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Google's Top Lawyer: Some Apple Inventions are Commercially Essential, Should Be Made Into Standards

Funny thing is that Apple did this thrice - Air (succeeded netbooks, competition later became Ultrabooks), iPhone (a plethora of phones that could download software existed before it), and iPad (there were many earlier tablets/touchpads before it). These combinations of ideas are only "essential" if you try to recycle them. Non-Apple ideas were fully viable before these machines – why not find your own soul instead of parasiting on someone else? Your soul that you lost when Apple presented these?

Now that would benefit the customer. To have actually different machines to choose from. I think many companies are even hurt by trying to be someone they aren't. They are essentially choosing to fight Apple on Apple's home arena. In sports, that would be considered insane.
 
cdmoore74 said:
That's the point. Iphone "4S" is just a incremental step up. Ios 6 is a incremental step up. Ipad 3 was a incremental step up. ipod touch was..well..ipod touch. These are not evolutionary products. They are "rev"olutionary.
Kinect was new and groundbreaking. Ice cream sandwich for Android was new and groundbreaking. Nexus 7 is new and groundbreaking for cracking the price/performance barrier. Apple has been banking on it's loyal following and it's patent stash in an attempt to slow down competition. There is no fire in Apple's heart. If it wasn't for Android phones iPhone 5 would still be stuck on a 3.5 inch display and 3G.
Can anyone say that Apple's "nuclear war" made them more successful? What matters is new and exciting product. Not silly lawsuits over the shape of a product, unified search or slide to lock. If you make nice product people will buy it. It's like Apple is avoiding the obvious. The first few iPhone generations sold because they were excellent products compared to the competition at that time. You can't say that about the iPhone 4S. The great majority of people buy iPhones because their trapped in a ecosystem.
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So basically groundbreaking is whatever you say it is. Nexus 7 is groundbreaking because it's $199. Android phones are groundbreaking because they have larger screens. Seriously, what makes a larger screen ground breaking or innovative? You really think the iPhone isn't bigger because no one at Apple is clever or innovative enough to do so? People say Retina is just Apple marketing. I'd say the same can be said for these big a** Android phones. The phone companies are pushing LTE. Phones need bigger battery to support it. So make the phone bigger, call it innovative and market the crap out of it. The fact Apple waited to jump on the LTE bandwagon doesn't show me a lack of innovation. It shows me they were waiting until it was more mature, more widely available and they could sell you a phone that still has decent battery life. You claim that people buy the iPhone because they're trapped in the Apple ecosystem. Care to provide any stats to back that up?
 
cankster said:
Blasphemy!!! Everyone is exactly equal. Their intellect. Their talents. Their ambition, their ability to save and try to get ahead. Their vision. It's only bad luck that separates people. That's why we need to have an all powerful government that smashes the successful down and brings the lowest up so we can have only one class. A uniform class, where all have exactly the same. This is clearly self evident. It's only fair!!!

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Before the iPhone, I had a Nokia clam shell. Or maybe it was a Nokia candy bar. How great would it be to go back in time and stop the iPhone and see how long it would have been till someone made one? You want to talk about a lack of innovation, or sucking every dollar out of old tech? Christ! The last 3 years of Nokia phones I had were the same i think :p I can only thank Apple for saving me from more Nokia clam shells, or blackberries.

Thank you Apple.
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Nice set of ninepins.
 
pdjudd said:
Really? I believe Motorola tried to abuse their FRAND patents to discriminate against Apple.
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Good thing that your opinion means squat then uh ? FRAND doesn't mean FREE as you keep trying to tell us. FRAND means Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory. It means Motorola needs to license their patent for a certain cost that is fair and reasonable.

If Apple doesn't pay up, well... Apple can be found guilty of patent infringement. Shocker I know. It's happened before, where people were screaming "FRAND Abuse!" and Apple settled the matter and paid up what they owed.

Anyway, it's only normal that if someone *cough* Apple *cough* complains about FRAND abuse that it undergoes investigation. Of course, before we try to state as fact that any abuse has been going on, maybe we should wait for actual results in the investigation ? For all we know, Apple saying "That's not FRAND!" doesn't mean squat. What is fair to Motorola and the industry might not sound fair to Apple (and frankly, seeing how they behave, I'd bet if Motorola offered to pay Apple to use its patents, Apple would still be screaming that's not FAIR!).

Karma*Police said:
Based on what Google is saying, their search algorithm should be licensed to any company that wants it. Google is being hypocritical.
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Hypocritical how ? Google doesn't own the patent to their search algorithm, PageRank.

Do people even bother reading the thread, this has been addressed about 10 times already to all the other people who said the same thing you did. It was ignorant when it was first uthered, even more so now that links have been provided explaining what is the deal with Google's search algorithm. :confused:

I shouldn't ask I know, because after 13 pages, only a few people have understand that Google wants to pay to use Apple's patents rather than litigate to get them declared invalid 1 by 1.
 
arkhanjel said:
So if Google thinks they should be able to use the things that Apple spent the all that money on R&D for does that mean Apple and other companies should have that same full access to anything they develop in Maps and Search??
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Bingo.
 
cosmichobo said:
Bingo.
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Yep, exactly. The big problem with these kind of software utility patents though are that ideas are a dime a dozen. The patent itself is not the hard part of making the technology. Writing code, the testing, getting the infrastructure up and running, the distribution, the support and maintenance are.

If you do all that and someone comes out of the woodwork after you've invested millions in a project and says "We've patented that!" and refuses to give you a license, you're basically up the creek without a paddle.

In this day and age, it's pretty darn impossible to know if your idea has prior art. Patents are sub-marined, sometimes left to rot until someone somewhere comes up with the same concept and markets it. That's why most people believe software patents are bad. Copyright and Trademark already protect software in a much better way than patents can.
 
bedifferent said:
Actually, Fingerworks developed multitouch, Apple simply bought them out and adapted their tech.
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So look at it this way then. If apple hadnt bought finger works (along with their patents) and appl simply licensed their tech. Should google be able to come along and tell finger works that they can not charge so much for a license, or indeed withhold one completely simply because their idea got popular? I know apple is a massive company so we all think they can afford to take it some times, but google right now is just trying to get an unfair advantage by simply standing on the shoulders of giants.

To finish off, nobody is saying apple invented everything on the iPhone, the article is basically about those few things that apple either invented or bought, hold patents for, and shouldn't have to give it away just because google thinks it's not fair.
 
pdjudd said:
Really? I believe Motorola tried to abuse their FRAND patents to discriminate against Apple.
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So Apple says. It's still to be decided by the court, and Apple isn't doing so well so far. On Thursday, a US District in California dismissed Apple's declaratory judgment and antisuit injunction lawsuit against Motorola over this.

This case is interesting because it hinges partly on licenses, partly on covenants.

Apple claims they're covered by patent exhaustion via Qualcomm licenses from Motorola. They say they're further protected by a Motorola covenant given to Qualcomm not to sue users of their chips.

Normally, they'd be right about the license. The covenant, however, contains a defensive clause. It states that if any chip user files a lawsuit against Motorola (as Apple did), then Motorola is no longer bound by the covenant. Motorola claims this extends to the sub-licensing through Qualcomm as well.

Note that Motorola is not refusing to license the FRAND technology to Apple, however they want to deal directly with Apple instead of through Qualcomm. This would raise the license price and/or possibly allow for a deal that would stop Apple from filing constant lawsuits against them.
 
I find it funny that they cited "slide to unlock" as an example.

You mean that all the brains in the world cannot come up with a viable alternative to sliding a virtual bar across the screen to unlock your smartphone? :confused:

These people are just lazy, plain and simple.
 
KnightWRX said:
I shouldn't ask I know, because after 13 pages, only a few people have understand that Google wants to pay to use Apple's patents rather than litigate to get them declared invalid 1 by 1.
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And Apple doesn't want that. Even if all the patents eventually turn out to be invalid, still Apple stalling the competitors for infringing on invalid patents would mean more sales for Apple while the competitor products might get temporary bans on sale. If the competitors don't want to deal with lawsuits and such stalling, they should stop infringing on Apple patents, valid or invalid. Invalidity of patents isn't Apple's fault. Apple will keep filing for patents whenever they feel that they don't want something to be copied directly. And obviously Apple and Google would both know which path to take is more lucrative for them. If they are doing this, that means this is better.
 
Frustration!

The all out war statement from SJ was misunderstood and overused by the media. We all know that SJ exaggerates his anger with Android it's a figure of speech people. We all know that there's no way he can put MS or Android down never. He's a smart person and I believe he does recognize this too before he died, and Walter Isaacson undermined this statement, he's a writer. I don't remember any company killed by Apple this way other than a healthy competition. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, HP and the list will go on, they killed companies by buying them and we all know that, it's either they don't like competition or just copy somebody, then market it at the cheaper price and we all like this, there's a big market for this. Somehow Apple historically speaking is been a victim of this kind of practice with Microsoft. They're ahead of the competition and over confident then what happened, they were left behind for a very long time. Now here they are back in business on top of the world and they don't want this to happen again, it's either they're aggressive or defensive it depends on how you look at it.

(By the way I like Apple products but I'm using my new Nexus 7 to type this comment.)
 
Renzatic said:
That's just it. Apple's implementation isn't much different than what's been done before and since. The problem is, some people think it is. That it's some totally unique thing that came about through immaculate conception.
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In that case, others can do the things that have been done before. They just can't use the "not much different" implementation that Apple uses. If there really is not much difference, then they should be fine with what was there before. If there is much difference, then Apple deserves its implementation to be protected.


Rogifan said:
You really think the iPhone isn't bigger because no one at Apple is clever or innovative enough to do so?
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Absolutely. That's what they think.

Actually I think there is some backlash starting against these massive phones. To me, a phone with a 4.5 inch screen just looks ridiculous. But then I go to a jeweller's and look at the watches that they sell, and some are starting to get ridiculous in size.


KnightWRX said:
The Google lawyer is saying exactly that too. The problem is apparently Apple would rather pay lawyers to fight in courts rather than getting money from other OEMs for licensing out their patents.
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You are actually wrong. Apple has patents, and it is their choice to decide whether to license the patents or not. So Apple would prefer nobody using their patents and not making money from licensing rather than getting money for licensing out their patents, and that is their decision to make - if OEMs don't like that decision that is just tough, if you think that Apple's decision is bad for Apple that's your opinion, and if you're actually right, well, that's tough for Apple. However, if OEMs don't accept that decision and use patents without a license, then of course Apple needs to pay their lawyers to fight in courts.
 
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KnightWRX said:
Good thing that your opinion means squat then uh ? FRAND doesn't mean FREE as you keep trying to tell us. FRAND means Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory. It means Motorola needs to license their patent for a certain cost that is fair and reasonable.

If Apple doesn't pay up, well... Apple can be found guilty of patent infringement. Shocker I know. It's happened before, where people were screaming "FRAND Abuse!" and Apple settled the matter and paid up what they owed.

Anyway, it's only normal that if someone *cough* Apple *cough* complains about FRAND abuse that it undergoes investigation. Of course, before we try to state as fact that any abuse has been going on, maybe we should wait for actual results in the investigation ? For all we know, Apple saying "That's not FRAND!" doesn't mean squat. What is fair to Motorola and the industry might not sound fair to Apple (and frankly, seeing how they behave, I'd bet if Motorola offered to pay Apple to use its patents, Apple would still be screaming that's not FAIR!).



Hypocritical how ? Google doesn't own the patent to their search algorithm, PageRank.

Do people even bother reading the thread, this has been addressed about 10 times already to all the other people who said the same thing you did. It was ignorant when it was first uthered, even more so now that links have been provided explaining what is the deal with Google's search algorithm. :confused:

I shouldn't ask I know, because after 13 pages, only a few people have understand that Google wants to pay to use Apple's patents rather than litigate to get them declared invalid 1 by 1.
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After 13 pages of comments, it looks like you still don't understand anything about what Apple's appeal to its customers is, and why licensing is thus unacceptable for them. They should not have to license, period. If the patents are so obvious that they shouldn't have been granted, Google should have no problem invalidating them.

Steve Jobs responded to exactly this point:

I don’t want your money. If you offer me 5 billion dollars, I don’t want them. I have enough money. I want you to stop using our our ideas in Android, that is all I want.
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Google want a cross-licensing deal. They always have. It would cover up their reckless and willful infingement of Apple's non-SE patents (probably in a way similar to how they treated Oracles IP - that is, "do it anyway"). What Google did to try and absolve itself in retrospect was it bought some SEPs, broke the contractual FRAND pledges and demanded an extortionate license that Apple could never agree to (2.25% of the RRP), in the hope that Apple would settle and open the doors to their own vaults in a cross-licensing deal. Apple don't care about paying royalties for the patents they use that others let them use (by participating in standardisation, you let others use the patents you contribute under FRAND terms).

It's hard to come up with an everyday analogy. The best I can come up with is someone who robs your house, uses the proceeds to buy the land it's on, and threatens to evict you if you report it to the police.

The terms proposed to Apple were the same ones proposed to Microsoft, which the ITC found was not a realistic offer. In other words, the licensing deal Motorola proposed was a show that they didnt expect anyone to accept (and that no other company has accepted). http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/itc-judge-finds-motorola-was-not.html

From the patents that Samsung and Motorola are putting up (as well as the fact that they are still not offering true FRAND terms despite the EU and US antitrust investigations) shows that Apple still very much has the upper hand. The Android makers are desperate for any sort of leverage, while Apple wins injunction after injunction as it finds a solid group of patents within its enormous archives.
 
300+ posts and less than one percent of them about:
Google is trying to copy Apple. (per Google counsel, reasonably sound source)

Hasn't that been the #1 argument on this forum for the last couple years? Strange that it isn't being argued. I must be wrong, boring patent arguments are #1.
 
JAT said:
300+ posts and less than one percent of them about:
Google is trying to copy Apple. (per Google counsel, reasonably sound source)

Hasn't that been the #1 argument on this forum for the last couple years? Strange that it isn't being argued. I must be wrong, boring patent arguments are #1.
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They didn't just admit that they want to copy Apple, they also admit that the ways Apple is prohibiting them is actually working. That's what this plea means.
 
Renzatic said:
No it isn't. It isn't at all like Socialism. You'd still have multiple companies competing for your dollar, doing things in different, better ways to try to rise above the competition.

And remember, what these companies are doing isn't wholesale copying each other. It's a similar implementation of a similar idea with similar end results. AND YOU CAN'T PATENT END RESULTS!
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Again, that's the problem. If each company can license from another an idea that seems obviously the only way to implement such a feature or whatever. They will all do it. That's not innovation. That's just copying. Just that the inventor gets paid something for it (and who is to say what a fair price is? Me, you, and agency, the companies themselves?). Which seems nice and all. But, again, why would Apple or any other company want their patented idea being potentially used by everyone else? Maybe if Apple was only a software company like MS. But they are not. They make the whole widget. Google might not mind it, they are primarily a software company. They want people to use there stuff, that's how they make money! Apple wants people to use their stuff too. But, they make the whole thing. So they need you to buy it ALL from them. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense in their business model.


Its much harder to come up with an idea to a problem. Then it is to just "buy" the solution from someone else. Will there still be some improvements? I'm sure. But, not at the pace that it is now. Where you have to (or should) start fresh. If you can buy it, fine. If you can improve on it. Fine. But, what your saying would end up going in the wrong direction. Exactly what the problem is now, but in reverse to the other extreme. Don't hate the playa, hate the game. But, the game is being played and all of these companies can play if they so choose. This doesn't hurt the consumer. The consumer has a choice. You can buy Apple or NOT, you can buy Google or NOT. If your looking for a feature that's not in either you can shop the other for it. If either company see's that there customers want something (feature or whatever), that they don't currently own the ability to provide. They can maybe license it, maybe come up with a new way of getting it done, or just not bother at all. Choice is still there. The consumer chooses which they prefer, and the sale is made.

If Google could provide their customers with everything that the iPhone can. Why would people buy Apple products? Same in reverse. If price isn't that much different, then maybe people will just side with there brand loyalties or what have you. But, if Apple sells something at 2x the price. People would by Google, if they could get the same set of features as the iPhone at half the price.
 
btbeme said:
I'd say that the free market pretty much disagrees with every letter you typed.
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I didn't say they sold as well, they didn't. At the time, consumers couldnt afford WIndows MObile, BBs or Palms, some went for 700-1000 dollars, data plans would go for insane prices to.

Sales weren't my point, my point is that the iPhone didn't really bring a massive amount of new stuff to the table. Its still a great phone though. Clearly, as it sells so well, I have one as I work phone, and it does its job great.

Yes, it brought some new stuff to the table. But, I'm still waiting to know what an iPhone can do what my late Windows Mobile phone couldn't do? The iPhone put the smart phone into hands of consumers. But that doesn't mean Apple gets to sue over things they made popular, but didn't develop or invent.

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Rogifan said:
The Nexus 7 is a must buy product that youd'd stand in line for? OK. Whatever.
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There is any product anyone should stand in line for overnight?

That's sad.
 
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