An Inside Look at Apple's Role in the Patent Industry

An interesting argument can be made that these big companies that deal with patent suits are, indeed, stifling innovation - even their own. How so? As stated in the article - which would need to be verified - these companies spend more money on the lawsuits than on R&D. Tells you something...

I think patents should regress back to the day when you had to actually demo the product/service/etc to obtain a patent vs just submitting a sketch and description.

What this proves...

What this proves is that we need more powerful and capable 3-d printers. Patents protect a company from another company profiting by "stealing" innovation. However, if you use an innovation to build something you use (and don't sell it) there is no protection in place. So, if I had a 3-d printer that could handle the job, I could build myself an iPhone, and there is nothing that Apple could do about it (as long as I don't sell it).

I agree we need patent reform, but while we don't have it, all this BS will just serve to push 3-d printing innovation forward.

It'll be several years yet, but it will come.

And then what?

jontech said:

You being Outperforming then another Samsung comes along....


How do you protect innovation?


We tend to forget that we compete in a world market and every locality has different rules.

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I might be alone on this, but I think thats part of the problem. Apple's patent lawsuit with Samsung is completely ridiculous. Look at the patents Apple claims Samsung infringed on, I don't think Apple should have been given patents with such a broad description.

Miss those days when companies worked together

Apple patents the things that others own and uses its money and influence to win court cases they dont deserve to even have heard in court.

The US patent system is for sale just like the presidency

kd5jos said:

What this proves is that we need more powerful and capable 3-d printers. Patents protect a company from another company profiting by "stealing" innovation. However, if you use an innovation to build something you use (and don't sell it) there is no protection in place. So, if I had a 3-d printer that could handle the job, I could build myself an iPhone, and there is nothing that Apple could do about it (as long as I don't sell it).

I agree we need patent reform, but while we don't have it, all this BS will just serve to push 3-d printing innovation forward.

It'll be several years yet, but it will come.

And then what?

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3d printers that could make all the technology associated with an iphone that is affordable for the average household is at least half a century away, and that's being extremely generous. You have fun with your iphone 5 then.

Radio said:

Miss those days when companies worked together

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What days were those??

With the exception of (illegal) collusion between companies with the purpose of killing another company, or controlling the market... when was it that companies "worked together" here?

So

Apple = Patent Troll

"..... and boy have we patented it!"

The problem with no patents

The story in the Times begins with a sad story about a smallish developer who was had patents but couldn't enforce them in time because of the money their opponent, Nuance, spent to keep their patents up in the air. That's a place where we need court reform, so that access to protection is not unequal. What a thought. It would be great to do the same thing with accused criminals, too. Courts, in fact, are underfunded so that they don't give speedy justice for all.

But the bigger problem is a LARGE company like Samsung and Google, who have no regard for patent laws, or intellectual property in general. They are supported by the tech teeny bops, who see no reason for any software patents at all. Samsung makes nice pieces of tech, but first they made Blackberry knockoffs, and then they made Apple knockoffs. And Google fan's talking point is that "Google was at work on Android two years before the iPhone came out!" (Yeah, but it looked like a Blackberry, see?) Or "The iPhone wasn't first! The Palm Pilot was just the same!" (And I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.)

I love the idea of open source, though, since it waives patent protection it is not possible that anyone will make any money on what they do. The open source movement is made up of people who make real living elsewhere, for the most part. And that's the way it always will be. The main Linux distribution exists because a billionaire decided to put money into it as a cause. I have no quarrel with that, but it will never be the mainstream.

A patent is on a method. Software patents were found viable by the Supreme Court, because they are a method of operation. This is the way that the writers of the Constitution chose to protect private business, in distinction to the British method: if the King declares the East India Company has a monopoly on tea, and the company gives a really nice cash present to the royal in question, then there was a monopoly that lasted hundreds of years. In contrast, we file a patent, the government accepts it, and you have legal protection for a limited time. Patents can be invalidated by a court, or upheld.

Google has a very troubling and incorrect reading of the patent laws. They are a huge company that doesn't seem to have any regard for the laws of the land in this regard. They scan millions of books; good. But they take no care of the rights of the various authors, so they get hit by a lawsuit and whine. They want a music player, but they don't get the licensing for such a thing, and so all you can do is store your own music with them. They start up Google TV, and then are surprised that all the "free tv" that is on the web gets shut down to their machine.

I think we should do something about trolls; those who buy up patents with no intent to use them as anything but a money farm. I would say that a patent can be bought, but that the new owner has to make something within three years that uses that patent, and its ownership only starts when it brings a product to market.

Patent fees are higher than costs of R&D? There will be consequences of this, though the result might be unpredictable.

This should bring smiles to the lawyers. They are going to be the biggest winners in all this.

Shrink said:

What days were those??

With the exception of (illegal) collusion between companies with the purpose of killing another company, or controlling the market... when was it that companies "worked together" here?

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Yes, what days were those? Brings me back to the days of Bill Gates, a lawyer's progeny, and Gate's discussions with IBM, who opted to wield the hardware portion of their planned association.


BIG mistake.

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Swift said:

The story in the Times begins with a sad story about a smallish developer who was had patents but couldn't enforce them in time because of the money their opponent, Nuance, spent to keep their patents up in the air. That's a place where we need court reform, so that access to protection is not unequal. What a thought. It would be great to do the same thing with accused criminals, too. Courts, in fact, are underfunded so that they don't give speedy justice for all.

But the bigger problem is a LARGE company like Samsung and Google, who have no regard for patent laws, or intellectual property in general. They are supported by the tech teeny bops, who see no reason for any software patents at all. Samsung makes nice pieces of tech, but first they made Blackberry knockoffs, and then they made Apple knockoffs. And Google fan's talking point is that "Google was at work on Android two years before the iPhone came out!" (Yeah, but it looked like a Blackberry, see?) Or "The iPhone wasn't first! The Palm Pilot was just the same!" (And I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.)

I love the idea of open source, though, since it waives patent protection it is not possible that anyone will make any money on what they do. The open source movement is made up of people who make real living elsewhere, for the most part. And that's the way it always will be. The main Linux distribution exists because a billionaire decided to put money into it as a cause. I have no quarrel with that, but it will never be the mainstream.

A patent is on a method. Software patents were found viable by the Supreme Court, because they are a method of operation. This is the way that the writers of the Constitution chose to protect private business, in distinction to the British method: if the King declares the East India Company has a monopoly on tea, and the company gives a really nice cash present to the royal in question, then there was a monopoly that lasted hundreds of years. In contrast, we file a patent, the government accepts it, and you have legal protection for a limited time. Patents can be invalidated by a court, or upheld.

Google has a very troubling and incorrect reading of the patent laws. They are a huge company that doesn't seem to have any regard for the laws of the land in this regard. They scan millions of books; good. But they take no care of the rights of the various authors, so they get hit by a lawsuit and whine. They want a music player, but they don't get the licensing for such a thing, and so all you can do is store your own music with them. They start up Google TV, and then are surprised that all the "free tv" that is on the web gets shut down to their machine.

I think we should do something about trolls; those who buy up patents with no intent to use them as anything but a money farm. I would say that a patent can be bought, but that the new owner has to make something within three years that uses that patent, and its ownership only starts when it brings a product to market.

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Agreed on those who are sufficiently large and who disregard patent law. They play catch me if you can and whomever has the deepest pockets wins.

Swift said:

But the bigger problem is a LARGE company like Samsung and Google, who have no regard for patent laws, or intellectual property in general. They are supported by the tech teeny bops, who see no reason for any software patents at all. Samsung makes nice pieces of tech, but first they made Blackberry knockoffs, and then they made Apple knockoffs. And Google fan's talking point is that "Google was at work on Android two years before the iPhone came out!" (Yeah, but it looked like a Blackberry, see?) Or "The iPhone wasn't first! The Palm Pilot was just the same!" (And I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.)

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Samsung has far more patents than Apple does.

As for your history of Android - it's pretty inaccurate. But posted in this forum - that's not surprising given the amount of inaccurate information you're probably just spewing from "memory" vs fact.

chrmjenkins said:

You're misreading what he's stating. He's allowing the possibility they may change their decision to bring to market later, but don't want to find themselves in the position where they do to decide to bring it to market and they didn't file those patents.

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No where in Jobs' original quote is your bolded statement present. The bolded statement is simply a personal interpretation of what Jobs said, such that Tones wasn't "misreading" anything given that Jobs very much did say "even if we never build it, which implies they would patent an idea and then sit on (since that's where the "never build part" comes in).

The defensive component is ambiguous, so it could be potentially that it's in case they change their mind, or it could be used to simply prevent others from using that idea, or any other number of reasons. Ultimately though, there's no way to read into it that they were using it for the purpose you prescribed.

Instead of trying to "revamp" the patent system. I think the larger issue is to revamp the law system. We need to switch to a "loser pays" system. There is no reason not to. Besides for the fact that lawyers won't make their ridiculous salaries... Damn lobbyists.

Bafflefish said:

No where in Jobs' original quote is your bolded statement present. The bolded statement is simply a personal interpretation of what Jobs said, such that Tones wasn't "misreading" anything given that Jobs very much did say "even if we never build it, which implies they would patent an idea and then sit on (since that's where the "never build part" comes in).

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Which was an implied possibility in my statement.

The defensive component is ambiguous, so it could be potentially that it's in case they change their mind, or it could be used to simply prevent others from using that idea, or any other number of reasons. Ultimately though, there's no way to read into it that they were using it for the purpose you prescribed.

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Which I challenge anyone to provide a realistic scenario in which that would happen. Patent trolls have a very specific mode of operation which you do not see at all in legitimate consumer electronics companies. I cannot think of a single case in which a consumer electronics companies with actual products has sued over a patent that they either used to use and no longer do, or never did.

People are out to make apple the bully when they are just as guilty as the other parties involved. HTC, Samsung, Motorola etc. have all launched their own suits against Apple. In fact, Nokia started the sue-fest by suing Apple back in 2008.

samcraig said:

Samsung has far more patents than Apple does.

As for your history of Android - it's pretty inaccurate. But posted in this forum - that's not surprising given the amount of inaccurate information you're probably just spewing from "memory" vs fact.

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So give us what you think of the facts. If you were there, I'll take it seriously.

Regarding Samsung, one of the most damning pieces of evidence was the evolution of their phones over the years. The jury thought it was damning.

And i distinctly remember the prototype Android before the iPhone: it sure looked like a Blackberry. I guess that Eric was serving on the board, passing info to the Google board, and when Apple succeeded their iPhone project went live. And Eric stayed on the board.

...good.

I don't know how good of a job I can do at explaining this, but I'm going to try.


When you are playing a competitive game, everyone should try to abuse the game as much as possible. If the game is flawed, the problems will become evident. If the game is not flawed, someone will find a counter for the abuse, and the original abuser will find a counter for the counter, and the opponent will counter that, and then the abuser can try to sneak the original tactic back in, and so on and so forth and the game will grow in depth.

Once it's discovered that the game is flawed, then you need to sit down and either play a different game, or find a ruleset that maintains those flaws. But you don't want to do that until the issues presented are clearly layed out.

(Highly recommend reading David Sirlin's book, "Playing To Win", on competitive gaming, btw.)

If everyone tries to play "nice" and doesn't abuse a clear abuse avenue, one of two things happen; either the game fails to grow in depth and just becomes a poor game because players are refusing to grow in every way they can find, *or*, the flaw is not demonstrated and the players continue to play with their homemade gentleman's arrangement until someone else comes along who destroys them all and makes them cry about it.

What Apple's doing here should not be allowed, yes. But you know what? It IS allowed, they are legally allowed to do it. Great. They are exploiting flaws in our poor patent system. In the process, they are demonstrating it. And forcing others to exploit it to to fight back.

What SHOULD happen next is that this forces the patent system to be overhauled now that the problem is evident. Unfortunately, our politicians suck too much to do this.

Tones2 said:

Um, that's exactly what Steve Jobs told his employees to do, apparantly, as quoted in the OP: "His attitude was that if someone at Apple can dream it up, then we should apply for a patent, because even if we never build it, it's a defensive tool,"

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Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company who enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered aggressive or opportunistic with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

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No, Steve didn't tell his employees to become patent trolls, and Apple *hasn't*. Steve said to patent everything so they can use those patents as *defensive* tools if they don't bring them to market. A patent troll uses them as *offensive* weapons, going after people for infringing patents that they have no intention of practicing themselves.

You can't just read the last half of a definition, and ignore the first half. Apple hasn't included *any* patents in their suits that they don't practice themselves. That, right there, precludes Apple from being considered a patent troll by any definition more nuanced than "I don't like them and they're suing over a patent!".

Swift said:

So give us what you think of the facts. If you were there, I'll take it seriously.

Regarding Samsung, one of the most damning pieces of evidence was the evolution of their phones over the years. The jury thought it was damning.

And i distinctly remember the prototype Android before the iPhone: it sure looked like a Blackberry. I guess that Eric was serving on the board, passing info to the Google board, and when Apple succeeded their iPhone project went live. And Eric stayed on the board.

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You can mroogle all you want. I'm not going to waste my time (yet again) on someone who can't research for themselves vs relying on "fan" mentality.

Apples role in the patent industry is a tragedy. They are not protecting things they invented with their lawsuits. They have set a ton of very bad precedents and have slowed down the innovation in the industry a ton. Software patents absolutely need to go. They never should have legal to begin with. Copyright your code. The idea of the what the code should not be protected. Some of the patents out there are so vague and stupid like the one about clicking a link and it opening the phone dialer. How the hell is that patentable. Thats was hyperlinks have been doing for years.

Attempting to ban the one x, evo lte, galaxy nexus, and galaxy s3 is shameful. None of these are stolen products.

Every other company uses patents defensively; given the current system, is it reasonable to demand that Apple NOT do so? They’d be making themselves uniquely vulnerable to attacks. They HAVE to play game, broken though it is.

Also, as of last year, Apple was the most-sued tech company. Have we seen more recent numbers to prove that has changed? Or are we simply assuming that Apple initiates more than it defends?

nagromme said:

Every other company uses patents defensively; given the current system, is it reasonable to demand that Apple NOT do so? They’d be making themselves uniquely vulnerable to attacks. They HAVE to play game, broken though it is.

Also, as of last year, Apple was the most-sued tech company. Have we seen more recent numbers to prove that has changed? Or are we simply assuming that Apple initiates more than it defends?

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They aren't using them defensively. They are using them offensively, that's the difference.

nagromme said:

Every other company uses patents defensively; given the current system, is it reasonable to demand that Apple NOT do so? They’d be making themselves uniquely vulnerable to attacks. They HAVE to play game, broken though it is.

Also, as of last year, Apple was the most-sued tech company. Have we seen more recent numbers to prove that has changed? Or are we simply assuming that Apple initiates more than it defends?

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Apple is not using the system defensively. They actively go out of there way to thrown money at the chance of winning a rediculous suit.