I think some "look and feel" lawsuits were lost (Lotus vs. MS) which makes people wary of suing. I don't believe Apple patents "look and feel"; they patent the hardware (and software) mechanism/process/technique underlying it. In other words, they do not patent the concept of "pinching" to make something smaller. But they do patent the multi-touch mechanism, consisting of hardware sensors and software interpretation, that they use to sense the pinching and compress the image sent to the display.
Others can implement pinching to make something smaller but they need to use a different mechanism to make it happen.
Apple does file for "design trademarks" which provides protection for a certain look of a device. That look can be hardware size/shape or a software-driven arrangement of an icon(s) on a display, or both.
Agreed. Most of the patents mentioned in this complaint appear to be technical and based on implementations of hardware and software technology.
The one that will probably get the least play in the media, and yet to me is the most interesting is the DSP one for WinMobile devices. If Apple is correct about HTC copying their implementation on that, it seems particularly blatant and it's disturbing to me that any large corporation would approve of that sort of thing.
I also agree that look and feel patent lawsuits are a bit dodgy at best, I just wanted to point out the popular misconception. Apple didn't actually "lose" the look and feel lawsuit, as so many people seem to think.
Look and feel is probably best dealt with as a trademark issue even though on the surface it doesn't appear to be trademark related. Apple was granted extensive trademark protection on the "look" of the iPhone just last week so maybe we will see something there as well.
Well, I am sure you are asking the question just to try and trash me. However, I guess I'll play along...
I bought a 2.66Ghz Macbook Pro back in June when they came out. I liked it so much, I bought a 2.0Ghz Mac mini to put in my entertainment center. I will say that due to my work, I would not have bought one if it was not capable of running MS Windows ( I use VMWare ). I point this out, because until recently, I would not have even considered the switch to Apple. I also though about trying my hand a developing software for the Apple for a change.
So, I am fairly new to the Mac world. I have been a software developer for about 30 years so I am not new to computers in general.
I was thinking about getting another Mac Mini to replace one of my PC based Web servers. I recently converted the Perl Script ( used on the site ) so that It runs well on Apache...
I will be honest and say that I find the Apple Fan base to be quite interesting. I never though people would take discussions of computers and phones so personal. To me it is just another interesting piece of technology...
Finally! Apple wakes up in sweaty fear and takes action.
Fixed.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Any Company making Phones has an Operating System on that phone. Any Company contractually joined with another Company violating Operating System patents is complicit in that knowledge ahead of time.
Going after HTC is a shot at Nokia, Symbian and Google via Android. Motorola is next.
Taligent Object-Oriented Operating System was used instead of NeXTSTEP because the Taligent Patents are older in a few cases.
People forget that NeXT and Apple patented the hell out of Object-Oriented Systems and it was just NeXT that actually sold an Object-Oriented OS in NeXTSTEP. Taligent IP is still part of Apple's overall portfolio.
My favorite part that patent reference that people haven't realized is the 1988 article on Distributed Computing:
Quote:
Proc. of the Summer 1988 Usenix Conf. 20 Jun. 1988, San Francisco, US, pp. 1-13 "Using the X Toolkit or How to Write a Widget" by McCormack et al. .
New Directions for Unix. Proc. Autumn 1988 EUUG Conf. Oct. 3, 1988, Cascais, Portugal, pp. 25-37, Bernabeu-Auban et al. "Clouds--A Distributed Object-Based Operating System Architecture and Kernel Implementation"..
These patents deal directly with the OS on all levels working with the hardware. No OS means the Hardware is useless.
Steve figured it out at NeXT. The Software dictates the Hardware, not the other way around--the lesson he failed to learn at Apple when Microsoft laughed all the way to the bank.
All Smartphone Operating Systems today are Object-Oriented.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Yeah, because iPhone sales are really starting to tank and Apple doesn't seem to be very interested in extending the platform.
I never though people would take discussions of computers and phones so personal. To me it is just another interesting piece of technology...
Oh come the freak-on. You've never - ever - seen a nerd discussion on any tech product ever devolve into a fever-pitched ego battle of playground proportions? Google Xbox vs PS3, Wii vs anyting, Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux....
You're magical sir. I want a unicorn.
BTW - good catch on NeXT from myer earlier. I still own mine even though the clock battery is dead and it thinks it's 1979.
Another personal attack! I don't think i'm stupid. I think my opinions are different obviously.
I think most of the people on here are hypocrites. I didn't see you people so happy when Nokia filled suit for their innovations.
Of course you didn't - this is AppleInsider, after all, not NokiaInsider.
That being said - many opinions here sound as if they were observed written on inner wall of Steve's colon. Which makes sense, since Steve is Apple. SteveInsider..?
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Could be that Apple is just serious about defending its patents. See post #157 in this thread, a brief assessment that I agree with.
As a shareholder, I am glad Apple is doing something...
It sucks that a few companies like Apple strive to innovate while others just sit by and copy them...
The only problem here is that Apple has liberally copied others. Of course, they have done so by wrapping it into a beautiful package, but the fact remains: Apple copies others all the time.
This move clearly shows that Apple is scared to death about Android. HTC is one of Google's best mobile buddies, after all.
Oh come the freak-on. You've never - ever - seen a nerd discussion on any tech product ever devolve into a fever-pitched ego battle of playground proportions? Google Xbox vs PS3, Wii vs anyting, Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux....
You're magical sir. I want a unicorn.
BTW - good catch on NeXT from myer earlier. I still own mine even though the clock battery is dead and it thinks it's 1979.
Note that Apple did nothing against Palm, even though that was a similar situation. Apple *has* decided to go after HTC, though. Seems Apple has a strong position this time.
They didn't go after Palm because Palm bombed. The Palm Pre never became a threat to the iPhone. Android, on the other hand, is a real threat. Even if it can't compete with the iPhone experience today, it's quickly catching up. And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
They didn't go after Palm because Palm bombed. The Palm Pre never became a threat to the iPhone. Android, on the other hand, is a real threat. Even if it can't compete with the iPhone experience today, it's quickly catching up. And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
Apple is scared shitless.
iPhone and iPod Touch sales are showing massive growth. Whatever anyone might think, the iPad is poised to be another huge win for the platform.
My guess is that Apple is anything but "scared shitless", although I'm sure you take satisfaction in imagining so.
Seeing as how this patent lawsuit wasn't filed in Marshall, Texas it's an automatic point for Apple (and for Nokia, respectively).
Quote:
Originally Posted by insike
And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
Apple is scared shitless.
That makes little sense since Android is not tied to any one vendor and Android is open, which means that any win for Apple against HTC means that any other vendor can change up any implementation of Android to deal with patent infringement.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
I thought it was dumb when people said Nokia sued because they were scared, and it's just as dumb now when it's the other way around.
If you plan to win a lawsuit, you research the hell out of it before you even sue. There's no prize for suing quickly. You research the potentially infringing products; you tear them apart, run them through all sorts of tests to see what was actually implemented. When there's lots of potential infringement, you research legal precedents and case history to find the best courses of action, so you can pick the very best items to contest. This takes time.
In the case of Nokia, there was the additional step of negotiating with Apple over licenses, so from start to suit, it took 2.5 years since Nokia could get their hands on an iPhone. Why does anyone think that the 1.5 years since the Dream/G1 came out is that long?
The only problem here is that Apple has liberally copied others. Of course, they have done so by wrapping it into a beautiful package, but the fact remains: Apple copies others all the time.
This move clearly shows that Apple is scared to death about Android. HTC is one of Google's best mobile buddies, after all.
What it clearly shows is that Apple thinks it can convince the court that HTC has violated its patents. Attributing it to 'fear' might make for amusing conversation, but isn't something that is relevant in the legal sense.
As for the notion that Apple has "liberally copied others", if they have violated existing patents, then they are subject to the same. It's one thing to make a generic claim that they have copied other's ideas, but it's another matter to prove it specifically.
I would be very surprised if Apple were just shooting from the hip in this case. Steve Jobs said at the iPhone introduction that it was heavily patented and that they would defend them vigorously.
Comments
Funny I don't see "They're trying to kill us!" anywhere up there.
THERE'S ANOTHER ONE - BURN HIM! stamping feet foley - rhubarb rampaging mob rhubarb
Also hard to miss that all three of those links include the exact same anonymous quote.
You are correct in your Apple vs. MS history.
I think some "look and feel" lawsuits were lost (Lotus vs. MS) which makes people wary of suing. I don't believe Apple patents "look and feel"; they patent the hardware (and software) mechanism/process/technique underlying it. In other words, they do not patent the concept of "pinching" to make something smaller. But they do patent the multi-touch mechanism, consisting of hardware sensors and software interpretation, that they use to sense the pinching and compress the image sent to the display.
Others can implement pinching to make something smaller but they need to use a different mechanism to make it happen.
Apple does file for "design trademarks" which provides protection for a certain look of a device. That look can be hardware size/shape or a software-driven arrangement of an icon(s) on a display, or both.
Agreed. Most of the patents mentioned in this complaint appear to be technical and based on implementations of hardware and software technology.
The one that will probably get the least play in the media, and yet to me is the most interesting is the DSP one for WinMobile devices. If Apple is correct about HTC copying their implementation on that, it seems particularly blatant and it's disturbing to me that any large corporation would approve of that sort of thing.
I also agree that look and feel patent lawsuits are a bit dodgy at best, I just wanted to point out the popular misconception. Apple didn't actually "lose" the look and feel lawsuit, as so many people seem to think.
Look and feel is probably best dealt with as a trademark issue even though on the surface it doesn't appear to be trademark related. Apple was granted extensive trademark protection on the "look" of the iPhone just last week so maybe we will see something there as well.
My apologies.
What models and when did you get them?
Well, I am sure you are asking the question just to try and trash me. However, I guess I'll play along...
I bought a 2.66Ghz Macbook Pro back in June when they came out. I liked it so much, I bought a 2.0Ghz Mac mini to put in my entertainment center. I will say that due to my work, I would not have bought one if it was not capable of running MS Windows ( I use VMWare ). I point this out, because until recently, I would not have even considered the switch to Apple. I also though about trying my hand a developing software for the Apple for a change.
So, I am fairly new to the Mac world. I have been a software developer for about 30 years so I am not new to computers in general.
I was thinking about getting another Mac Mini to replace one of my PC based Web servers. I recently converted the Perl Script ( used on the site ) so that It runs well on Apache...
I will be honest and say that I find the Apple Fan base to be quite interesting. I never though people would take discussions of computers and phones so personal. To me it is just another interesting piece of technology...
Here we go!
"We've patented the hell out of this thing"
Finally! Apple wakes up in sweaty fear and takes action.
Fixed.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Going after HTC is a shot at Nokia, Symbian and Google via Android. Motorola is next.
Taligent Object-Oriented Operating System was used instead of NeXTSTEP because the Taligent Patents are older in a few cases.
People forget that NeXT and Apple patented the hell out of Object-Oriented Systems and it was just NeXT that actually sold an Object-Oriented OS in NeXTSTEP. Taligent IP is still part of Apple's overall portfolio.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...S=PN/5,519,867
My favorite part that patent reference that people haven't realized is the 1988 article on Distributed Computing:
Proc. of the Summer 1988 Usenix Conf. 20 Jun. 1988, San Francisco, US, pp. 1-13 "Using the X Toolkit or How to Write a Widget" by McCormack et al. .
New Directions for Unix. Proc. Autumn 1988 EUUG Conf. Oct. 3, 1988, Cascais, Portugal, pp. 25-37, Bernabeu-Auban et al. "Clouds--A Distributed Object-Based Operating System Architecture and Kernel Implementation"..
These patents deal directly with the OS on all levels working with the hardware. No OS means the Hardware is useless.
Steve figured it out at NeXT. The Software dictates the Hardware, not the other way around--the lesson he failed to learn at Apple when Microsoft laughed all the way to the bank.
All Smartphone Operating Systems today are Object-Oriented.
Personal attacks, nice!
People usually resort to that when they have no real arguments (or are too dumb to find any, which boils down to the same).
Don't take it personal
Fixed.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Yeah, because iPhone sales are really starting to tank and Apple doesn't seem to be very interested in extending the platform.
I never though people would take discussions of computers and phones so personal. To me it is just another interesting piece of technology...
Oh come the freak-on. You've never - ever - seen a nerd discussion on any tech product ever devolve into a fever-pitched ego battle of playground proportions? Google Xbox vs PS3, Wii vs anyting, Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux....
You're magical sir. I want a unicorn.
BTW - good catch on NeXT from myer earlier. I still own mine even though the clock battery is dead and it thinks it's 1979.
Another personal attack! I don't think i'm stupid. I think my opinions are different obviously.
I think most of the people on here are hypocrites. I didn't see you people so happy when Nokia filled suit for their innovations.
Of course you didn't - this is AppleInsider, after all, not NokiaInsider.
That being said - many opinions here sound as if they were observed written on inner wall of Steve's colon. Which makes sense, since Steve is Apple. SteveInsider..?
"Defendant has also committed tortuous acts of patent infringement in Delaware."
Might be a typo but somehow still relevant, some might say.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
Could be that Apple is just serious about defending its patents. See post #157 in this thread, a brief assessment that I agree with.
As a shareholder, I am glad Apple is doing something...
It sucks that a few companies like Apple strive to innovate while others just sit by and copy them...
The only problem here is that Apple has liberally copied others. Of course, they have done so by wrapping it into a beautiful package, but the fact remains: Apple copies others all the time.
This move clearly shows that Apple is scared to death about Android. HTC is one of Google's best mobile buddies, after all.
Oh come the freak-on. You've never - ever - seen a nerd discussion on any tech product ever devolve into a fever-pitched ego battle of playground proportions? Google Xbox vs PS3, Wii vs anyting, Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux....
You're magical sir. I want a unicorn.
BTW - good catch on NeXT from myer earlier. I still own mine even though the clock battery is dead and it thinks it's 1979.
That did not seem to make any sense....
By the same logic, RCA should be suing like crazy.
Only if they are lawsuit-happy morons.
Note that Apple did nothing against Palm, even though that was a similar situation. Apple *has* decided to go after HTC, though. Seems Apple has a strong position this time.
They didn't go after Palm because Palm bombed. The Palm Pre never became a threat to the iPhone. Android, on the other hand, is a real threat. Even if it can't compete with the iPhone experience today, it's quickly catching up. And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
Apple is scared shitless.
They didn't go after Palm because Palm bombed. The Palm Pre never became a threat to the iPhone. Android, on the other hand, is a real threat. Even if it can't compete with the iPhone experience today, it's quickly catching up. And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
Apple is scared shitless.
iPhone and iPod Touch sales are showing massive growth. Whatever anyone might think, the iPad is poised to be another huge win for the platform.
My guess is that Apple is anything but "scared shitless", although I'm sure you take satisfaction in imagining so.
And HTC is one of Google's best buddies in the mobile world.
Apple is scared shitless.
That makes little sense since Android is not tied to any one vendor and Android is open, which means that any win for Apple against HTC means that any other vendor can change up any implementation of Android to deal with patent infringement.
It seems to me they are starting to be seriously worried. Unfortunately that might mean that iPhone OS4 is not going to be much different and Apple is expecting to loose more ground to competition, so they need other means to fight that competition.
I thought it was dumb when people said Nokia sued because they were scared, and it's just as dumb now when it's the other way around.
If you plan to win a lawsuit, you research the hell out of it before you even sue. There's no prize for suing quickly. You research the potentially infringing products; you tear them apart, run them through all sorts of tests to see what was actually implemented. When there's lots of potential infringement, you research legal precedents and case history to find the best courses of action, so you can pick the very best items to contest. This takes time.
In the case of Nokia, there was the additional step of negotiating with Apple over licenses, so from start to suit, it took 2.5 years since Nokia could get their hands on an iPhone. Why does anyone think that the 1.5 years since the Dream/G1 came out is that long?
iPhone and iPod Touch sales are showing massive growth. Whatever anyone might think, the iPad is poised to be another huge win for the platform.
My guess is that Apple is anything but "scared shitless", although I'm sure you take satisfaction in imagining so.
Again: "Google's don't be evil mantra? It's bullshit! They're trying to kill us!" - Steve Jobs on the Google phone platform.
The only problem here is that Apple has liberally copied others. Of course, they have done so by wrapping it into a beautiful package, but the fact remains: Apple copies others all the time.
This move clearly shows that Apple is scared to death about Android. HTC is one of Google's best mobile buddies, after all.
What it clearly shows is that Apple thinks it can convince the court that HTC has violated its patents. Attributing it to 'fear' might make for amusing conversation, but isn't something that is relevant in the legal sense.
As for the notion that Apple has "liberally copied others", if they have violated existing patents, then they are subject to the same. It's one thing to make a generic claim that they have copied other's ideas, but it's another matter to prove it specifically.
I would be very surprised if Apple were just shooting from the hip in this case. Steve Jobs said at the iPhone introduction that it was heavily patented and that they would defend them vigorously.