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Apple Files Lawsuit Against HTC Over Alleged iPhone Patent Infringement
- Thread starter Teh Don Ditty
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What is very funny to see here, is that if any company files a case against apple a lot of people getting angry ( I know this is a Apple forum but not one for the blind or mad)
If Apple is filing a case against other companies it is OK, whatever the reason is.
I think every company has the same rights ......!!!!!
You sound like a troll.. Apple is the only company in the Universe and whatever they do is correct. Everyone else makes "crappy products" with "clunky" OSes....
BTW, Whatever you see the words "clunky" and "crappy" in the same paragraph, you are dealing with a graduate of "Mindless Fanboy University" ... Do not challenge their opinion.. They all "Skate to where the puck is going to be" and only use "sexy, Delicious, and elegant" products!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How did you get that from my post? I merely noted that Apple had not yet taken action against Palm. I made no judgment on Palm itself.
You conveniently ignore my post disputing your BS about the HTC Touch being an iPhone ripoff. Classy
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone
The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
By Fred Vogelstein 01.09.08
The demo was not going well.
Again.
It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."
The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting.
The ramifications were serious. The iPhone was to be the centerpiece of Apple's annual Macworld convention, set to take place in just a few months. Since his return to Apple in 1997, Jobs had used the event as a showcase to launch his biggest products, and Apple-watchers were expecting another dramatic announcement. Jobs had already admitted that Leopard — the new version of Apple's operating system — would be delayed. If the iPhone wasn't ready in time, Macworld would be a dud, Jobs' critics would pounce, and Apple's stock price could suffer.
This 4.8-ounce sliver of glass and aluminum is an explosive device that has forever changed the mobile-phone business, wresting power from carriers and giving it to manufacturers, developers, and consumers.
And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines.
For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.
But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone's brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America's big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone "the best device I have ever seen." (Details of this and other key moments in the making of the iPhone were provided by people with knowledge of the events. Apple and AT&T would not discuss these meetings or the specific terms of the relationship.)
Six months later, on June 29, 2007, the iPhone went on sale. At press time, analysts were speculating that customers would snap up about 3 million units by the end of 2007, making it the fastest-selling smartphone of all time. It is also arguably Apple's most profitable device. The company nets an estimated $80 for every $399 iPhone it sells, and that's not counting the $240 it makes from every two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco.
But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and AT&T, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers' proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. "The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave," says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.
The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
By Fred Vogelstein 01.09.08
The demo was not going well.
Again.
It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."
The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting.
The ramifications were serious. The iPhone was to be the centerpiece of Apple's annual Macworld convention, set to take place in just a few months. Since his return to Apple in 1997, Jobs had used the event as a showcase to launch his biggest products, and Apple-watchers were expecting another dramatic announcement. Jobs had already admitted that Leopard — the new version of Apple's operating system — would be delayed. If the iPhone wasn't ready in time, Macworld would be a dud, Jobs' critics would pounce, and Apple's stock price could suffer.
This 4.8-ounce sliver of glass and aluminum is an explosive device that has forever changed the mobile-phone business, wresting power from carriers and giving it to manufacturers, developers, and consumers.
And what would AT&T think? After a year and a half of secret meetings, Jobs had finally negotiated terms with the wireless division of the telecom giant (Cingular at the time) to be the iPhone's carrier. In return for five years of exclusivity, roughly 10 percent of iPhone sales in AT&T stores, and a thin slice of Apple's iTunes revenue, AT&T had granted Jobs unprecedented power. He had cajoled AT&T into spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to create a new feature, so-called visual voicemail, and to reinvent the time-consuming in-store sign-up process. He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill. On top of all that, Apple retained complete control over the design, manufacturing, and marketing of the iPhone. Jobs had done the unthinkable: squeezed a good deal out of one of the largest players in the entrenched wireless industry. Now, the least he could do was meet his deadlines.
For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.
But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone's brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America's big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone "the best device I have ever seen." (Details of this and other key moments in the making of the iPhone were provided by people with knowledge of the events. Apple and AT&T would not discuss these meetings or the specific terms of the relationship.)
Six months later, on June 29, 2007, the iPhone went on sale. At press time, analysts were speculating that customers would snap up about 3 million units by the end of 2007, making it the fastest-selling smartphone of all time. It is also arguably Apple's most profitable device. The company nets an estimated $80 for every $399 iPhone it sells, and that's not counting the $240 it makes from every two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco.
But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and AT&T, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers' proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. "The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave," says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.
Totally wrong. They have every right and obligation to defend their patents--in court.
Pardon? Not good? Apple invented the iphone it's very good they're defending their inventions.
What's NOT good is other companies copying Apple's innovations and profiting from it.
Hmm, there sure seem to be a lot of whiners on both sides of the argument today.
I support Apple in both this lawsuit and Nokia's suit, but I'm not hypocritical as some would suggest. Having a background in audio codecs, I have worked through licensing from patent pools such as the one Nokia contributes GSM patents to.
I take Apple at their word that they would license it at the industry standard pricing if Nokia would stop trying to force a cross licensing agreement which is not part of the standard agreement for the GSM tech. What Nokia is doing is equivalent to blackmail. Now, if the facts end up coming out different, I will definitely act like a civilized adult unlike some of you people who like bashing and screaming, and adjust my opinion to meet the facts. But from what I know, Apple looks to be in the right with Nokia. Apple in the end will pay licensing fees; most likely the ones spelled out in industry contracts. There may also be cross licensing but Apple I think will avoid that at all costs if they can.
With the new HTC lawsuit, Apple doesn't submit their patents to be licensed to others in any way. They pre-announced that they applied for patents on everything when the iPhone was first demoed, giving others notice to be careful. *IF* HTC violated these patents, HTC had no expectation of licensing them since there was no procedure in place for doing so. This is a completely different type of suit than the Nokia suit. Some could argue against software patents, agreed, they are messy... some could argue about things like the power management feature as being common sense, but it may be implementation specific. Again, let the facts come to the table. However, since Apple doesn't sell use of their patents to others, HTC should have avoided the patents since there would be no reasonable expectation they'd be given any permission to use them. That is theft, whether intentional or not. It may have been HTC simply thought some things wouldn't be patented and copied them thinking they could get close to the iPhone where people couldn't tell them apart without stepping on patents. Perhaps they didn't do due diligence.
I support Apple in both this lawsuit and Nokia's suit, but I'm not hypocritical as some would suggest. Having a background in audio codecs, I have worked through licensing from patent pools such as the one Nokia contributes GSM patents to.
I take Apple at their word that they would license it at the industry standard pricing if Nokia would stop trying to force a cross licensing agreement which is not part of the standard agreement for the GSM tech. What Nokia is doing is equivalent to blackmail. Now, if the facts end up coming out different, I will definitely act like a civilized adult unlike some of you people who like bashing and screaming, and adjust my opinion to meet the facts. But from what I know, Apple looks to be in the right with Nokia. Apple in the end will pay licensing fees; most likely the ones spelled out in industry contracts. There may also be cross licensing but Apple I think will avoid that at all costs if they can.
With the new HTC lawsuit, Apple doesn't submit their patents to be licensed to others in any way. They pre-announced that they applied for patents on everything when the iPhone was first demoed, giving others notice to be careful. *IF* HTC violated these patents, HTC had no expectation of licensing them since there was no procedure in place for doing so. This is a completely different type of suit than the Nokia suit. Some could argue against software patents, agreed, they are messy... some could argue about things like the power management feature as being common sense, but it may be implementation specific. Again, let the facts come to the table. However, since Apple doesn't sell use of their patents to others, HTC should have avoided the patents since there would be no reasonable expectation they'd be given any permission to use them. That is theft, whether intentional or not. It may have been HTC simply thought some things wouldn't be patented and copied them thinking they could get close to the iPhone where people couldn't tell them apart without stepping on patents. Perhaps they didn't do due diligence.
Perhaps Google cannot. One would assume that Apple and Google would have a contractual agreement on these types of things. In just don't see two multi-billlion dollar companies doing something like that w/o terms agreed to.
Also, Google on the iPhone gives them (Google) a pretty nice revenue stream.
Wow, lots of ignorance in this thread. Many of us hate software patents, but the current law is the current law and Apple would be foolish to pretend otherwise no matter how much we hate software patents. In the patent world, you protect your invention or you lose it. Apple is doing what it has to do.
So is Nokia. So are all of the companies suing. That's how the game works. It's one of the reasons we hate it. But that's the only game in town at the moment, so all of the moaning about how you hate software patents accomplishes nothing. Get the laws changed, that's all you can do. Moaning won't help.
Is it hypocritical to boo Kodak/Nokia and to cheer Apple? We don't know the merits of the Kodak/Nokia cases, so we'll have to wait and see what the courts do. But one thing we can clearly see is how smartphones looked one way before 2007, and then suddenly looked a lot like iPhones after 2007. It's so blatant, and given Steve Jobs' statements on the subject years ago, it's hardly a surprise that Apple would take this step.
The cheering is not for software patents (we hate 'em, but it's the law), but for Apple to get all these copycat companies to stop ripping off Apple's ideas. And if it turns out Apple ripped of Nokia, well, the law's the law, and Apple would have to be punished in return. That's how it works, and it ain't hypocrisy.
So is Nokia. So are all of the companies suing. That's how the game works. It's one of the reasons we hate it. But that's the only game in town at the moment, so all of the moaning about how you hate software patents accomplishes nothing. Get the laws changed, that's all you can do. Moaning won't help.
Is it hypocritical to boo Kodak/Nokia and to cheer Apple? We don't know the merits of the Kodak/Nokia cases, so we'll have to wait and see what the courts do. But one thing we can clearly see is how smartphones looked one way before 2007, and then suddenly looked a lot like iPhones after 2007. It's so blatant, and given Steve Jobs' statements on the subject years ago, it's hardly a surprise that Apple would take this step.
The cheering is not for software patents (we hate 'em, but it's the law), but for Apple to get all these copycat companies to stop ripping off Apple's ideas. And if it turns out Apple ripped of Nokia, well, the law's the law, and Apple would have to be punished in return. That's how it works, and it ain't hypocrisy.
No, it's not good. If Apple sues their competition out of existence, then they have absolutely no reason to innovate and can charge whatever price they want for the iPhone.
You conveniently ignore my post disputing your BS about the HTC Touch being an iPhone ripoff. Classy
It's not only a ripoff, but a really bad ripoff.
But since Apple is doing no such thing (those companies will continue to exist and make lots of phones even if they lose this case), your positing a future that will never occur.
I'm confused over these software patents.
Are HTC solely responsible for these patent infringements even though Google and Microsoft provide the software for these phones?
Are HTC solely responsible for these patent infringements even though Google and Microsoft provide the software for these phones?
What is very funny to see here, is that if any company files a case against apple a lot of people getting angry ( I know this is a Apple forum but not one for the blind or mad
If Apple is filing a case against other companies it is OK, whatever the reason is.
I think every company has the same rights ......!!!!!
I'm not sure what you have been reading but a scan of the post shows an equal division between those who are happy and those who are unhappy with Apple's decision.
That's why we have patents and lawyers. Let the courts figure this out.
I proved you wrong. It was designed before the iPhone was announced. How the hell is it a ripoff? You can't rip off something that doesn't exist.
Why would you take Apple's word? There is absolutely no evidence one way or the other...
This is why they are suing each other.
I guess that we can judge who Apple's REAL competition is by who they file lawsuits against. They steal others technology, but they can't stand it when someone may have done it to them. I guess it's all about money.
no doubt there will be some kind of agreement. i'm not saying google can or will just ask for the app to removed and suddenly it goes, i'm just saying this could be something worth pursuing if they want to hit back. and it would certainly hit back hard if they could. was purely a thought.
On the other hand, if Apple doesn't protect their IP, other companies have no reason to innovate and can just clone Apple's products. I guess they would be cheaper, but still no innovation.
ABOUT TIME!!!! Take no prisoners on these creeps.
Meaning creeps=Apple themselves?