improved so greatly in the last 15 years.
The "Free Market" and the "Invisible Hand" are the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy of economics, so no, I don't, "believe in them." But, you contradict yourself. If it were in fact a "Free Market", there would be no patents at all. The only reason there are patents is because it was believed that the so-called "Free Market" wasn't perfect and that a slightly less free market was a better system to promote innovation. Let's call the "patent arbitrage" market what it mostly has become, the patent trolling market.
So, do you want a free market, or do you want patents? You can't have both.
The trouble with iFans is that they seem to think the entire patent system should operate only for the benefit of Apple and no one else.
You couldn't say it any better.
"I Invented the Rectangle" - Steve Jobs
"We Bomb you" - USA
"I Invented the Rectangle" - Steve Jobs
"We Bomb you" - USA
I was using spreadsheets long before the 1995 patent was issued that had all the features described in the patent.
In the USA, a patent is not supposed to be issued if the features it describes were in "prior art" i.e. existing products.
Therefore the patent is invalid, and the patent troll is just attempting extortion. It's a typical organized crime operation.
The problem is that
(A) the court that let this suit go forward is known for its pro-patent-speculator bias. (They should be called speculators, not trolls.)
Thus the court in question may well be enabling extortion by speculator thugs.
And if the speculators get a jury trial as requested then the other problem is that
(B) the jury members may well be pressured or outright paid under the table to side with the speculator crooks.
Never underestimate what can be done in a small town like Marshall to rig a trial or election or anything.
I was using spreadsheets long before the 1995 patent was issued that had all the features described in the patent.
Probably not. QuattroPro for Windows was widely regarded the first *Windows* spreadsheet program with the tabs.
The patent does not cover the concept of a 3D spreadsheet, it covers a specific implementation of them, under Windows.
I highly suspect you are either referring to non-Windows products, ones that post-date the 1992 release of QPW, or ones that use some other visual display.
But feel free to list your examples.
