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No kidding. Samsung could really cripple Apple if they all of a sudden cut off their flash memory supply.

In a way I wish they'd do that. Send a message.

Samsung would be killing themselves. Apple has two other houses ready to go if they do that. Like any good systems house, Apple is playing their suppliers against each other.
 
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Ok so I guess apple does hold the multi-touch patents but I assumed that there's no way apple patented it first because multitouch is such an old concept. But I guess I didnt know how underpopular it really was. Was the iPhone actually the first multitouch product? (not including MacBook 2 finger scroll)
 
Good for Apple

Those that excuse Motorola are lame and dishonest. Apple invented the iPhone, now practically every smart phone looks and works just like it. Spontaneous innovation or theft? Gee, I wonder.

If the iPhone had ears poking out of the side, every competing phone would have ears. I LOVE competition. I'll buy it. But crap that is just a rip-off of Apple's hard work deserves no support. Support should go to the innovator only.

Apple's focus is make the best products. That's what Google and Motorola and HTC and Nokia should focus on. Innovate. Out-invent Apple. Make something new and exciting and people will line up for you. But, reverse engineer Apple products and you deserve one thing only -- a lawsuit.

Good for Apple.
 
multitouch is such an old concept

[citation needed], plus, "concepts" are not patentable. If a company develops a speed-of-light engine, you can't then say "It's crazy that they could get a patent on that! The concept of a speed-of-light drive has been very popular since the 1960s!"
 
No kidding. Samsung could really cripple Apple if they all of a sudden cut off their flash memory supply.

In a way I wish they'd do that. Send a message.

Yeah, I'm sure Samsung would cut off their nose to spite their face like that. Apple is a big customer for any supplier.

Besides, there's no shortage of suppliers ready to get on the Apple train.
 
Just buy Motorola already Apple, this lawsuit isn't going to affect the shareprice enough to equal any real savings.
 
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Ok so I guess apple does hold the multi-touch patents but I assumed that there's no way apple patented it first because multitouch is such an old concept. But I guess I didnt know how underpopular it really was. Was the iPhone actually the first multitouch product? (not including MacBook 2 finger scroll)

Before iPhone there are several touch screen devices like the Palm Treo and HP iPaq. But they use stylus. So most of the companies thought the stylus is the better solution for touch screen. They porbably think the fingers are much less precise thus can not be useful. Apple's implementation of multi-touch is a real innovation and should be rewarded.

Even the Android OS was founded to compete with the RIMM OS. The Android team learned from the iPhone that iOS is better solution than the RIMM OS.
 
Forgive my stupidity, but who invented the multipoint touchscreen then?

Read this multi-touch history as a starter lesson. Note the 1982 entry.

Fingerworks [did] and Apple bought them.

No, see above. Fingerworks came late to the game. Besides, Fingerworks dealt with opaque surfaces such as physical keyboards, not display touchscreens, although some of their gesture recognition algorithms carry over.

When SJ first showed multi-touch on the iPhone at Macworld in 2007, he said "Boy have we patented it!"
Guess he was serious.

He was doing his usual handwaving for the fanboys, who will believe anything. They got a couple of useful patents, which can be gotten around.

I suspect the piece of the multi-touch patent they're using against Motorola in this case, has to do with filling the display glass between sensing lines with material with a similar optical transmission quality as the electrode lines, just so it's harder to notice them.
 
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tzeshan said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Ok so I guess apple does hold the multi-touch patents but I assumed that there's no way apple patented it first because multitouch is such an old concept. But I guess I didnt know how underpopular it really was. Was the iPhone actually the first multitouch product? (not including MacBook 2 finger scroll)

Before iPhone there are several touch screen devices like the Palm Treo and HP iPaq. But they use stylus. So most of the companies thought the stylus is the better solution for touch screen. They porbably think the fingers are much less precise thus can not be useful. Apple's implementation of multi-touch is a real innovation and should be rewarded.

Even the Android OS was founded to compete with the RIMM OS. The Android team learned from the iPhone that iOS is better solution than the RIMM OS.

Yes but multitouch was new to the phone marked (and market in general) still. I saw multitouch I think in a TED video for one of the first times. Yes with fingers (the only way multitouch would work) and that was before the iPhone and not far from Microsoft surface.
 
Judge Judy

So what is your advice for Motorola then? Motorola suing Apple for patent infringement is fine, but Apple countersuing Motorola means "get over it"?

No, it's not to be taken personally.
I think it's about both parties getting over 'some of it'.
What would Judge Judy say if she was in charge of all of these cases?
 
I saw multitouch ... Yes with fingers (the only way multitouch would work) and that was before the iPhone

Again though, you're confusing a concept with an invention. Inventions are patentable, concepts are not. The idea of touching something with your fingers and having it respond is not patentable. Using special lasers focused on your fingertips to determine where your fingertips are pointed is patentable. Using a special surface to measure changes in electrical current across that surface in order to determine where your fingertips are pointed is patentable. But the concept of using your fingertips to make an object respond is not a device, and thus is not patentable, it's merely an idea. You can't patent general ideas.

EDIT:

Sweet ! Wish I saw life through that guys eyes ...
I try to

Me too. That guy really knew a good way to live. I even quote things he's said.
 
According to this Bloomberg story the development of iPhone touch screen began in 2004. http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2qOFL1qm7DY

Apple probably invited Google to develop at that time too. Google saw the opportunity of iPhone bought Android and used its experience in developing iPhone Map app to update the Android OS with the capabilities of iOS.

This situation is so eerily similar to Apple Microsoft relation. Before Mac was introduced in 1984, Apple invited Microsoft to develop the Mulitiplan spreadsheet application. Multiplan did not fair well. Microsoft subsequently released the most popular Excel program which implement the Mac UI very will. Microsoft used this experience to develop a new PC OS called Windows. Before Windows, PCs are equipped with the DOS OS. When Apple lost the copyright war with Windows, Mac lost the PC war.
 
Yet not Samsung because Samsung can do some major damage back to Apple

Apple counter-sued Moto because Moto sued and DJ'd Apple.

This is like trying to sue people for using a touch screen. It's the next generation of input, get over it, Apple. You can't have a complete monopoly on everything.

Actually, they can. That's what a patent is - a 20 year, government-sanctioned, monopoly.


This is very lame and ridiculous... Apple has NOT invented multipoint touchscreens... although they have got the patent...
Once again... we have an example of how patents are stupid and useless (at least in US...).
I wonder if I could get the patent for the process of inhaling and exhaling air using biological bags...

Apple does not have the patent on multipoint touchscreens.
 
Forgive my stupidity, but who invented the multipoint touchscreen then?

Start here, and follow the references.... ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History

Multi-touch technology began in 1982, when the University of Toronto's Input Research Group developed the first human-input multi-touch system. The system used a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass. When a finger or several fingers pressed on the glass, the camera would detect the action as one or more black spots on an otherwise white background, allowing it to be registered as an input. Since the size of a dot was dependent on pressure (how hard the person was pressing on the glass), the system was somewhat pressure-sensitive as well.[5]

In 1983, Bell Labs at Murray Hill published a comprehensive discussion of touch-screen based interfaces.[9] In 1984, Bell Labs engineered a touch screen that could change images with more than one hand. In 1985, the University of Toronto group including Bill Buxton developed a multi-touch tablet that used capacitance rather than bulky camera-based optical sensing systems.[5]
 
I sue you, You sue me, Lets get togeather and have a lawsuit with a big fat cheque and money here and there, We've got the money so we don't really care.

Lol @ Motorola
 
Those that excuse Motorola are lame and dishonest. Apple invented the iPhone, now practically every smart phone looks and works just like it. Spontaneous innovation or theft? Gee, I wonder.

If the iPhone had ears poking out of the side, every competing phone would have ears. I LOVE competition. I'll buy it. But crap that is just a rip-off of Apple's hard work deserves no support. Support should go to the innovator only.

Apple's focus is make the best products. That's what Google and Motorola and HTC and Nokia should focus on. Innovate. Out-invent Apple. Make something new and exciting and people will line up for you. But, reverse engineer Apple products and you deserve one thing only -- a lawsuit.

Good for Apple.

Haha your a newbie.

Anyways moving on the iPhone is a slab it;s nothing special in it's design I guess you could say Apple copied any other phone that i candy bar and added a touchscreen so get over yourself. And apples hard work your talking as if apple as a company is a living being I would like to correct you and say Apple's employees hard work.

And for everyone else, Samsung has enough money in the bank to buy Apple a couple of times so really Samung could kick the **** out of Apple.
 
Motorola is suing Apple because Apples business is BOOMING, and they want a piece of that pie. Good for Apple for countersuing. Innovation = profits, lawsuit = lazy way of getting money.


In only took you three sentences to go from praising Apple to calling them lazy. Good job.
 
I understand the romanticism people associate with patents, but they aren't awarded or used in the way most of this crowd thinks they are. 99% of patents are incremental improvements building on earlier inventions. Many are claiming a novel combination of technologies that all exist independently. And few if any of the patents I see talked about in these forums are actually claiming the things that people think they are.

What we're seeing with Mot and Apple is a lot of chest beating. Mot needs to demonstrate to their shareholders that they're challenging Apple's rise. Apple basically goes into their patent portfolio, pulls out a bunch that are close to Mot's business and makes it clear this is going to get ugly. It's very rare that the outcome is material to either party, especially when it involves two companies with patent portfolios as deep as these two. They'll cross license a few patents, maybe cut a check one way or the other, then report back to their boards that they've carried out their fiduciary duty.

Patents are rarely more than ammunition to fuel the perpetual border skirmishes between companies, and those battles generally do little more than discourage upstarts from entering the fray.

No kidding. Samsung could really cripple Apple if they all of a sudden cut off their flash memory supply.

In a way I wish they'd do that. Send a message.
Yeah, nothing sends a message like alienating your biggest customer. Besides, these are two separate divisions within Samsung run by two different management structures, each with their bonuses tied to their own revenue targets. The Flash division isn't going to sacrifice their careers just to help out the cell phone division, and any CEO worth their salt would mediate by simply asking "Why have you let Apple eat your lunch in the cellular market?".
Sink?
 
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