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Apple Files Lawsuit Against HTC Over Alleged iPhone Patent Infringement
- Thread starter Teh Don Ditty
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Yes it would make more sense to go after Google if Apple's goal is trying to stop all Android devices. I assume they are going after HTC because it is the weakest link at this point. If they can take down HTC then they will probably try and go after the other Android manufactures and Google itself. Apple knows that if Google decides to get nasty and shut them off a lot of those nifty iPhone applications would be broken.
I would not be surprised if Google doesn't get involved anyhow. This is basically an indirect lawsuit on them. Apple is just going to a company with less money to see if they can bring them to their knees first. If they are successful then they will try to take on the big G and things are going to get very ugly!
You can't patent software. All of the patent claims refer to either a device or to a computer-readable medium containing instructions that, when executed, cause the device to behave a certain way. Some of the claims are method claims, and thus they are not infringed until the method is actually performed. Thus, in the abstract, it is more difficult to maintain a complaint against google as a direct infringer - the infringement doesn't happen (in many caes) until android is in a device. It's also a little complicated because google doesn't sell the OS to the device vendors. Apple could maintain that google is an indirect infringer, of course, but for now they're just keeping their powder dry.
That's what you get when you license your OS out to all takers. The real problem for MS in this area has always been their business model. Microsoft *itself* is the problem.
Actually, I remember reading a lot of complaints from people about how OS X had new users running as admin all the time by default, and how stupid it was.
I don't recall them doing that except on iPhone, which isn't a multi-user system.
Speaking of patents:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ts_for_pioneering_unibody_macbook_design.html
Yes. It's true.
Hopefully this will develop into a trend both ways.
Well, no guarantee, but there is hope.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ts_for_pioneering_unibody_macbook_design.html
Yes. It's true.
Hopefully this will develop into a trend both ways.
Well, no guarantee, but there is hope.
It was on the same night I was reading a blog post about a guy who deleted his /usr folder, so I started poking around and found a bunch of complaints about how OS X handled certain things.
For example, you can (or could at the time; Idk if it's been fixed) open up a document in some program and go to File->Save As, and try to name the document "Library," say, because it's about a Library. Well, if you were signed in as an admin, (and you were in the right folder) it would just replace your Library folders with your new document, totally messing up your system. There were a lot of other things that OS X would let you do along the same lines. A lot of the sites I was coming across were lambasting Apple for making a system which automatically had you signed in as Admin after install.
Hmm. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything special when I turned on my macs for the first time (or upgraded the OS to SL) and I'm not logged in as admin.
Wonder if that's the 'Envy' they've next targeted. One can hope. Or actually, more like the HP G62t, since that looks to be a complete visual rip-off.
Speaking of patents:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ts_for_pioneering_unibody_macbook_design.html
Yes. It's true.
Hopefully this will develop into a trend both ways.
Well, no guarantee, but there is hope.
People will undoubtedly start whining. They should keep in mind these are DESIGN patents, not utility patents. They protect only the appearance of a thing, sort of like a trademark/tradedress protection but less powerful since it is time-limited.
just reading around the internet today Apple has turned off a lot of the tech world, including Apple fans.
I know right! I mean, most of the tech world sits around bitching on forums all day.
Oh...wait...
The "tech world" amounts to a bunch of nerds with too much free time, and opinions that largely matter to only themselves and each other.
Like I said, it could be fixed by now. I don't even remember if it was Leopard, Tiger, or what. It's also possible it may be related to clean installs, though I don't know why very many Mac users would be doing a clean install.
None of this has ever been true.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q2/macos-x-final/macos-x-3.html
From 10.0, new users were administrator by default. But administrator on OS X (and other Unix inheritors) isn't Windows-style administrator. Windows admin is "root" in Unix--you can do anything anytime. An OS X administrator *can* do most things--not ANYthing--but gets prompted for their password for many things.
The GUI will not let you save a file over a directory, or overwrite system locations such as /usr. Of course, a given application might ask you for privilege escalation and then do awful things, but... welcome to computing.
The comments you saw were from people who either escalated privileges intentionally and then made an effort to do something dumb, like rm'ing /usr without known what it was; or by Windows people who saw the word "Administrator" and out of ignorance assumed that other OSes were as stupid as Windows and would have the default user be the super-user.
Im not the biggest Apple fan on these boards, havent been since they pissed me off royally by cutting firewire from the Macbook, forcing me to get a 15 MB pro at double the price for the most simple of features which i needed to use with my audio interface. A ridiculous decision which they backpeddled on some 6-9 months later.
It is then that i thought what a foolish thing it is to build my life around a platform that is so closed off/lacking in choice and susceptible to the whims of whatever Jobs might decide is "unnecesary" in future. I mean, who's to say that they wont drop Logic completely in the future? Theyve already made it the cheapest fully fledged DAW on the market.
Regardless, I still think that Apple has every right to sue here if they hold the patents. I mean lets face it there are certain UI implementations, less significant than looks, like the rubberbanding of lists when you scroll too far... the touch keyboard... that werent on the market or at least popular before iphone, that have been fully lifted into webos, android etc. You would be pretty annoyed if you just saw this happen. I mean whats the point in designing cool stuff if some clowns can just step in and copy it and undercut your business??
You can call "offensive" but really its defensive lawsuit as if they let this get out of control its like the desktop OS market all over again... except android isnt like windows to OSX. Its actually very good and improving at a rapid pace. Combine this with lower retail prices of android handsets (from manufacturers willing to take less than the famous Apple Margins) you can see why this is very worrying.
Will be very interesting to see how this plays out though and interesting they are not directly going for Google as that is obviously who is the main threat. Surely Google will step in at some point having had their Nexus One mentioned as one of the offending handsets. And surely Google will not take kindly to the prospect of losing lots of money/sales to this suit.
It is then that i thought what a foolish thing it is to build my life around a platform that is so closed off/lacking in choice and susceptible to the whims of whatever Jobs might decide is "unnecesary" in future. I mean, who's to say that they wont drop Logic completely in the future? Theyve already made it the cheapest fully fledged DAW on the market.
Regardless, I still think that Apple has every right to sue here if they hold the patents. I mean lets face it there are certain UI implementations, less significant than looks, like the rubberbanding of lists when you scroll too far... the touch keyboard... that werent on the market or at least popular before iphone, that have been fully lifted into webos, android etc. You would be pretty annoyed if you just saw this happen. I mean whats the point in designing cool stuff if some clowns can just step in and copy it and undercut your business??
You can call "offensive" but really its defensive lawsuit as if they let this get out of control its like the desktop OS market all over again... except android isnt like windows to OSX. Its actually very good and improving at a rapid pace. Combine this with lower retail prices of android handsets (from manufacturers willing to take less than the famous Apple Margins) you can see why this is very worrying.
Will be very interesting to see how this plays out though and interesting they are not directly going for Google as that is obviously who is the main threat. Surely Google will step in at some point having had their Nexus One mentioned as one of the offending handsets. And surely Google will not take kindly to the prospect of losing lots of money/sales to this suit.
"tech world" was probably too specific.. change that to "consumers" - just did a search on twitter and a lot of sour posts about Apple. I wouldn't classify many of them as techies.
Did they patent it? Considering that Mediaman came out at virtually the same time, I'm not sure which company would get the license fees. If there are any, at all.
I hate to say this, but Apple now runs the risk of getting sued by the Feds for abusing their patent portfolio. Anyone who's taken a first-year college course in economics may remember the famous US v. United Shoe Machinery Company cases where the courts determined United Shoe used its patent portfolio to shut out competing companies; Apple is now approaching the point of getting sued by the Feds--not to mention the even more aggressive EU antitrust authorities!--over this action.
Why does Apple excite you? Anyway, it should be safe for you now to inside the Apple store....
You are joking, right?
Patents, by definition, grant the right to exclude. The whole point of a patent is to grant a limited, 20-year monopoly. That's what they're for. No company has ever been sued by the government for exercising it's patent rights. A patent may be unenforceable due to the doctrine of patent misuse or if a patent is fraudulently obtained and used to perpetuate a monopoly (Walker Process claims).
The case you cite is a 1918 case (ancient in patent law terms), and the Supreme Court said the following:
The Supreme Court further rules:
You have the holding backwards, and clearly misunderstand patent law.
2 Questions.
First, given what you've said here, what then qualifies as patent misuse?
Second, have you looked at this article, which goes into some depth as to the suit, and what do you think of its conclusion (that Android is actually the polar opposite of what Apple is claiming infringement on)?
Patent misuse is defined by 35 USC 271:
It's written sort of inside out, but let's start with (3) - it says that it is NOT patent misuse to sue somebody for infringement. (4) says it is NOT misues to refuse to license your patent to anyone else. (5) says it IS patent misuse to do a certain thing which I can most easily define by example. Say Apple refused to license its iPhone patents to HTC unless HTC agreed to put iTunes store on all its phones, and it had an iTunes store patent. This is sort of similar to the "tying" arguments you hear about in antitrust - if you have a monopoly in one market, you can't use it to force people to buy other stuff they don't want.
In any event, it's clearly not relevant here.
I did read that article. Note that it talks only about ONE of the 20 patents that Apple is asserting. Second, the article goes around and around talking about efficiency or inefficiency, and doesn't actually apply the simple test that will determine whether this particular patent is infringed. All one has to do is look at the claims of the patent. Here's one, for example:
So the question is simple: does Android do each one of those steps? If so, it infringes.
Now, this particularly claim smells invalid to me in light of the In re Bilski case. It is a pure software claim - it is not (in my humble opinion) tied to a machine and it does not transform matter. That doesn't mean there aren't other claims in the patent that do not have this issue (plus the Supreme Court is about to rule on whether In re Bilski was decided correctly in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, so the rule may change).
I think this is the start of patent war when every company is going to patent everything. Not necessary to use it but to protect and counter against getting sued themselves. I think this will limit innovation from moving forward. Apple better be careful with such things that are already out there that iPhone has yet to implement like front facing camera and features that Apple already implemented that's been in the market already like compass, GPS, etc.