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Boston University Sues Apple Over Gallium Nitride Thin Film Patent

gnasher729 said:
The university says: We have a patent, and Apple is infringing. To you, that indicates it is a legitimate claim. Apple will obviously reply "no, we are not". That would then be clear evidence that they are talking ********.
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I did underline "appears" to be a legitimate claim, because UB claims the technology in question has been developed by one of their professors, and they have filed a copy of the patent as Exhibit 'A', as opposed to some patent troll staking a claim on some purchased portfolio of patents.
That's not to say that claims by patent trolls are necessarily less legitimate.

It's entirely possible APPLE might respond: "We've done our reasonable due diligence, and have not willfully infringed". Which would make some difference. But I'm inclined to think that APPLE probably knew, or could have known. If UB's claim turns out to be legit, it would be in APPLE's best interest, if only for PR purposes, to just settle this.

Let's see how this progresses.
 
JohnPhamlore said:
Let's put the blame for the current patent mess where it belongs: the Vietnam anti-war movement. The Mansfield Amendment(s) cut off the military from sponsoring basic research at universities also removing a key advocate of funding such basic research, destroying a consensus that had emerged only after World War II. The NSF that was supposed to replace basic research funding had no political base in Congress.
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You are absolutely correct. Mansfield made the classical liberal's error of over-estimating the intellectual energy of those of A Certain Political Persuasion.

Before Mansfield--
Knee-jerk position: Project X is funded by DoD, so let's throw money at it!

After Mansfield--
Knee-jerk position: Same Project X is funded by NSF-- eeek, eeek, government waste, what a waste of money!

Your claim, which has proven to be absolutely true time and again, is that those of a A Certain Political Persuasion make world-changing decisions based on labels, not substance. Mansfield was certainly foolish to believe otherwise.
 
name99 said:
That specificity is what makes me wonder about the likelihood of this being relevant. The quote above refers to manufacturing via MBE (molecular beam epitaxy). MBE is the method of choice for research labs, because it gives you maximum control, but it is not the method of choice for mass manufacturing because it doesn't scale well to large volumes.
Manufacturers would prefer to use MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapor deposition) which can prepare in parallel a large number of wafers in a single chamber. MOCVD is not a slight variant on MBE, it is a very different type of technology.
If MOCVD CAN be used for manufacturing GaN substrate (and my five minutes of googling indicate it can) that would be the preferred route for volume manufacture.

I'd also be curious as to what the law is for the equivalent of frivolous patent suits. If you have good reason to believe that manufacturers DON'T use your patent, but rather than examining their plants to learn this, you figure, "what the heck, let's just throw out a lawsuit anyway" do you get punished by the court?
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Perhaps they will be removed from Apples Educational purchase program ? :D
 
Can the University make money from they own sources

mmm someone woke up with another idea how sue apple, i guess they don't have nothing productive to do
 
another bloody patent ? :eek:

Well.. its good to see its not only Samsung and Apple in the fight.

Apple can't seem to stay out of trouble.

Me things, it the new Macbook Air judging by the link and the new ipad (4th Gen.) ? :eek: (i just bought one of those too)

How else could Apple do "thin" designs without treading on anybody's feet ? There only so many things you can do.
 
err404 said:
Because Apple is selling an infringing product. The LCD manufactures could probably be sued too, but there is more profits if you consider the final assembled product value.
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You can only sue one company in the supply chain for any patent so you go after the one with the deepest pockets ;)
 
It's BU, not UB, and has been called "BU" since at least the 50s when my grandmother took classes there; it is a private university with a healthy but not overly large endowment and with overly large tuition costs but a lot of financial aid; it is not related to BC (Boston University is a nominally Methodist but actually secular school, Boston College is a Jesuit-run college), and most importantly, it has poured a huge amount of money into photonics research since at least the mid 1980s, and its Photonics group is widely respected in the field.
 
donutbagel said:
Yeah, I didn't know anyone could be held accountable for buying an infringing product. Apple doesn't even necessarily know how the parts are made. Theoretically, they could be buying mystery products that secretly infringe something.
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They are accountable because they are selling the assembled product and making profit. End users are not selling the product (at least not most and certainly not at a profit)

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macs4nw said:
Free iPads for all students and faculty. :)

.
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... and alumni :D

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Apple-Guy said:
As Tim Cook said, patents are broken the way they are now.
They're preventing technological evolvement and are being abused for bullsh* stuff like this, getting money from someone else.
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uuuhhh wasn't apple suing samsung for patent infringement :confused:
 
new-to-mac said:
They are accountable because they are selling the assembled product and making profit. End users are not selling the product (at least not most and certainly not at a profit)
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They most definitely are. End users sell their Apple stuff on eBay all the time. I sold my now supposedly illegal iPod touch. I didn't make a profit, but why would that matter? There's no way anyone selling infringing products could even know that they are infringing and then BAM, lawsuit.
 
tny said:
... it is a private university with a healthy but not overly large endowment...
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Warning: Seek getting a doctorate for classes lasting more than four hours. Do not take certain drugs while attending BU as it will effect performance and cause possible risk to academic life...
 
Apple Getting Sued Yet Again

Good, I hope they get their asses handed to them in court. The company steals all of it's ideas and has never invented anything. It all has been stolen ideas from other companies. One of the most successful apps on the iphone and the computer is called "iChat" guess where that came from??? Blackberry messenger years before Apple ripped the idea off.
 
Of course, BU is evil. How dare they sue based on their minuscule claim which they should have abandoned long ago anyway and not stagnate innovation. This patent is so obvious and insignificant, especially when compared to the really innovative patent on the sophisticated technology called "slide to unlock" by Apple the Divine.
 
jcamdk said:
Good, I hope they get their asses handed to them in court. The company steals all of it's ideas and has never invented anything. It all has been stolen ideas from other companies. One of the most successful apps on the iphone and the computer is called "iChat" guess where that came from??? Blackberry messenger years before Apple ripped the idea off.
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according to you, Apple steal ideas and also don't invent anything so where are those stolen ideas going???
if you want to troll, please make some sense in those sentences.
 
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I'm glad Apple is getting sued almost every hour of every day

I'm glad this company gets it's asses handed to them all the time. They rip of ideas and try to claim them as there own. They can't legitimately say they have ever created anything new in the market place. What has apple created? Nothing, that's right not even the iPhone as there were products like it years before the iPhone. What did you say the iPod? Wrong again. Wow Apple can't develop anything not even an operating system for their computers because that is all Unix and Linux based as well. I'm glad Samsung won the last round of battles. I hope everyone continues to win; and I can't wait until the HP lawsuit begins and oh yes it is coming and it's coming hard! There was a reason HP bought Palm, yes their patents! And why did the Swiss railroad have to sue Apple for stealing their infamous icon; oh ya Apple tried to rip that off to and got their asses handed to them for that as well.
 
LOL to all the defending comments

First, while Apple doesn't make LED screens directly, they design and sell them. There are a slew of Apple patent's for manufacturing techniques, I mean, they patented how they fuse the iMac's case together for the current generation. So its perfectly fine for the University to go after Apple on a manufacturing process because Apple designed a product that uses this process. Any manufacturer that Apple uses to make their actual parts are doing so strictly to the spec's, requirements, and process direction from Apple.

Second, come on. Apple is the most litigious company out there right now, so its time they eat some of their own medicine. Why Apple is being sued, opposed to other companies, is that the University most likely contacted Apple about it first and Apple is refusing to pay licensing or royalty for the patent, hence why it is going to court. I mean it is pretty bad for Apple to refuse to pay a patent royalty to a University considering the University has no where near the resources to throw into the case as Apple does; which is why Apple is probably going to fight any patent dispute in courts to wear out the plaintiff so they can plead a deal that always favors Apple.
 
Incog79 said:
I'm not sure if allowing universities to hold patents is responsible for that shift; while the amount of privately-funded research has grown relative to government-funded research, most research at universities is still funded by government grants. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows small businesses and non-profit organizations, including universities, to retain title to - and earn royalties from - inventions made under federally-funded research programs. Prior to Bayh-Dole, the government would retain title to any patents that were filed, and inventions would often sit on the shelf unused.
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Thanks, I was aware ownership of patents with federal funding, but not the details.

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jcamdk said:
I'm glad this company gets it's asses handed to them all the time. They rip of ideas and try to claim them as there own. They can't legitimately say they have ever created anything new in the market place. What has apple created? Nothing, that's right not even the iPhone as there were products like it years before the iPhone. What did you say the iPod? Wrong again. Wow Apple can't develop anything not even an operating system for their computers because that is all Unix and Linux based as well. I'm glad Samsung won the last round of battles. I hope everyone continues to win; and I can't wait until the HP lawsuit begins and oh yes it is coming and it's coming hard! There was a reason HP bought Palm, yes their patents! And why did the Swiss railroad have to sue Apple for stealing their infamous icon; oh ya Apple tried to rip that off to and got their asses handed to them for that as well.
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I would be the first to encourage you to talk your issues out here on MacRumors, but waiting so many years to join with all of that bottled up hate must have been almost unbearable.

Six posts and counting; rant on.
 
SeaFox said:
It's a joke. You must not catch much unnecessary pharmaceutical advertisement, and this coming from someone who hardly watches any American TV at all.
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Sorry!:eek:

I watch a lot of TV, but ONLY the premium HD movie stations. Never stations with commercials.

Once again...I am totally unresponsive to current cultural (using that word loosely) references.

Anyway...thanks for explaining it to this troglodyte!:D
 
lawsuits everywhere! why cant these guys just stop it and share everything, that's how the competition will increase and people will get better devices.
 
apple - the company which has more lawsuits than innovative ideas and products.
i wish SJ was alive.
 
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