There seems to be a whole lot of talk about consortiums lately. First, there were all those consortiums involved in the Nortel patent auction and now we have a web consortium which is going after Apple's widgets.
I happened to walk by a consortium late last night. There were these three hookers standing together, talking on a corner, and you can bet that if a younger, newer, more attractive prostitute were to encroach upon their turf, then the consortium of the three whores would have driven the newcomer out of their block.
It is clear, old man, that you have not an iota of idea what W3C really is.
This is probably the first time you are hearing it.
If it was not for w#c we would not have internet as we know it.
funny then ,you write your stupid rant on a browser which had been made a standard by W3C .(HTMLx)
by a website which uses php,on a internet which has been madepossibleonly because of W3C.
PS:did you have any luck with the hookers?
Ya ,I thought so.Maybe they thought your stupidity was more lethal and infectious than the germs they were carrying.
I don;t care apple is on the end of this stick.. I think this is probably the best anti-troll (not saying apple is a troll by any means) strategy. Bring about an all out attack on their patent portfolios invalidating all that you can while making them succumb to legal costs for once.
Now, with "first to file" these issues will all go away. Prior art will be meaningless.
Where first-to-file becomes relevant in comparison to first-to-invent, is situations in which two different people both attempt to obtain patents on the same technology, and neither of them had previously made any public declarations about the technology before filing: In that case, under the first-to-file system, the first person to file for the patent wins, and under the first to invent system the two filers have to provide evidence of who invented it first.
But I thought the distinction only really mattered in cases where both inventors kept the invention secret before filing the patent application.
The situation shifts, even in a first-to-file system, if complete details about the invention where already published in a publicly available forum before any prospective patent applicants had managed to file their patent application related to the technology. Hence the W3C's interest in locating prior art.
And the fact of the matter is, sometimes patent examiners fail to catch the fact that the same patent has already been granted, perhaps expressed in slightly different wording, and allow a second patent related to the exact same technology to be granted a second time to a second inventor. It is not positively established that Apple's patents in this case don't necessarily fall into this sort of situation.
So, W3C enforcing open and royalty free standards is only good when the company involved is not the one we love.
I would like to read the comments if the patentes were held by MS, Nokia, Samsung or Google
The W3C process was working exacty as it should be working, then politics broke it. The working group made a call to the members for patents which could be a problem, Apple raised it's hand. At that point the working group is supposed to ask Apple nicely (which happened) if it would like to sign over the patent(s) for everyone else to use, freely, forever. Apple politely declined which is also in accordance with the W3C rules.
What is supposed to happen after that is for the working group to work together, and with Apple, to find a way to define the standard in such a way that Apple agrees the standard implementations won't infringe on the previously identified patents. Then we would all have that royalty free standard we are looking for, and W3C gets the guarantee from Apple (or any other company that raises it's hand at the call) that there won't be any chance whatsoever of an IP suit from them down the line.
The problem is the anti-software patent reactionaries are making a big deal out of this and trying to make Apple out to be obstructionist, when Apple is playing completely by the rules. These are the rules that have allowed the web to be royalty free, and have worked well for a couple dozen years now. No company is required to give up its IP just because a couple working group members decide it would be easier for the working group if the big company just forked over the goods rather than the working group actually "working" to find the correct answer for the proposed standard.
This is tempest in a teapot stuff, pure opportunistic and reality avoiding politics, nothing more. The call for prior art isn't really going to change anything much, it's just placing W3C in the tight spot of formally being placed against one of its larger members by a working group that hasn't even tried to solve the issue beyond childish whinging and finger pointing.
If this kind of impolite interaction keep up it is more likely to hurt W3C because companies might not participate in working groups, which then gives the companies the right to take the W3C and/or standards users to court. It works far better to sit down and figure out how to do it without infringing on the published patent. For heavens sake the patent is published, and the holder is part of the process to generate the non-infringing implementation. While its not as easy as getting the existing IP granted royalty free, it's not impossible and it is how the process is designed to work. This call for prior art step was designed to attack external threats to the standard by intentional non-participants, turning it on W3C members internally just isn't a smart thing to do.
The problem is the anti-software patent reactionaries are making a big deal out of this and trying to make Apple out to be obstructionist, when Apple is playing completely by the rules.
It is a little more complicated than that. These particular patents seem to be very broad so it may be difficult to avoid them. Apple is playing by the rules, and so is W3C, they're both playing hardball - still they're both allowed.
Could someone please explain what the widgets on Mac Dashboard have to do with the World Wide Web? I realize some widgets access the internet for data, but the widget itself resides on my Mac within the proprietary Apple OS. So why do these guys care about my Mac's OS? I could see where they would if this was a Chrome laptop which lives on the web, by why my Mac? Apple is not selling or distributing these widgets outside their own ecosystem, so what's the deal?
The article's author could have done a better job of explaining the "why" of this as opposed to the "what."
I hadn't heard of this myself so I did a quick 5 minutes research! Someone with prior knowledge in this area may be able to correct of clarify my comments.
The "normal" way to view a HTML page is served up from a server on the Internet.
However it is possible to use HTML5 and related specifications (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to create offline HTML "apps".
A "widget" in this context is just an offline HTML app with a standardized way of being packaged up an loaded on a device.
It's really not that different from things like Flash or Silverlight, only instead of the app using a proprietary plug-in as the "container", it uses browser.
The patent in question relates to the security model around these "HTML apps".
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
Also, to anyone bashing the W3C: Read up before posting, the web consortium is pushing an open web for some very sensible reasons. The only reason HTML was successful in the first place was that it was free. There were other systems available but they were proprietary and locked into particular ISPs. Keeping HTML free is the way to prevent it sinking back into the proprietary mess it was in when IE was the ?only? browser.
And none of us want that, do we?
You do realize that Mosaic and Netscape preceded IE, so it never was "the 'only' browser"?
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
Another point is that given the way that WebOS works, Apple may strongly suspect that they're infringing these patents, and may be hanging onto them till it's clear that WebOS is going to kill itself without outside help.
Now, with "first to file" these issues will all go away. Prior art will be meaningless.
First to file sucks for game changing innovations, academic research and smaller independent inventors. In short it would degrade a US advantage in comparison to other nations currently saddled with first to file.
It's treading thin ground, after all look at what is supposedly happening to Samsung and look at what happened to Google when they crossed Apple.
What happened to Samsung? They'll win just as Nokia did. Is simple Apple widget and icons patents can't compete with real patents on in the inner workings of a cell phone, data transmission, compression, etc.....
I hadn't heard of this myself so I did a quick 5 minutes research! Someone with prior knowledge in this area may be able to correct of clarify my comments.
The "normal" way to view a HTML page is served up from a server on the Internet.
However it is possible to use HTML5 and related specifications (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to create offline HTML "apps".
A "widget" in this context is just an offline HTML app with a standardized way of being packaged up an loaded on a device.
It's really not that different from things like Flash or Silverlight, only instead of the app using a proprietary plug-in as the "container", it uses browser.
The patent in question relates to the security model around these "HTML apps".
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
What happened to Samsung? They'll win just as Nokia did. Is simple Apple widget and icons patents can't compete with real patents on in the inner workings of a cell phone, data transmission, compression, etc.....
So Apple, which lost to Nokia because of operational patents (your so-called "real patents"), is therefore going to lose to Samsung over TRADE DRESS patents?
Apple was pushing HTML 5 apps way before anyone else was. Let's not go off the deep end. I actually think Apple should let the w3c have access to these patents. However, with all the patent suits going on I can see what they wouldn't at this time.
Patents impede progress but reward innovation. It is a double edged sword.
I'd argue that patents both encourage progress and reward innovation. They encourage progress by forcing other inventors and companies to be creative with work-arounds and alternatives to solid patents. If there is no work around possible (and that is unlikely, there are always different ways of doing things) then licensing comes into play.
Apple certainly doesn't appear to be cooperating with the development of W3C web standards according to this article. Now they've thrown up detours for touch events specifications. What's not clear is why.
Comments
There seems to be a whole lot of talk about consortiums lately. First, there were all those consortiums involved in the Nortel patent auction and now we have a web consortium which is going after Apple's widgets.
I happened to walk by a consortium late last night. There were these three hookers standing together, talking on a corner, and you can bet that if a younger, newer, more attractive prostitute were to encroach upon their turf, then the consortium of the three whores would have driven the newcomer out of their block.
It is clear, old man, that you have not an iota of idea what W3C really is.
This is probably the first time you are hearing it.
If it was not for w#c we would not have internet as we know it.
funny then ,you write your stupid rant on a browser which had been made a standard by W3C .(HTMLx)
by a website which uses php,on a internet which has been madepossibleonly because of W3C.
PS:did you have any luck with the hookers?
Ya ,I thought so.Maybe they thought your stupidity was more lethal and infectious than the germs they were carrying.
I would like to read the comments if the patentes were held by MS, Nokia, Samsung or Google
Now, with "first to file" these issues will all go away. Prior art will be meaningless.
Where first-to-file becomes relevant in comparison to first-to-invent, is situations in which two different people both attempt to obtain patents on the same technology, and neither of them had previously made any public declarations about the technology before filing: In that case, under the first-to-file system, the first person to file for the patent wins, and under the first to invent system the two filers have to provide evidence of who invented it first.
But I thought the distinction only really mattered in cases where both inventors kept the invention secret before filing the patent application.
The situation shifts, even in a first-to-file system, if complete details about the invention where already published in a publicly available forum before any prospective patent applicants had managed to file their patent application related to the technology. Hence the W3C's interest in locating prior art.
And the fact of the matter is, sometimes patent examiners fail to catch the fact that the same patent has already been granted, perhaps expressed in slightly different wording, and allow a second patent related to the exact same technology to be granted a second time to a second inventor. It is not positively established that Apple's patents in this case don't necessarily fall into this sort of situation.
So, W3C enforcing open and royalty free standards is only good when the company involved is not the one we love.
I would like to read the comments if the patentes were held by MS, Nokia, Samsung or Google
The W3C process was working exacty as it should be working, then politics broke it. The working group made a call to the members for patents which could be a problem, Apple raised it's hand. At that point the working group is supposed to ask Apple nicely (which happened) if it would like to sign over the patent(s) for everyone else to use, freely, forever. Apple politely declined which is also in accordance with the W3C rules.
What is supposed to happen after that is for the working group to work together, and with Apple, to find a way to define the standard in such a way that Apple agrees the standard implementations won't infringe on the previously identified patents. Then we would all have that royalty free standard we are looking for, and W3C gets the guarantee from Apple (or any other company that raises it's hand at the call) that there won't be any chance whatsoever of an IP suit from them down the line.
The problem is the anti-software patent reactionaries are making a big deal out of this and trying to make Apple out to be obstructionist, when Apple is playing completely by the rules. These are the rules that have allowed the web to be royalty free, and have worked well for a couple dozen years now. No company is required to give up its IP just because a couple working group members decide it would be easier for the working group if the big company just forked over the goods rather than the working group actually "working" to find the correct answer for the proposed standard.
This is tempest in a teapot stuff, pure opportunistic and reality avoiding politics, nothing more. The call for prior art isn't really going to change anything much, it's just placing W3C in the tight spot of formally being placed against one of its larger members by a working group that hasn't even tried to solve the issue beyond childish whinging and finger pointing.
If this kind of impolite interaction keep up it is more likely to hurt W3C because companies might not participate in working groups, which then gives the companies the right to take the W3C and/or standards users to court. It works far better to sit down and figure out how to do it without infringing on the published patent. For heavens sake the patent is published, and the holder is part of the process to generate the non-infringing implementation. While its not as easy as getting the existing IP granted royalty free, it's not impossible and it is how the process is designed to work. This call for prior art step was designed to attack external threats to the standard by intentional non-participants, turning it on W3C members internally just isn't a smart thing to do.
The problem is the anti-software patent reactionaries are making a big deal out of this and trying to make Apple out to be obstructionist, when Apple is playing completely by the rules.
It is a little more complicated than that. These particular patents seem to be very broad so it may be difficult to avoid them. Apple is playing by the rules, and so is W3C, they're both playing hardball - still they're both allowed.
A little help?
Could someone please explain what the widgets on Mac Dashboard have to do with the World Wide Web? I realize some widgets access the internet for data, but the widget itself resides on my Mac within the proprietary Apple OS. So why do these guys care about my Mac's OS? I could see where they would if this was a Chrome laptop which lives on the web, by why my Mac? Apple is not selling or distributing these widgets outside their own ecosystem, so what's the deal?
The article's author could have done a better job of explaining the "why" of this as opposed to the "what."
I hadn't heard of this myself so I did a quick 5 minutes research! Someone with prior knowledge in this area may be able to correct of clarify my comments.
The "normal" way to view a HTML page is served up from a server on the Internet.
However it is possible to use HTML5 and related specifications (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to create offline HTML "apps".
A "widget" in this context is just an offline HTML app with a standardized way of being packaged up an loaded on a device.
It's really not that different from things like Flash or Silverlight, only instead of the app using a proprietary plug-in as the "container", it uses browser.
The patent in question relates to the security model around these "HTML apps".
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
Here is an Introduction to W3C Widgets.
....
Also, to anyone bashing the W3C: Read up before posting, the web consortium is pushing an open web for some very sensible reasons. The only reason HTML was successful in the first place was that it was free. There were other systems available but they were proprietary and locked into particular ISPs. Keeping HTML free is the way to prevent it sinking back into the proprietary mess it was in when IE was the ?only? browser.
And none of us want that, do we?
You do realize that Mosaic and Netscape preceded IE, so it never was "the 'only' browser"?
You do realize that Mosaic and Netscape preceded IE, so it never was "the 'only' browser"?
Notice how he put 'only' in quotes. He's referring to the browser wars and how MS IE won from being proprietary and readilly available.
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
Another point is that given the way that WebOS works, Apple may strongly suspect that they're infringing these patents, and may be hanging onto them till it's clear that WebOS is going to kill itself without outside help.
Now, with "first to file" these issues will all go away. Prior art will be meaningless.
First to file sucks for game changing innovations, academic research and smaller independent inventors. In short it would degrade a US advantage in comparison to other nations currently saddled with first to file.
It's treading thin ground, after all look at what is supposedly happening to Samsung and look at what happened to Google when they crossed Apple.
What happened to Samsung? They'll win just as Nokia did. Is simple Apple widget and icons patents can't compete with real patents on in the inner workings of a cell phone, data transmission, compression, etc.....
I hadn't heard of this myself so I did a quick 5 minutes research! Someone with prior knowledge in this area may be able to correct of clarify my comments.
The "normal" way to view a HTML page is served up from a server on the Internet.
However it is possible to use HTML5 and related specifications (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to create offline HTML "apps".
A "widget" in this context is just an offline HTML app with a standardized way of being packaged up an loaded on a device.
It's really not that different from things like Flash or Silverlight, only instead of the app using a proprietary plug-in as the "container", it uses browser.
The patent in question relates to the security model around these "HTML apps".
Apple could simply be defending their patents here, however it's hard not to notice the potential threat deployable offline HTML apps would pose to Apple's own app store.
Here is an Introduction to W3C Widgets.
Is easy to see why they don't like Flash.
What happened to Samsung? They'll win just as Nokia did. Is simple Apple widget and icons patents can't compete with real patents on in the inner workings of a cell phone, data transmission, compression, etc.....
So Apple, which lost to Nokia because of operational patents (your so-called "real patents"), is therefore going to lose to Samsung over TRADE DRESS patents?
That makes absolutely no sense.
Is easy to see why they don't like Flash.
Apple was pushing HTML 5 apps way before anyone else was. Let's not go off the deep end. I actually think Apple should let the w3c have access to these patents. However, with all the patent suits going on I can see what they wouldn't at this time.
Patents impede progress but reward innovation. It is a double edged sword.
I'd argue that patents both encourage progress and reward innovation. They encourage progress by forcing other inventors and companies to be creative with work-arounds and alternatives to solid patents. If there is no work around possible (and that is unlikely, there are always different ways of doing things) then licensing comes into play.
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2011/12/09/apple-w3c
This link talks about the widgets spec, the topic of the thread, that Apple is avoiding cooperation with.
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/200...le-w3c-patents