Apple Suing Motorola Over Design of Xoom Tablet

[kdarling]

I will get blasted for this but isn't suing Motorola dangerous? I would think with Motorola being such an old company and having a lot of patents with cell phones and the like , wouldn't apple be risking a counter suit ? Motorola does have 2g/3g and 4g patents.

Motorola has hinted at the same thing. They've been doing radios for a hundred years, both military and civilian gear.

It's hugely ironic that Apple's iPhone could not exist without licensing or buying the results of decades of R&D and work done by companies like Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft. Yet Apple usually refuses to license anything in return. Imagine if those competitors decided to totally withhold their IP from Apple, as Apple is constantly trying to do from them.

I also think it's a really poor idea to force your competition to innovate past you in some giant way. It's always better to license and keep them from doing too much inventing.

 

[KnightWRX]

If you pick-and-choose when to defend your patent, you're going to lose it. Patent enforcement is all or none, not just sometimes.

That is completely false. You're thinking of trademark and trademark dilution. Patents are not under any obligation to be defended.

 

[benthewraith]

And if someone owned a patent on that, you bet your sweet a$$ Apple would be getting sued...

Which says a lot about the piss poor way the patent system has been handled in the United States and elsewhere.

 

[AppleScruff1]

This is absolutely ridiculous. What a bunch of arrogant douches.

 

[faroZ06]

From Wikipedia: "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product."

Full article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)#Adoption_by_Apple

Last time I used Wikipedia to prove something about Mac OS coming before Windows, some Windows fans tried to prove my point invalid because Wikipedia is supposedly for n00bs. I love how that was their only argument

 

[MrWillie]

If it wasn't for Henry Ford, there would be no Toyota. Ford must sue every other car maker to protect itself.

<Insert picture of similarities between Ford and Toyota cars - 4 wheels, glass upfront, a freaking engine AND a steering wheel - what more proof do you need>

Macrumors is a sad place.

Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. Nicolas Cugnot (I think I spelt that right) made a steam power auto in the late 1760s. Mr Dailmer and Karl Benz invented internal combustion engines that made the auto practicle. Ford invented the assembly line (among other things) and made cars affordable to the average Joe. If he patented the assembly line, in 17 years the patent would have expired, and the tech would have fallen into the realm of common knowledge. So that statement (which has been made about 15 times on various threads, doesn't hold water.

 

[faroZ06]

Motorola has hinted at the same thing. They've been doing radios for a hundred years, both military and civilian gear.

It's hugely ironic that Apple's iPhone could not exist without licensing or buying the results of decades of R&D and work done by companies like Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft. Yet Apple usually refuses to license anything in return. Imagine if those competitors decided to totally withhold their IP from Apple, as Apple is constantly trying to do from them.

It's less appealing to see a consumer electronics company get sued by tech companies than the other way around. A tech company shutting off supplies for Apple would look really bad. Look at Oracle and Google's Android platform.

I think Motorola should stick with tech and not try to compete with consumer electronics.

 

[qtx43]

Actually they were the first to come up with that form factor.

The form factor being a thick black bezel on touch device. No one else had done this before and everyone else has since.

Here's [two images]

A curved black bezel isn't an unique idea.

you may be right in general, I don,t know, but those two examples are not good ones. They both use styluses, OandA said touch screen. And neither one is nearly as minimal as the iPad, the freescale has buttons and grills all over, and isn't symmetrical.

 

[Darth.Titan]

And how about this for a little Ford-related patent law trivia: Robert Kearns successfully sued Ford and Chrysler over their use of his invention, the intermittent wiper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

See? Patents *do* protect innovation.

Yeah, we saw the movie. Thanks.

Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. Nicolas Cugnot (I think I spelt that right) made a steam power auto in the late 1760s. Mr Dailmer and Karl Benz invented internal combustion engines that made the auto practicle. Ford invented the assembly line (among other things) and made cars affordable to the average Joe. If he patented the assembly line, in 17 years the patent would have expired, and the tech would have fallen into the realm of common knowledge. So that statement (which has been made about 15 times on various threads, doesn't hold water.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to clear up this misconception. Ford didn't invent the automobile, he just perfected the assembly line process to reduce costs.

 

[miamialley]

Honestly, Apple is ridiculous with crap like this and the 30% cut they want from in app sales. Get over yourselves.

 

[parapup]

Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. .

And neither did Apple invent Tablets in any significant way - they just made them popular. So it is your 'justification at the cost of reality' that does not hold.

If he had patented car making and shut down every other car maker we would have been at loss of several years of innovation that happened outside of Ford's factories.

[ Oh and by the way - let's completely ignore that my post never claimed Henry Ford invented automobile - that knowledge is just a google search away. My implied point was that Apple did not invent tablets - just like how Ford made cars popular and accessible to common man, Apple did something similar to Tablets - not invented but popularized.]

 

[faroZ06]

you may be right in general, I don,t know, but those two examples are not good ones. They both use styluses, OandA said touch screen. And neither one is nearly as minimal as the iPad, the freescale has buttons and grills all over, and isn't symmetrical.

A bezel, how quaint

One day, the technology would be available for the entire thing to be a screen with no bezel. Everyone need a bezel at the moment.

 

[Melab]

This is ridiculous.

 

[faroZ06]

Honestly, Apple is ridiculous with crap like this and the 30% cut they want from in app sales. Get over yourselves.

They have the most successful app store and mobile platform. You have to be serious to put your app there.

Or is Apple going to be like Google and let their store be a mess of random programs?

 

[KnightWRX]

They have the most successful app store and mobile platform. You have to be serious to put your app there.

Or is Apple going to be like Google and let their store be a mess of random programs?

Wait... did you browse the app store recently ? There's a lot of crap on there.

 

[kdarling]

From Wikipedia: "The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product."

Wikipedia is missing a few critical details. A while back, I ran across an original Northern California District Court document discussing the 1990 Xerox lawsuit against Apple. In it, Xerox's complaint was quoted thusly:

"In November of 1979, Steven Jobs, then-president of Apple, visited PARC with other Apple employees for a demonstration of Smalltalk. On June 9, 1981, Xerox granted Apple a license pursuant to which Apple agreed to "participate in a project with the Learning Research Group at PARC/Xerox for the purpose of implementing the Smalltalk-80 language and system on a hardware system to be developed by [Apple]." Shortly thereafter, Apple began developing its "Lisa" computer for use with Smalltalk.

...

"On March 17, 1988, Apple sued Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard Company in this court for copyright infringement of, among other works, Lisa and Macintosh Finder and for unfair competition. In that suit, Apple asserted that Lisa and Macintosh Finder substantially consist of material wholly original to Apple."

Basically, Apple claimed that the Mac ideas came from the Lisa. Xerox in turn claimed that the Lisa ideas came from them and was the only device they had licensed to use a GUI, and it was supposed to be in a participating project.

 

[PowerGamerX]

There's only so many ways you can make a rectangle with a screen in it look different from another rectangle with a screen in it. :|

I never really agreed with Apple's business practices but this is getting out of hand. Every day it seems I come to this website to find a new lawsuit underway.

 

[miamialley]

They have the most successful app store and mobile platform. You have to be serious to put your app there.

Or is Apple going to be like Google and let their store be a mess of random programs?

So they have a right to 30%? Does Microsoft deserve a cut of all compatible software sold for Windows? Why does Apple deserve this? Because they review apps they get 30% of all sales? Geez.

 

[Melab]

This is going to be an interesting turn for Apple, for better or for worse (depending on what you consider better or worse).

 

[zacman]

That's a rough translation from Apple's complaint in the Samsung case:

The Galaxy tab violates the design patent number 000181607-0001 because:

* it has a rectangle form factor
* it has rounded curves
* it is a "slim design".
* it has a clean surface which covers the frontside
* it has a bezel
* it has metal around it

And my favorite:

* when switched on it shows colored(!) icons on the screen.

I am not kidding, that's really what Apple is writing in their lawsuit.

 

[blgalvin]

You all better watch out. I just filed a patent for "walking on two legs with shoes on"

I'm going to sue everybody into oblivion....

 

[Melab]

that's a rough translation from apple's complaint in the samsung case:

The galaxy tab violates the design patent number 000181607-0001 because:

* it has a rectangle form factor
* it has rounded curves
* it is a "slim design".
* it has a clean surface
* it has a bezel
* it has metal around it

and my favorite:

* when switched on it shows colored(!) icons on the screen.

I am not kidding, that's really what apple is writing in their lawsuit.

Wow, Apple is going overboard. But, I can understand that last part a little bit if it is only used in conjunction with more reasonable claims.

 

[wovel]

This is getting ridiculous.

Did Apple patent rectangle or touch screen? Anyone else other than Steve Jobs notice any resemblance between Xoom and iPad?

Maybe you should read the complaints.

That is completely false. You're thinking of trademark and trademark dilution. Patents are not under any obligation to be defended.

This is 100% correct. Apple ignored countless violations of the patents in the HTC case over the past 15 years. I assume they did this primarily because they were not competing with any of them directly till about 4 years ago.

 

[bushido]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

that's a rough translation from apple's complaint in the samsung case:

The galaxy tab violates the design patent number 000181607-0001 because:

* it has a rectangle form factor
* it has rounded curves
* it is a "slim design".
* it has a clean surface
* it has a bezel
* it has metal around it

and my favorite:

* when switched on it shows colored(!) icons on the screen.

I am not kidding, that's really what apple is writing in their lawsuit.

Wow.

omg this is insane lmao "slim design" i cant even ...

 

[BornAgainMac]

The best thing Apple did was come out with a better looking iPad.