Apple Awarded iPhone and Multi-Touch Patent

[SydneyDev]

I do agree it is great to have a patient to protect your intellectual property, but this comes at a cost of stifling and restrict innovation.

I disagree. Without the promise of a temporary monopoly on a new technology, companies would not invest so much in R&D to begin with. Patents don't stifle innovation, they cause it.

And remember, it is only a temporary monopoly. Also, companies typicallly don't shut down their competition but merely force them to pay royalties. In effect, anyone that uses it has to pay part of the R&D, which is fair.

 

[NT1440]

I'm guessing this is what steve meant when he said " And boy have we patented it!"

The mammoth 358 page patent application incorporates patent applications filed as far back as September 2006

Why did it take until 2009? I know the system isn't speedy, but three years?

 

[kurosov]

The voice of reason after reading a couple of posts regarding Apple's possible new rights to sue it's competition.

I do agree it is great to have a patient to protect your intellectual property, but this comes at a cost of stifling and restrict innovation.

I would much prefer an industry that allows innovation and competition for we all win due to the lengths companies will go to makes the best products and services.

Something like this would promote competition. A market is hardly competetive if every device just copies one idea and makes practically identical devices.

If companies have to create their own ideas and gain sales on the ingenuity of those ideas then cometition becomes greater.

 

[NAG]

I don't buy the Apple resting argument.

Look at the iPod. Did it ever have serious competition after the third generation? Yet here we are with the iPod touch and the iPhone (which arguably is an offshoot of the ipod).

I seriously don't think Apple works like Microsoft.

Be interesting to see if Apple's threat is more than just executive trash talk/if they actually go after Palm.

 

[elppa]

Pre is also infringing on a Microsoft patent for sucky OSes...

I mean HTML and javascript for your OS?????.....

You forgot a Web Browser for the IDE.

 

[billandy]

I really don't see this affecting the Pre.

pre is the only device so far bravely adopts two finger gestures-zoom in&out- so far. all other firms seem to have chosen to avoid using such gestures. my guess is that this is where pre might have infringed apple's patent.

nevertheless, the pre we have seen is all just pre-production model. apple can only sue palm once it starts selling it later this year

 

[billandy]

I'm guessing this is what steve meant when he said " And boy have we patented it!"

The mammoth 358 page patent application incorporates patent applications filed as far back as September 2006

Why did it take until 2009? I know the system isn't speedy, but three years?

three years is still fast mate for a patent application, this is the reality...

 

[NT1440]

I don't buy the Apple resting argument.

Apple has never really been lazy with their products. People mistake not putting in all the features they want as lazyness, but apple has always had a way of showing us what we want before we could even think it up. Thats innovation.

 

[elppa]

Why did it take until 2009? I know the system isn't speedy, but three years?

They have to research prior art etc. It's an immensely painstaking process I believe. It's clearly far from a case of reading and stamping it through.

 

[plumbingandtech]

You forgot a Web Browser for the IDE.

Who needs XCode, objective C 2.0 and cocoaTouch when you can do this:


alert("hello");

 

[Auzburner]

This is heating up quite a bit, I'm all for Apple defending themselves, but I'm not sure if I want to see them go down this road.

 

[crisss1205]

I really don't see this affecting the Pre.

The Pre uses multi-touch that Apple now holds the patent to.

 

[crisss1205]

Phone, yes, but there's Microsoft with the Surface (big... table ) and HP with their TouchSmart line (I think they use multitouch).

And Shaved Kitty, if it's a monopoly patent, why isn't the EU complaining?

I don't think the HP TouchSmart series uses multi-touch, just a bad touchscreen design.

 

[lftrghtparadigm]

I really don't see this affecting the Pre.

Oh really? I see this as the first step in the end of Pre, long before it hits market.

 

[Adokimus]

another one of those Monopoly Patents

+1, this is VERY bad news.

Apple now has a patent on "detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display [...] to determine a command for the device, and processing the command."

That would seem to be Pre territory...

That would seem to be the future of all phone's territory. Why not patent using fingers to input into a computer, then we can have only one company allowed to make keyboards...

This is bad news. Competition is good and makes for better products.

Indeed. Don't understand why the fanboys don't get this. The iPhone would become a stagnant product without competition... and why all the hate for the Pre? It looks awesome to me. Oh, and we also like to forget that Microsoft had multi-touch in their "surface" device first... what if Apple had never been allowed to make the first iPhone because Microsoft had a patent on using more than one finger as an input device?? Grow up people. Having a monopoly is BAD!

 

[dissdnt]

Wow multi-touch patent.. ah booo..

Patents are so stupid, let the market decide.

i wonder if you could patent using a wheel to steer a car and then sue all car manufactures.

Sorry but multi-touch has been done before and I dont see how they can really sue over such an obvious development in touch screen technology.

 

[NT1440]

This is heating up quite a bit, I'm all for Apple defending themselves, but I'm not sure if I want to see them go down this road.

What's wrong with having the rights to its own IP?

 

[klittle32]

Apple to Pre:

Bite me.

Haha. Your response actually made me laugh out loud.

 

[Peace]

+1, this is VERY bad news.



That would seem to be the future of all phone's territory. Why not patent using fingers to input into a computer, then we can have only one company allowed to make keyboards...



Indeed. Don't understand why the fanboys don't get this. The iPhone would become a stagnant product without competition... and why all the hate for the Pre? It looks awesome to me. Oh, and we also like to forget that Microsoft had multi-touch in their "surface" device first... what if Apple had never been allowed to make the first iPhone because Microsoft had a patent on using more than one finger as an input device?? Grow up people. Having a monopoly is BAD!

Microsoft did not have it's surface device first and they got the technology ( read: purchased ) from Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel, Inc. a full year after the iPhone was shown.

 

[Michael CM1]

This is bad news. Competition is good and makes for better products.

Competition isn't defined as taking what someone else worked long and hard to develop and then slapping it together as your own creation. It's called copyright (or patent) infringement.

Look at it this way. I think it was IBM that initially created DOS to run computers. Apple said, "I think we can do this better." Then Apple created the Mac OS. Also, take the video game systems. Not much new had been done on these things in a while, then Nintendo develops a very new kind of controller. It makes some games available for people who had never played games, while the other two systems have great horsepower and make games look better.

There is a huge difference between copying and creating.

P.S. how did someone NOT make a huge deal about the "video" icon on the spec drawing? I figure someone would've said "VIDEO RECORDING IS COMING NEXT ON THE IPHONE!!!"

 

[jlwilliams]

I wonder if Jon Rubinstein, who worked in apple's ipod division, had some inside knowledge of the iphone and its working, and brought that over to palm, thus apples pledge to defend their IP. Im sure Tim Cook new that the patent was going to be granted any day now when he made his statement.

 

[LagunaSol]

Patents are so stupid, let the market decide.

I agree with you...yet I don't. I agree with your basic argument, but after watching Microsoft blatantly rip off Apple for so many years and the market "deciding" in Microsoft's favor (i.e. by picking the crappier, cheaper option) - it's obvious Apple needs some protection for its groundbreaking innovation.

Apple can't be Microsoft's free R&D shop forever, you know...

 

[lftrghtparadigm]

The Pre uses multi-touch that Apple now holds the patent to.

Yep.

Goodbye, Pre. It was rather head-shaking to know you.


I hope they cancel the device all together. In a world where marketing and advertising are everything, anything else comes second. Its nice to see a little respect for innovation. The iPhone was (and still is) years head of the curve and Apple deserves some security for being such a pioneer....(again).

The iPhone had opportunity written all over it, Apple knew it, and they went for it. They succeeded.

Now, 1.5 years in, all of their innovation and marketshare accomplishments have been threatened by products with no goals besides:

1. mimicking the iPhone
2. confusing consumers into buying the wrong device (theirs)

I have no respect for this Chinese-manufacturer tactic of business (copying others work at fraction of quality/cost).

Its bound to happen, in every industry and market, but patents exist to prevent true intellectual property from being stolen....Up until today I felt Apple was allowing that to happen.

 

[jayducharme]

The Pre uses multi-touch that Apple now holds the patent to.

This is what I don't get: how could Palm allow the Pre to be made when they must have known Apple would get a patent on some of the underlying technologies? It seems as if Palm didn't even try to come up with anything outwardly new (except for bulking up the icons). The Pre is basically the iPhone, just with different software. And having two former Apple employees as the heads of Pre development doesn't help their case much. Maybe Palm's legal department was on vacation.

 

[crisss1205]

This is what I don't get: how could Palm allow the Pre to be made when they must have known Apple would get a patent on some of the underlying technologies? It seems as if Palm didn't even try to come up with anything outwardly new (except for bulking up the icons). The Pre is basically the iPhone, just with different software. And having two former Apple employees as the heads of Pre development doesn't help their case much. Maybe Palm's legal department was on vacation.

They probably didn't think Apple would be awarded the patent, honestly I didn't think they would get it either.