Sorry, didn't mean to offend.
I just think that's a great quote and rarely get the chance to use it in public. And, on these forums it really doesn't ever end well...
FWIW
DLM
Biometric Sensor Company Valencell Accuses Apple of Stealing Technology for Apple Watch
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I just think that's a great quote and rarely get the chance to use it in public. And, on these forums it really doesn't ever end well...
FWIW
DLM
Iconoclysm
macrumors 68040
I'm pretty sure that virtually anyone can take Apple to court if they ever dealt with them in any way. Every lawyer in the world is willing to stick their neck out for 1/3 of a multi-million dollar law suit. Don't just throw around nonsense like "it's not the first time Apple has stolen", provide an example anything close to this - I doubt that you can. This would be willful theft, and the consequences are so huge that Apple would have to be extremely irresponsible to let that happen, regardless of whether or not they are the thieves you assume they are.
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I didn't say "insider", that's a term you've introduced. Not really sure what you're getting at with all of this anyway?
DUCKofD3ATH
Suspended
In what way did they disagree? Surely Apple's offer of a sweetheart stock deal (purchasing stock before the IPO) to Xerox was made in return for value received (i.e., allowing Apple's people access to PARC).
Glideslope
macrumors G3
He we go again......... 
@Iconoclysm : you made a false claim that "many employees at Apple at the time were from Xerox PARC to begin with" ...
There was ZERO (0) former PARC employees working for Apple at the time. Raskin was the only "insider" who came close to knowing anything at all about it.
There was ZERO (0) former PARC employees working for Apple at the time. Raskin was the only "insider" who came close to knowing anything at all about it.
inkswamp
macrumors 68030
OMG, yet another person doing this. Please go read the history of Apple and Xerox. It's incredibly complicated and can't be boiled down to such a simplistic statement. Characterizing at "stealing" is more a reflection on your inability to read and comprehend than on anything Apple has ever done.
winston1236
macrumors 68000
Probably because the Fitbit heart rate sensor is so inaccurate for workouts that they don't bother.
I don't see the part where Apple "licensed" or "bought" Xerox's patents, as Sun Microsystem or Metaphor Computer Systems Inc. did.
Sure, Apple "stole" Xerox's technology in the same way that Microsoft "stole" Apple's technology.
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Samsung has been making smart watches (or digital watches with mobile connectivity) since the late 1990's and has also been throwing various experimental / prototype models at consumers. The company apparently doesn't make much effort into "making the best, not the first," as Tim Cook would have said, but whatever they think consumers want (or whatever sticks).
If Apple Watch is their "best" wearable product, I can see why some see it as a failure.
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macduke
macrumors G5
This is why you keep your nose clean. The fact that people like this serve on a jury should be enough to scare anyone straight. Even people who don't do anything wrong. The slightest hint at any misdeed, guilt by association or "bad upbringing" and boom, you'll be locked away.
No question. This is how Apple works. They've been stealing IP and technology from day one. I know that every major tech company does it, but I'm not going to defend Apple when they do. Real people's financial lives are impacted by this.
Consider stuff like this next time Tim Cook get's on 60 Minutes and lectures you about how ethical he and his company is.
Consider stuff like this next time Tim Cook get's on 60 Minutes and lectures you about how ethical he and his company is.
Xerox PARC at the time was known to employee 50 of the top 100 computer scientists, so which "most of the engineers" went to work for Apple? (some apparently did while others went to Microsoft (Simonyi), Atari (A Kay), Citibank, their own start-ups, etc). Jef Raskin was already working on the MacIntosh project when the demos were arranged:
"
THE PARC VISIT
Pang: The accounts of the famous PARC visit-- the ones that cast it as a Promethean stealing of fire-- leave open a couple questions. First, how secret was the work that they were doing, or how secret was the Star and its various capabilities? and second, how much traffic was there back and forth between Apple and PARC of a formal or informal sort? There were several people, including yourself and then people you hire, who come from or had experience there; and it sounds like the work there was pretty well-known.
Raskin: It was, and they published like crazy. They published a lot, which was a great help to the rest of the world. I wished Apple would have published a little bit more.
officially started-- it had really been started in 1978-- it was approved and was a going project before that visit took place. So it's chronologically not possible for that visit to have sparked the Macintosh. I have read over and over that that visit is what started the Macintosh project, that Jobs saw it and said, "There shall be Macintosh." But no, the Macintosh project was already in existence. Actually, I had worked with Bill Atkinson and some other people because I was on the outs with Jobs by then, and Bill Atkinson was on his wonderful list; so I had finagled things to get Jobs to PARC so he could begin to understand what I was trying to do.
Most people don't know also that the Lisa machine in those early days-- this was 1979-- was a character-generator, green-screen machine; it didn't have a bitmapped screen, it was not Macintosh-like. That all came from the Macintosh project to the Lisa. I went over then to Ken Rothmuller, and I was telling him why this was a dumb thing you're doing, that the future is in bit-mapped screens, and take a look at what we're doing on the Macintosh project. But it was Lisa that got all the funding, and Jobs behind it, and two hundred engineers, and cost $15,000, and my little project with just a handful of people was doing the right thing.
But the basic idea of a graphics-based, user interface-oriented machine for Lisa came from the Macintosh project. The only book I've ever seen that mentions that is Owen Linzmeyer's Apple Confidential. Everyone else has gotten it wrong: they say that the Macintosh was a downsized Lisa, when really the Lisa was an upsized Macintosh. Exactly backwards.
ORCHESTRATING JOBS' VISIT
Pang: One thing that's been said about Jobs' visit to PARC-- which was one of several that Apple people made to PARC-- was that it was necessary to get him to understand the importance of this technology, and that it mainly served a political purpose.
Raskin: That was my intent, yes. There were other things going on that I didn't know about. The deal between Apple and Xerox over stock, I didn't know about any of that at the time. And I don't know if that was after the visit, or before it, or in conjunction with it, I have no first-hand knowledge. But apparently other things were grinding away. And of course the Macintosh project was killed several times, and it was usually Jobs who was killing it, because he didn't understand it; I figured if he understood it, and could see something like it, before we were ready to show anything, that he would be more sympathetic. And I think that became true. He decided to take the Lisa project and try to do it there.
Now, the Lisa was very Star-like; the Lisa stole things from Star right and left-- it stole people, it stole ideas, even stole the font names, exactly. I didn't like that, and I thought we could do better. Certainly the Macintosh benefited from Lisa development; later on, Lisa software came over to Macintosh, and Macintosh software went over to Lisa. And there was cross-pollination, which was fine. But the Lisa was very Star-like. And the Macintosh also inherited things which to this day I don't think are very good interface ideas. But that's what happens when you don't have someone who has their own ideas, and has to borrow a lot."
and where is your proof that Xerox thought it all useless and "SOLD" them to Apple? Why are you making all these audaciously ludicrous claims?
kdarling
macrumors P6
Sure, but patents are rarely for something as basic as that. They're almost always instead about some unique implementation details.
After reading what Valencell's technology is about, its understandable why they might think Apple copied them... and not just because Apple had access to test devices from them.
You see, (and I posted on this forum about this last year), wrist heart rate sensors are usually not accurate when exercising, because it's difficult to separate actual beat pulses from blood movement caused by arm motion.
Finding a way to factor out that extra blood motion is one of the holy grails of wrist HR monitoring.
Valencell's patents are apparently about using an accelerometer and special algorithms to do this, derived from much testing on their part.
--
Apple has said that they measured hundreds of employees while exercising in order to get their rate calculations more accurate, meaning they likewise created correction algorithms from the motion of those testers.
The upshot is, normally it could be assumed to be simple parallel invention, but in this case Apple had gone through the trouble to get access to Valencell's technology. For Apple to then do something very similar, would naturally seem suspicious to Valencell.
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I'm surprised through all the shouting that no one has brought up the possibility that Apple felt that Valencell's patents were simply unenforceable. Without knowing details of the patents or the technology involved, it's very difficult to know if there are examples of prior art or other invalidating factors in the patents.
But I must thank those of you already making absolute claims of guilt of innocence. It's really easy to assess the value of your comments.
But I must thank those of you already making absolute claims of guilt of innocence. It's really easy to assess the value of your comments.
gnasher729
Suspended
There is no reason to believe that Valencell needs a defending lawyer at this point. Or ever.
In the Microsoft case, Apple had entered into a contract with Microsoft that in hindsight they should never have signed.
And I thought the idea behind patents is that you publish them so that everybody in the world can read them and understand them and has a chance to improve on the patent, or to decide not to do what the patent describes, or to achieve the same goal in a way that is different from the patent. Anyway, whatever Apple learnt from information that Valencell made freely available is totally irrelevant unless the information was given under an NDA or if it is covered by a patent. I seem to notice that Valencell didn't mention any NDAs.
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The only one who has accused or defended anyone until your comment above is: you!
Well I fully believe they would have evidence, I guess we shall see.
Firstly Apple stole the world famous trademarked Swiss Railway Clock face design, they paid for it when threatened with a court case, it's well documented.
Secondly, anyone can sue Apple? What fantasy land is that in then? No one goes to court or even considers it without evidence, otherwise surely the case would be thrown out and the person suing made to pay costs do they will be out of pocket?
Not everyone is after Apples money, some have legit business cases despite the arm chair lawyers on here going on about patents.
FriednTested
macrumors 6502
If they gave out details about their technology during preliminary meetings before inkling a deal then they are the most moronic businessmen ever and deserve to be duped. I would do the same.
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Without having inked a deal why would you give your stuff to be examined? I think they aren't fit to run a business in this case.
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kdarling
macrumors P6
The popular fan myth is that Apple offered pre-IPO stock to Xerox in exchange for the 1979 visit. This myth seems to have arisen in the wake of the 1989 Xerox-vs-Apple trial, and became popular around the mid 1990s.
The problem is that this myth... as most myths do... totally ignores some critical facts that invalidate it:
1. Apple was offering pre-IPO stock to many investors, no strings attached. At the time, Apple needed angel investors, needed the money, and the best way to raise interest in a new stock is to offer pre-IPO options. Thus there was need for Xerox to offer anything in return. Zip. Nada.
2. The supposed visit-for-stock events happened in reverse of the myth. Xerox Development Corporation (XDC)... an investment arm of Xerox... took the above offer of stock options -- the same as other Silicon Valley entities did -- and THEN AFTERWARDS Steve Jobs used that PRE-EXISTING conditionless XDC investment connection to wrangle (insiders say "bully") his way into a visit to the PARC division.
3. Apple themselves HAVE NEVER CLAIMED THEY HAD A LICENSE to use what they saw during the visit. Not even when Xerox sued them.
Thus it's crystal clear that there was no license... or even visit... made in exchange for stock.
But personally, I'm not sure Apple needed a license to copy the most basic concepts. Xerox had published their work, and many of the former PARC researchers went not just to work for Apple, but also created GUIs such as GEM, used by other companies such as Atari. So ironically, the myth is something that was probably unnecessary to defend Apple's use of any of the GUI ideas.
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Clearly? While I'll grant that short of knowing all the facts, anything is possible, but it's anything but clear that Apple stole anything from them.
If anything, given the timing of this lawsuit and the tired Steve Jobs quote that's being used out of context, I have little reason to believe there is any merit to this case without seeing actual evidence.
What is clear to me is that you know nothing of history, especially with regard to Apple and Xerox's past. That's the one thing you have made clear.
jettredmont
macrumors 68030
Well:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth
https://books.google.com/books?id=gzAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=xerox+apple+stock+deal&source=bl&ots=ApiIieCPXx&sig=a0abEPSu7xTJsWldJYenB_rblK0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1mZ-ypZPKAhXFFh4KHeHmBiY4ChDoAQgxMAQ#v=onepage&q=xerox apple stock deal&f=false
(this is from InfoWorld, Jan 1, 1990 issue)
... August 1979 was pre-IPO, and the time of the Apple-PARC visit. So, the facts line up with the stories which have been described by Xerox and Apple employees who were familiar with the deal, which leaves little room to contest their version of the story.
I should add that when the shares were sold in 1981, 800,000 shares were worth $16M, essentially flat from the IPO in July. So, Xerox clearly got a steal of a deal on those pre-IPO shares, making 9x profit over the two years they held them.
What evidence do you have that Apple "stole" these ideas (in the legal sense, not in the Picasso quote sense) from Xerox?
[citation needed]
kdarling
macrumors P6
Well, no. Apple did NOT pay full taxes on that revenue to the other countries where they sold products. That's the whole point of their using the Irish trick... to avoid doing so.
As the German newspaper Die Zeit put it in this article, "Why the iPhone Cost Us Billions":
The court dismissed Xerox's lawsuit because there was no legal basis (or incorrect venues) and they waited too long to contest the copyright claims, resorting to much weaker unfair competitions claims. Xerox filed the lawsuit in part they feared Apple's lawsuit would scare away potential licensee.
As for Apple vs. Microsoft, the court ruled that Microsoft had already "LICENSED" Apple's GUI -- 179 of Apple's asserted 189 GUI elements were covered by their earlier licensing agreement. The remaining 10, and only 10 out of 189 asserts elements, were not copyrightable.
Completely opposite: Apple never licensed GUI from Xerox (Apple never had Xerox's permission to use them, as stated in Xerox's lawsuit). Microsoft "LICENSED" Apple's GUI (see above). Where are you getting these absurd "facts"?
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The barriers for suing another party are extremely low. As we all know, if you spill coffee on yourself, you're entitled to sue the company that sold you the coffee. The point being, the notion that nobody goes to court without proper evidence is extremely naive on your part. Given that specific patents weren't even mentioned, this feels more like a weak money grab attempt to me.