So Samsung shouldn't be sued for having a grid of icons?
Not a patent issue. It's a trade mark issue, and it's much more detailed than just "a grid of icons."
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ITC Rules For Apple in HTC Patent Case
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Not a patent issue. It's a trade mark issue, and it's much more detailed than just "a grid of icons."
Anyway.... My point still stands, there are many more people that hate Apple than like them. You are wrong. Apple going after other companies is reported in the television media here in the UK, its in the papers too. No matter how many iPads are sold the average consumer doesn't care how much money Apple make or their share value. How many of them own a mac? How many of them can name what Apples laptop range is called? Hardly any? They are buying iOS devices because they work and the cost of entry isn't that high.
The Touch sells because its a good mp3 video player with an app store. iPad because its a cheap way to surf on the sofa and makes a good secondary device. iPhone because its really easy to use.
But then i suppose Apple will need the extra money after having to pay Nokia off.
Top 10 Features Apple copied from Microsoft
Also, didn't Apple recently add Microsoft's old any-edge window resize? And the "new" split thumb keyboard for the iPad was used by Microsoft before.
Personally, I think most UI features are figured out by all developers over time. The "copying" is more like taking a shortcut in the time spent thinking
For instance, a slide-in/down/up shade for items that you don't want to see all the time, is not a new invention. Think pulldown menus. Thinik Windows Start menu. Think popout desktop menus. But shades are popular now, and work well on a tiny mobile screen, which is why everyone uses them.
The difference I see is, most developers don't even think of patenting the obvious. OTOH, Apple seems determined to patent as many UI ideas as they can, so that others can't use them.
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Without any material proof your opinion is uninformed. Sorry.
If we're seeing the results of Apple being hated, then may everyone continue to hate Apple. It apparently results in astronomical demand, sales, and profit.
Having a lot of people like you doesn't mean theres not a lot of people who also hate you. Ask Obama. Besides PC sales are up for the last quarter of 2011. Someones still buying them
Apple Will Win
When Lotus came out with Lotus 1-2-3 it was a clear violation of patents held by VisiCalc. However, VisiCalc was slow to respond and Lotus eventually bought VisiCalc so they themselves couldn't be sued. Later Borland thought they would pull the same stunt as Lotus and copied several UI navigation patents off Lotus to place within its Quattro Pro for Windows app. However, this time Lotus responded quickly and had the money to afford an army of lawyers. Eventually, Lotus won, as it was a clear violation of their patents and the ones they had purchased from VisiCalc. As it was, Borland was struggling to stay alive after talks over a merger with WordPerfect failed. Losing the Quattro Pro lawsuit was the last nail in the coffin and Borland became history.
Now Apple is doing what VisiCalc should have done, and what Lotus did successfully. There is no substitute for innovation and, somehow, stealing just never works out to be a good substitute.
When Lotus came out with Lotus 1-2-3 it was a clear violation of patents held by VisiCalc. However, VisiCalc was slow to respond and Lotus eventually bought VisiCalc so they themselves couldn't be sued. Later Borland thought they would pull the same stunt as Lotus and copied several UI navigation patents off Lotus to place within its Quattro Pro for Windows app. However, this time Lotus responded quickly and had the money to afford an army of lawyers. Eventually, Lotus won, as it was a clear violation of their patents and the ones they had purchased from VisiCalc. As it was, Borland was struggling to stay alive after talks over a merger with WordPerfect failed. Losing the Quattro Pro lawsuit was the last nail in the coffin and Borland became history.
Now Apple is doing what VisiCalc should have done, and what Lotus did successfully. There is no substitute for innovation and, somehow, stealing just never works out to be a good substitute.
those patents are lame
And in fact all software patents are lame. The decision on these 2 patents doesn't cover the core of what makes the iPhone what it is, and like most similar patents, there's surely prior art in the past decades of the patent-less software industry but nothing that can be proven.
It used to be that a patent was on a physical invention and you submitted its technical design (or even a working unit, was it?) and the mechanics of how it worked was what you had protection for. Also the design was put into the public record so that the invention didn't die with the inventor, which was apparently common beforehand when everything was trade secrets. This was the problem that the patent system was meant to solve.
A patent on, say, an automatic car window, applied to the design of the mechanism inside the door that makes it work. Some competitor could invent a different mechanism that worked the same way to the user. If patents on physical invention worked like a software patents then they wouldn't need to submit the mechanism, only the idea and vague outline of its workings (with the lifter unit represented by a square in a diagram, connected to crude drawings of the door, switch and window) such that anyone inventing a new mechanism would be in violation of the patent.
The mechanics and technical design of software, what mirrors the patentable design of physical inventions, is by definition the source code. But because the patent office employs lawyers and not coders, all they have the expertise to analyse are high-level requirements specifications and behavior (diagrams with boxes and lines described by paragraphs of useless legalese).
Software patented should follow the intent of the patent system. It should be a kind of open source process, the code is submitted and visible to competitors, but they can't use in the marketplace until after however-many years. To be in violation the patent you'd have to had copied that source code, reimplementing it would almost invariably be a new invention. (Don't believe that? Look at a coding competitions and see how different people's solutions are.)
A software patent should assist competitors in copying the software exact behavior! And with source code made open, they can ensure they're using different algorithms. (Most commenters on this forum talk about algorithms where they don't even know what the word means, like that of Apple's multitouch. Under their concept, all similarly-performing sorting algorithms would be the same because the produced the exact same behavior to the user)
[I may be totally wrong, IANAL and all I know about patents are vague recollections from a long time ago, probably from a schoolhouse rock PSA]
And in fact all software patents are lame. The decision on these 2 patents doesn't cover the core of what makes the iPhone what it is, and like most similar patents, there's surely prior art in the past decades of the patent-less software industry but nothing that can be proven.
It used to be that a patent was on a physical invention and you submitted its technical design (or even a working unit, was it?) and the mechanics of how it worked was what you had protection for. Also the design was put into the public record so that the invention didn't die with the inventor, which was apparently common beforehand when everything was trade secrets. This was the problem that the patent system was meant to solve.
A patent on, say, an automatic car window, applied to the design of the mechanism inside the door that makes it work. Some competitor could invent a different mechanism that worked the same way to the user. If patents on physical invention worked like a software patents then they wouldn't need to submit the mechanism, only the idea and vague outline of its workings (with the lifter unit represented by a square in a diagram, connected to crude drawings of the door, switch and window) such that anyone inventing a new mechanism would be in violation of the patent.
The mechanics and technical design of software, what mirrors the patentable design of physical inventions, is by definition the source code. But because the patent office employs lawyers and not coders, all they have the expertise to analyse are high-level requirements specifications and behavior (diagrams with boxes and lines described by paragraphs of useless legalese).
Software patented should follow the intent of the patent system. It should be a kind of open source process, the code is submitted and visible to competitors, but they can't use in the marketplace until after however-many years. To be in violation the patent you'd have to had copied that source code, reimplementing it would almost invariably be a new invention. (Don't believe that? Look at a coding competitions and see how different people's solutions are.)
A software patent should assist competitors in copying the software exact behavior! And with source code made open, they can ensure they're using different algorithms. (Most commenters on this forum talk about algorithms where they don't even know what the word means, like that of Apple's multitouch. Under their concept, all similarly-performing sorting algorithms would be the same because the produced the exact same behavior to the user)
[I may be totally wrong, IANAL and all I know about patents are vague recollections from a long time ago, probably from a schoolhouse rock PSA]
Top 10 Features Apple copied from Microsoft
Also, didn't Apple recently add Microsoft's old any-edge window resize? And the "new" split thumb keyboard for the iPad was used by Microsoft before.
Personally, I think most UI features are figured out by all developers over time. The "copying" is more like taking a shortcut in the time spent thinking
For instance, a slide-in/down/up shade for items that you don't want to see all the time, is not a new invention. Think pulldown menus. Thinik Windows Start menu. Think popout desktop menus. But shades are popular now, and work well on a tiny mobile screen, which is why everyone uses them.
The difference I see is, most developers don't even think of patenting the obvious. OTOH, Apple seems determined to patent as many UI ideas as they can, so that others can't use them.
yep.
First questions you ask yourself in engineering a solution to a problem
1) has anyone solved this before? if so can I use it? If answer is yes to both Use it
2.) Has anyone provided a solution that is close to what I need? If so, can it be modified to what I need it to do? If yes use it.
Always ask those question first. There is no point to reinvent the wheel.
*LTD* is correct. AAPLaday - if you want to make wild claims, back them up with evidence or it's just your speculation/guess. Apple has haters like every company has. As you said in your 2nd post I quoted. But more Apple haters then Apple fans? I'll believe that when I see the proof.
The funny thing is *LTD* seems to get most situations. And people are too busy hating him to actually read what he has to say. I'm sure it's just jealousy cause *LTD* seems like a smart person.
You might achieve an improvement in patent granting and adjudication, but *never* an abolition of them. They are too valuable as protection against theft and they ensure fair market practice. Especially for the small developer.
Parties are allowed, as with anything, to seek legal remedies if they feel they've been wronged.
the current situation is in fact quite good. It's all coming out into the open now - who has what, and who needs to license or clean out the offending code. Everyone's going assume their rightful positions. That's certainly a positive.
Saying they're "lame" without regard to the consequences or their fair and intended use is, in your case, an innocent opinion. But really, if it's meant seriously it's quite irresponsible.
If you want, make a plea of reform. But abolition is a bad way to go.
Since you know so much, I thought I would take some time to respond to your arguments. Let's look at claim 1 of the patent in question:
The terms citing the basic parts of the computer are necessary to establish the actual physical thing that is being claimed -- you have to say "an input device, an output device, yada yada yada" or else you are trying to patent an idea rather than invention -- this is a key requirement in all software patents.
Secondly you will notice the bold parts in that claim. The key point here is analyzing the data, finding specific sorts of structures and linking actions to those structures. Typically actions are deliberately programmed in executables run on the PC's and Macs you are referring to. The difference here is that the programmer is inferring actions. The invention is far from perfect, certainly on my iPad reading your post and clicking on those links below causes the iPad to prompt me to add them as phone numbers to a contact or create a new contact. On the iPhone it prompts me to call somebody. The imperfection of it is probably why most developers in the past opted for deliberate explicit marking of actionable structures. This invention says that they are going to infer them and that they believe the benefit outweighs the cost of the false-positives.
Yes this is a job of the patent examiner and anybody who reads a patent publication prior to issuance. Competitors monitor each other's patents so they can submit prior art to invalidate these things BEFORE they get issued. Also, the patent examiner seeks out prior art on his own and the system requires that anybody submitting a patent makes any relevant art known to the examiner lest they lose the opportunity to be granted a patent at all. If you have clear prior art, please send it to the lawyers at HTC or Motorola -- they would be very interested to hear from you. If it was as easy as you say, I think the attorneys from these high-powered companies would have done it already.
Yes I know who HTC is and why Apple is leveraging this patent against them. What I don't know is why Apple has not leveraged this against other competitors like RIM in the past. I am guessing that these other companies had other patents that Apple needed and so the two came to a confidential cross-licensing before it ever became public. It's also possible that Apple did a competitive analysis on RIM's patents and decided it was not in their best interests to go after them because of the potential for mutually assured destruction.
Copying code violates copyright, not patents. You do not need to copy code to infringe a patent. I don't need to win my argument -- HTC and Motorola need to win their arguments. The patent was granted way back in 1999 and filed for in 1996 (the priority date). The burden is now on HTC or Motorola that somehow there was prior art to this patent before 1996. They have to show code that was registered for copyright or show a released product that had this feature prior to that date. It's not as easy as you think. This is the kind of widely applicable patent that anybody would love to have in their coffers. I wish I owned it.
I do not think Google is a "peanut company" -- but there are a couple of things that Google has a problem with here:
1) They are not a party to this lawsuit and would openly have to sue Apple for infringement of a patent they own in order to get involved. Google would rather watch HTC fend for themselves -- they don't think HTC is a peanut company and should therefore have enough in patents to negotiate a cross-licensing deal. HTC did a good thing recently in acquiring some patents that Apple may need. A very smart move.
2) Google, for their size, is patent poor. When you do everything on the server side you tend to favor "trade secrets" over patents since a patent will eventually expire and then the world knows your secret sauce. Further, it would be near impossible for Google to prove that somebody like Bing was infringing one of their patents in their server-side code. So filing for a patent for server-side stuff can do more harm than good since it lets your competitors know what you are doing and gives you little chance of enforcing the patent. Also, Google acquired Android which was open source and came with no patents.
Just so you are aware -- that is not a patent. When somebody files a patent application, part of the process involves publishing the invention for public review while the examiner is investigating the claims of the invention for prior art. This invention by Google was filed in 2010. That means that anybody just needs to show an automatic operating system update prior to 2010 that employs the same method stated in the claims of that patent -- there is a pretty good chance of that in my opinion (Microsoft comes to mind). As prior art is brought to the attention of the patent examiner, Google will have the opportunity to either narrow their claims or abandon the application. If Google does get a patent from this application it may be far more narrow than the current claims and would not be issued for a good two to five years.
Again, not a patent, but did you even read that one? The first claim is as follows:
Do you think that is going to hold up in its current form? The follow-up claims are pretty much garbage as well. This patent application was filed in August of 2009, and the Palm Pre was shown in January of that year. Given the generality of the claims on this one it does not stand a chance since the Pre is only one example of prior art.
And again, this is not a patent, but a patent application being reviewed. The filing date on this one is January 2010 and has some general aspects that are going to get destroyed by art that existed prior to January 2010 in the area of geospatial search (Oracle?). Though there may be some independent claims that hold up here that allow Google to protect a specific method of sorting the results from a geospatial search. Either way, it will be 2015 before we know the final form of the claims after the examiners and competitors beat up on this one.
And after all that, we finally agree. Yes the litigious environment we live in right now and the abuse of the system by patent trolls is horrible. Usually the big boys can get along because each of them have so many patents in their coffers that it forces them to cross license to each other. Nokia and Apple finally backed down from each other and came to an agreement. The little guys are going to get hurt badly in all of this since they are coding in a mine field. Further, the patent trolls are essentially patent squatting and not doing anything with these supposed innovations except suing people. Something definitely needs to be done to protect intellectual property but to somehow also protect small-time developers who don't have the resources to defend themselves or navigate the mine field and to prevent patent trolls from abusing the system.
Torn.
Considering how crappy the experience is on my less than two-year old HTC Android phone in comparison to my four-year old iPod Touch, I don't know whether Apple winning any claims HTC is stealing from them is a victory or they should be embarrassed.
As for Samsung's TouchWiz UI, yeah, pretty close to a complete ripoff.
Considering how crappy the experience is on my less than two-year old HTC Android phone in comparison to my four-year old iPod Touch, I don't know whether Apple winning any claims HTC is stealing from them is a victory or they should be embarrassed.
As for Samsung's TouchWiz UI, yeah, pretty close to a complete ripoff.
I'll break those down for you:
1. Finder sidebar: I am not very sure about it. Maybe Windows came up with the sidebar first. But maybe it was a part of system 6 in different applications; or maybe it came from NeXT OS. I have no proof of this. I'll give you that.
2. Path bar. The seems like coming from the UNIX systems of the past. Nothing exceptional to windows or mac os x.
3. Back and Forward buttons: The claim that proves that the author is a dumbass. Back and forth buttons have prevailed since long in file explorers. Remember Apple and Microsoft were not the only ones who "invented" operating systems.
4. Minimising to icon: It's not about adding such functionality. It's about the behaviour of different UI designs. Windows has always worked that way. OS X worked in a different. As for minimising windows into their own section in the task bar has been done in windows managers like CDE for a number of years.
5. Screen sharing: Windows did not invent screen sharing, i.e. the idea does not belong to windows. The only case is that Apple implemented it after Microsoft did with windows. I think the author is struggling to identify the features which windows invented and OS X copied; rather than some one else invented and both these operating systems implemented.
6. Backups: The author is a dumbass - Part III. Microsoft did not invent backups.
7. System preferences as control panel existed in Mac OS before windows implemented it. The author is terribly lost.
8. Exchange support: I agree apple was late to that game. But how is this a copy feature? It's about adding a standard functionality of Exchange support to an operating system. I don't know whats up with that guy.
9. Command-Tab: Alt-Tab: I'll give you that but I don't know how apple implemented such a thing in System6,7,8...
10. Command Prompt: the author is a dumbass - part 5. Microsoft didn't invent the command prompt for christ sake.
So 2/10. I'll still give you that.
I don't know if I should say this but basically just came out here and posted some random article claiming how Apple copied microsoft whereas the discussion is totally about patents and patent related things. This type of behaviour on internet forums is called: something you must be knowing already. Well never mind.
Lol! Here you again. Resizing, etc has been done by I believe NeXTOS as well. It's been done by CDE, KDE and almost all other windows managers. I don't know if this is just random meaningless post of yours or actually had an objective behind it.
Pulldown menus are not an invention but when Apple implemented them in notifications, people claimed they copied them from android?
EDIT: I am sorry if you mind this. You have been a UI designer for the last 30 years and it looks like from your post, that you have quite less knowledge of the same.
Maybe you didn't read the article you posted; so in that case, read it again. Or have a better argument next time.
No its not a joke. This is some serious **** we are talking about. I mean, .... ya... resizing windows was stolen by apple. Some serious ****. Do you get it?
Microsoft used to excel at these tactics of retarding tech innovation to preserve their market position. Sad to see Apple taking the same path now that they've become Big Brother.
I thought it was common knowledge Apple are a company that you either love or hate. The modern day Sony. The image of Mac users is certainly not flattering. Arrogant, smug, elitist and believing anyone who doesn't own a Mac is beneath them. And yet is this true for most Mac owners? No. Of course its a stereotype but like most of them they are based somewhat on a part truth. Who else has a CEO who would try and tell users how to hold a phone correctly? Its the 'my way or the highway' attitude that rubs certain types up the wrong way.
That's your best example? iOS 5 isn't even out yet. Who is to say what the final product will look like. You, oh high and mighty oracle?
Steve Jobs never said that great artists steal. This is a rumor that needs to stop circulating.
Apple didn't steal any ideas from Xerox. They asked Xerox if they could use the ideas, and Xerox said sure, go ahead. At that time, Xerox had used those ideas in one commercial product, and it did not sell worth spit. The management at Xerox did not support the PARC team, so Apple did... by hiring several of them and augmenting their places in history.
Apple didn't steal any ideas from Xerox. They asked Xerox if they could use the ideas, and Xerox said sure, go ahead. At that time, Xerox had used those ideas in one commercial product, and it did not sell worth spit. The management at Xerox did not support the PARC team, so Apple did... by hiring several of them and augmenting their places in history.
Not looking to pick a fight, but with about 11% of US computers (and less globally) and probably less than 20% of smartphone market globally, I fail to see how
could be perceived as Big Brother. The only thing they seem to have the lion's share (no pun intended) are tablets and Mp3 players. Apple's beef with HTC predates the iPad. Go back and look at HTC's phone pre-iPhone, and they basically made Windows Mobile and feature phones.Considering HTC is paying Microsoft a $5 per phone licensing fee for stepping on their patents by using Android, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility that there may be some merit to Apple's claims.
BTW, GO BANANA SLUGS!
+1
Yep. But more precisely, Xerox said, "Go ahead, and, by the way, we'd like 100,000 shares of AAPL for $1,000,000.00. K? Thanks!" I seriously hope they held onto those shares!
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Nope. The 40% + is worth it to me for maximum up time with Apple products unlike maximum down time with buggy Windows and Android.
To MacNewsFix:
If you find anything in the court ruling that says Xerox lost the case due to a signed agreement with Apple, let me know...
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433687&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
In fact, the ruling was that Apple held copyrights to the Finder, and Xerox never filed for any copyrights.
Perhaps you are confusing this ruling with that about the 1988 lawsuit for Windows stealing the look and feel of the Macintosh. In that riling, the court cited a signed agreement between Apple and Microsoft from the time of Word development.
If you find anything in the court ruling that says Xerox lost the case due to a signed agreement with Apple, let me know...
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433687&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
In fact, the ruling was that Apple held copyrights to the Finder, and Xerox never filed for any copyrights.
Perhaps you are confusing this ruling with that about the 1988 lawsuit for Windows stealing the look and feel of the Macintosh. In that riling, the court cited a signed agreement between Apple and Microsoft from the time of Word development.