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Apple's Time Machine, Cover Flow, and Safari for iOS Targeted in New Patent Infringement Lawsuit
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Note: I'm only an expat living in China, no Nationalist agenda from me
Shhhhh.... they are reading what you are saying!
The patent drawing looks a lot like a LISA or Mac System 1.0, but with some kind of TRON grid underneath it.
Why don't they sue Disney for stealing their patent when they made TRON in 1982.
Why don't they sue Disney for stealing their patent when they made TRON in 1982.
Legit question for you guys. What is worse:
a) American Patent troll lazily suing Apple over a tenuous patent they bought / collected?
b) Chinese company brazenly copying an Apple product and profiting from it?
Note: I'm only an expat living in China, no Nationalist agenda from me
I'd vote 'A' all day long, because trolls don't 'just sue Apple'. They sue everyone that they think they can get some serious coin (or Jones) off from by suing them. And it's the smaller companies that are sued that will shape the technology that we use on a day to day basis into the future.
It's the smaller companies that can't fight this kind of abuse of the law and settle that fueled this 'industry'. And often, from what I've deduced, the lawsuits are based on overstated or inaccurate statements of violation (ignoring 'prior work', etc). But how can a smaller company afford to 'spin the wheel' in court, and potentially end up spending years, decades, defending themselves and their work. Many companies that settled rather than fight probably did more to embolden these trolls than any other group.
What you saw in Jurassic Park was FSN running on IRIX. It was a UNIX workstation running UNIX, nothing "so-called" about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn
Agan, the comment was sarcastic of movie canon, not actual computer science. I have already responded to this regard.
Of course they lost the case. If you have a perfectly valid patent, you can't just sue me because you have a valid patent. You can only sue if you have a valid patent and I'm using the patent and I have no right to use the patent. The court finally rejected the idea that Apple was using that patent. No use of the patent, you lose. Even if your patent is valid. You don't lose the patent as a punishment.
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No, there is no bond in Germany.
When you sue, the judge first decides the amount of money that is sued for. You can't sue for "whatever we get" as this case seems to be, you can sue for a million, or for 100 million, or for 10,000. Whatever you demand.
The judge then looks up a table that says "you are suing for one million euros, so that is 21.300 Euros court cost, 30,000 for the plaintiff's lawyers, 30,000 for the defendant's lawyers" (I made up the amounts, but it's something like that). Then if you are awarded 100,000 Euros, that's 10% of the demand, the defendant pays 10% of the cost, the plaintiff pays 90% of the cost.
In addition, after the plaintiff said "I want a million", the defendant can say "I'm willing to pay 100,000". Now the court case is about 900,000 Euros. If the award is 100,000 then the plaintiff lost 100% and pays all the cost.
Since the cost goes up with the demand, making huge demands and not getting the money will be very expensive. That's why people don't sue for ridiculous amounts of money.
That's entirely -- and obviously -- wrong. If it weren't, such suits would never fail and the mere filing of a suit would be evidence of infringement. Patent suits often end in a judgment that there has been no infringement.
The answer is:
c) Apple's karma coming full circle, after assigning the Nortel patents that they paid so much for, to a new patent troll company which they helped create to harass other companies.
After doing that, they have no right to complain about such entities.
The point wasn't about the merit of the case, it was that the two companies do not produce a product or service.
Yes, so much of a lawsuit is posturing, and bravado.
Many cases in the history of the American legal system have been lost, or settled, because the defendant gave up, not because they had a weak case.
That starts to look worse for a state like Alabama, where they deny defendants a 'free' lawyer, but require one for a fetus.
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OK, it was an awkward way to say it. I'll admit that.
Their winning/losing is a nuanced thing. They didn't lose the case in the idea that they still have their patents but yet they lost in the idea that their patents were significantly narrowed in their application and, yes, that Apple did not violate them. Oh, plus they lost the cash in their ill cited 'attack' on Apple, and became yet another footnote of a corporation using bad advice to try to tackle a much larger perceived foe.
But, this is also, possibly, a moment to consider that in a different court, under a different judge, Apple potentially could have been found in violation of the patents, and an appellant court could have upheld the verdict, as absurd as it is. The first court found enough to support their verdict...
And I'm no legal expert, yet find the legal system fascinating and wrought with peril, if misused by opportunistic ideologues. THAT is why the GOP expended so much time and effort to block judges that Obama nominated.
But anyway...