Apple sued by 'patent troll' over Numbers software

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  • Reply 61 of 77

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by GTBuzz View Post



    I have had many "brain flashes" of ideas. Could I build them or write them, no. Did I bring them to marketable products, no. Anyone can get a patent, but few can create a really useful or marketable product. Unless someone sets out to steal my ideas and market or use them internally without some extra reward or compensation to me, I don't think they have done wrong. Some People are always tring to make a fast buck ($) by stealing. Even many non-religious people have a degree of ethics. There are a few who want to profit from the actual work of others. This is a matter of ethics & morality. Weather it is a purse found by a empty park bench or software code does not make it right to steal. An idea on a napkin is not the same as a purse or actual code. Most of us have wallets, purses, or some tangible object such as code. To take these things via deception is wrong. To steal a napkin with an idea is wrong, but if you have a "brain flash" or want to create your own spreadsheet is not wrong. Mouse traps have improved over the years. Right now the iPad and iOS6 are hot marketable items. If Microsoft chooses to build a better mouse trap, that is not wrong. Apple is doing what they can, as is Microsoft. These are successful companies in their own right. Making the world a better place, but not at the expense of others is commendable, but not at stockholder expense. If an owner wants to spend his money to benefit others or throw it out the window, that is their business. Government has no money and should serve at the pleasure of the people, not for the pleasure of the elected. It does not take a large government to give money away and it is not theirs to give away or redistribute.

    Here are a few comments on several things - patent trolls are like catfish, bottom feeding scum suckers that will eat anything they can digest. May they and their parasite attorneys get their just rewards, but not at the expense of others who have earned it.


    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.

  • Reply 62 of 77

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post



    The original concept of the patent was to protect the creative output of the individual. If they would just return to that ideal, none of this patent troll stuff would be possible at all because the people who invented this stuff are either all dead or have already been suitably compensated.

    It's the (ridiculous) concept that you can somehow buy and sell ideas that's really at fault here just as it's the ridiculous concept that corporations are somehow "people" that causes all the worst abuses of capitalism.

    All these problems would disappear overnight if we just changed our point of view.

    Just sayin. :-)


    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). 

  • Reply 63 of 77

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post





    OMG, seriously? Did they shoot themselves?


    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. 

  • Reply 64 of 77

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post



    Will you stop with the silly patent troll nonsense?

    The rightful owner of a patent has the right to enforce it whether they are using it or not. ...


     


    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.

  • Reply 65 of 77
    mstone wrote: »
    Well in their case they forgot to file for a patent at all.

    OMG, seriously? Did they shoot themselves?

    Nope. Steve actually bumped into them the night before he was on AllThingsD in 2009(?). Also, please read newcomer "duervo" post #55

    As I recall, there was some 'issue' between those guys and MS back in the day, and the judge made MS only use the term 'Microsoft Excel' instead of simply Excel.
  • Reply 66 of 77

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post



    The original concept of the patent was to protect the creative output of the individual. ...


     


    That was actually more the idea behind copyrights.

  • Reply 67 of 77
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    anonymouse wrote: »
    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.

    Not at all accurate.

    Patent arbitrage (what you are calling 'patent trolls') serve a very important role in incentivizing innovation. Without the ability for someone to buy and resell or license patents, the small inventor would be left out in the cold. There'd be no way for most inventors to ever benefit from their inventions because most people can't/won't start a company to commercialize their inventions.

    Either you believe in a free market or you don't. It's that simple. If you believe in a free market, then the owner of an invention should be able to sell it to anyone they wish and the new owner can do whatever he wants with it. THAT is the best way to benefit society in the long run.
  • Reply 68 of 77
    I believe this patent has exactly zero chance of succeeding. Let me illustrate why, in depth.

    Start with the patent. Recall that a patent's legal force is basically equivalent to its Claims. Those start here:

    http://www.google.com/patents/US5463724?pg=PA49

    Read the claims. They fall into two basic groups. The vast majority of the claims cover the existence, visual display and manipulation of a tabbed spreadsheet display. The only claims that do not apply to the tabs themselves are 10 and 11, which refer to how the data in those tabs is referred to in other cells. The long and short is that Quattro patented the idea of having a workbook with multiple sheets.

    Numbers does not have tabs. It has sheets, but they are very different than those in Quattro, and you don't refer to them directly. Instead, you can place multiple *tables* anywhere you want - on a sheet, on a canvas, or anywhere you want. Numbers is utterly different than what this patent encodes.

    That leaves claims 10 and 11. These deal with the *referencing* of the data, and specifically states you do this with a colon. Numbers uses a double colon. They got it from Excel, which I suspect make this change specifically to bypass this patent.

    As if that were not enough, also recall the whole concept of "prior art". There are multiple examples of this system in use prior to Quattro:

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=jE2OlZ9PkrkC&pg=PA141

    Thus the patent can only stand on those parts that are specific to Quattro, as the general concept was already in use. If those portions don't fail due to the obvious test, then they certainly aren't applicable to Numbers, which looks and works in an entirely different fashion.

    Good luck, troll.
  • Reply 69 of 77




    Either you believe in a free market or you don't. It's that simple. If you believe in a free market, then the owner of an invention should be able to sell it to anyone they wish and the new owner can do whatever he wants with it. THAT is the best way to benefit society in the long run.


    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.



  • Reply 70 of 77
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,857member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post





    Not at all accurate.

    Patent arbitrage (what you are calling 'patent trolls') serve a very important role in incentivizing innovation. Without the ability for someone to buy and resell or license patents, the small inventor would be left out in the cold. There'd be no way for most inventors to ever benefit from their inventions because most people can't/won't start a company to commercialize their inventions.

    Either you believe in a free market or you don't. It's that simple. If you believe in a free market, then the owner of an invention should be able to sell it to anyone they wish and the new owner can do whatever he wants with it. THAT is the best way to benefit society in the long run.


     


    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.

  • Reply 71 of 77
    mocsegmocseg Posts: 86member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post




    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.

  • Reply 72 of 77
    We need to return to the old patent standard that someone must actually create an example of the new product, at least in prototype form. Otherwise you are going get the descendants of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells claiming patent infringement on things like lasers, rockets, and nuclear submarines.
  • Reply 73 of 77
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by mocseg View Post

    You couldn't say it any better.


     


    Well, he could be telling the truth and not being a troll. That would be better.

  • Reply 74 of 77
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    cjcampbell wrote: »
    We need to return to the old patent standard that someone must actually create an example of the new product, at least in prototype form. Otherwise you are going get the descendants of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells claiming patent infringement on things like lasers, rockets, and nuclear submarines.

    Patent law requires reduction to practice. You are right that that requirement seems to have been forgotten recently.

    But we don't have to worry about Jules Verne's grandkids. Public disclosure would eliminate the chance to get a patent.
  • Reply 75 of 77


    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.

     

  • Reply 76 of 77


    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.

  • Reply 77 of 77


    Originally Posted by Grind View Post


    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.

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