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Florida Company Sues Apple Over Apple TV's 'What Did He Say?' Feature
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Sure, why not.
In 1895 or so (whenever the 1st electric car came to market).
There is also nothing wrong with someone having a patent and making money of it without building a product.
What is the problem are generic patents like this one or "rectangular with rounded edges" being awarded in the 1st place.
Question for anyone who knows better than me (or thinks they do!) - is there really much of a downside for Apple to just ignore patents it thinks it can possibly win against if challenged? How punative would any judgement be against them if it was found they knew all about this (or any) patent but chose to ignore it in the hope they'd get away with it? Is it worth the gamble?
All assuming they have violated the patent of course, which will have to be proven properly (personally it looks like they have to me, but I am not a laywer...).
All assuming they have violated the patent of course, which will have to be proven properly (personally it looks like they have to me, but I am not a laywer...).
Not being American I do not fully understand the patent system. But if this is a Utility patent it would expire next year anyway. Or if is is deigned based patent it would expire 14 years from the time it was filed. So they may not have a case to answer. However clearly this company is a patent troll and have admitted to be involved with another patent troll. I would be asking for a fully working model before I went anywhere with this if I was a judge. These types of companies hurt innovation by getting patents for ideas they have no will to or skills to make. And a lot of companies do this. But these people are scum. I would like to know if they have been paying the fees to uphold this patent. I should go and patent time just in case someone solves the theory of relativity. Jeez
They should be sued for advertising ATV 4 to feature Siri, when in reality, it doesn't unless you have an Apple ID from one of about 5 English speaking countries. I fail to understand why Siri eligibility is tied to the Apple ID on the ATV 4, but not on iOS.
Well you know, for once one of these patents is actually specific and to the point. It's not vague, it literally is exactly what the Apple feature does.
But the patent is for something patently obvious, pun intended. There's no particular "invention" in this patent.
Roku's skip back button does the same. (It goes back 7 sec and turns on subtitles.) No mention of them here? Does the 'inventor' not care about protecting their idea? They just want Apple's money.
Samsung has design patents for rectangular phones. Is that what you are referring to?
But absolutely yes. If their invention is to achieve X by doing A, B and C (in a way that doing only two of A, B and C doesn't work), and I manage to achieve X by doing A and B only in a clever way, then this is not covered by their patent.
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Seriously, you are being silly here. Samsung has a design patent for a phone design with round-cornered rectangles, and all the things that makes a Samsung phone look like a Samsung phone. It's a design patent, so you either don't know what you are talking about by confusing patents or design patents, or you intentionally are giving false and misleading arguments.
Or are you thinking about Bill Atkinson's patent?
No that is actually a smart idea. Wouldn’t you want to get rich from an idea you had before anyone else?
That same argument can be made for the patents apple files in hopes that someday they can claim ownership of it.
Some people need a hard slap over the head.
It has historically been the case that computer science degrees weren't valid credentials for patent examiners. It follows that patent examiners wouldn't know what "obvious" means in this context, nor do they have knowledge that any well-versed practitioner in the industry should have so they can't recognize prior art. I bet I could get a quicksort patent past these idiots.
If Apple can patent (and sue) "opening the phone by pressing keys on a number pad" or "using a trash can icon for deleting files" then the patenting a "rewind and repeat with subtitles" function is patentable, too.
I think they didn't understand the kind of patent they were approving. I mean, it's a combination of software actions on a video, not even the mechanism/code that actually does it. It's ridiculous.
Not something any one person came up with, it was always on the to do list of everyone minds, just that years ago way way back in the 80s computers were no were near and we just dreamed what would be possible in movies and now that tech is ready for most of the stuff you get idiots trying to own the air you breath, I remember reading a good while back that someone was granted a patent for a handle device to open a door, wtf is the patent office doing, I am going to patent the grouping of letters and own the rights of the internet
You patent ideas, not implementations. Code is an implementation, so that can be copyrighted, but not patented.
