ITC Rules For Apple in HTC Patent Case

[unicorn025]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/276120-did-nokia-win-the-battle-against-apple-but-lose-the-war

After all, Apple is acknowledging that its iPhone owes at least some of its success to Nokia’s technology. Surely Nokia’s shareholders must be asking why Nokia’s management didn’t implement the technology into its own phones.

Apple will pay Nokia a one-time amount, estimated between $300 million and $600 million, to cover the 111 million iPhones sold since it came to market in 2007. Apple will also provide ongoing royalty payments for Nokia technology, which could easily be worth several hundred million dollars more,.

 

[kdarling]

Those patents (at least as quoted) sound unbelievably generic/abstract. I can't even tell WTF they're talking about reading the post here.

I'd never guess a smart phone by that description of any kind.

That's because those two patents date from the 1990s, before most smartphones. In one patent they use a Power Mac as the example computer. The other patent talks about using a fax/modem.

They have nothing to do with Apple's claims of HTC copying the iPhone. They're just conveniently broad old patents that they could use against almost any modern device. Which is why they stand a fair chance of being overturned on multiple challenges.

I've always wondered: If Apple has the FingerWorks patent for multitouch- how does Android, Samsung, HP and everyone else get away with using it on their phones/tablets?

We get this question all the time. There is no such thing as a patent on multitouch itself. There are only patents on certain soft/hardware implementations and on single/multiple finger actions.

The Fingerworks patents are mostly about strokes on a touch sensitive keyboard, not a touchscreen, btw.

 

[lilo777]

You simply don't understand patents do you?

If you read carefully between the lines, you would know that those S3 patents were some old technology on which apple infringed in the 'past'. It's not very clear if they still are infringing on those patents.

On another note, the products will only get banned if Apple continues to infringe without S3's permission and if the court rules that Apple is guilty. If Apple pays its dues and changes the technology underneath(people say they already have), there's absolutely no way these products are going to be banned.

Remember, Nokia filed an ITC complaint twice to block almost all Apple iDevices.

Try to read stuff and know about things before you comment.


Don't burst his bubble.

One simple rule for you. Before reading "between the lines" try reading the lines themselves first. Then you would read the following: "The “infringed” patents in question were over a type of chips, primarily used for playing video games on phones. The lawsuit filed by S3 Graphics with the ITC claimed that Apple was exploiting some of its patented technologies in its iPhone, iPod, Mac as well as its iPad devices."

I did not know that iPad was Apple' "past".

Full article link.

 

[wizzerandchips]

But you're not. Just because you are a fan of a company that makes a lot of money does not in any way reflect on you. In fact many of your posts that talk about things like "paradigms" are so myopic that it's impossible to discuss anything. If you think you are "right" about anything, why don't you get out there and make a product like some of us? If you know how it's done, go build a fortune. You criticize everyone BUT Apple so much, but something tells me these companies are far more successful at making great products than yourself. The reasons why I can assume that should be clear.

I have as many Apple products as anyone, but I don't blindly think they are the only ones doing good work. Microsoft does incredible work, for example. Windows 8 could potentially be a huge threat to Apple's products, and I know several people just don't understand why. 2012 will be an amazing year.

Lmao, windows 8 might be a good product, but it's taken them 20 years for heavens sake!

 

[macsmurf]

People who are comparing language compilers to this patent are being silly.

This patent is intended to work on input that is specifically used for an entirely different purpose. A compiler works on input that is designed specifically to be compiled. It is not the same thing in any way shape or form.

You're right. It's not the same. It is similar. Did you read my original post?

Maybe you can explain the essence of what is being patented and how it differs substantially from the idea behind Lotus Agenda, because I can't.

Extracting information from freeform text and having the program do some action based on this text was not a new idea. I don't know if Lotus Agenda required a confirmation before adding stuff to the database but even if it it didn't the patent would be reduced to "only do an action is the user confirms it". Do you consider that worhty of a patent?

 

[dethmaShine]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/276120-did-nokia-win-the-battle-against-apple-but-lose-the-war

After all, Apple is acknowledging that its iPhone owes at least some of its success to Nokia’s technology. Surely Nokia’s shareholders must be asking why Nokia’s management didn’t implement the technology into its own phones.

Apple will pay Nokia a one-time amount, estimated between $300 million and $600 million, to cover the 111 million iPhones sold since it came to market in 2007. Apple will also provide ongoing royalty payments for Nokia technology, which could easily be worth several hundred million dollars more,.

Simply implies, you gotta pay up for using someone else's technology.

Fair enough.

 

[gnasher729]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/276120-did-nokia-win-the-battle-against-apple-but-lose-the-war

After all, Apple is acknowledging that its iPhone owes at least some of its success to Nokia’s technology. Surely Nokia’s shareholders must be asking why Nokia’s management didn’t implement the technology into its own phones.

Apple will pay Nokia a one-time amount, estimated between $300 million and $600 million, to cover the 111 million iPhones sold since it came to market in 2007. Apple will also provide ongoing royalty payments for Nokia technology, which could easily be worth several hundred million dollars more,.

There was never any doubt that Nokia had valid patents that Apple had to license, and Apple never claimed otherwise. There was also never any doubt that Nokia had to license these patents to Apple, and Nokia never claimed otherwise. The argument was always about the amount of license fees, with Nokia asking for more than Apple claimed they should be allowed to ask for.

I don't know exactly where these numbers came from, but it is quite possible that $300 million is what Apple said was the fair license payment and $600 million is what Nokia demanded. In which case that report would be completely true and completely void of any information. There was also never any doubt that Apple would have to pay license fees for future phones, to the same amount as for past phones, so if Apple paid "between 300 and 600 million" for the first 111 million iPhones, they are going to pay "between 300 and 600 million" for the next 111 million iPhones as well. That's nothing unusual going on at all.

What nobody has told us at all is how close the license fees are to what Apple was offering, and how close to what Nokia was demanding. (And how close to what Apple was willing to pay, which is obviously more than they were offering, and how much Nokia wanted, which is obviously less than they demanded).

 

[divinox]

Looks like a rip-off of Palm PDA which was a rip-off of the Newton.

First, calling the palm a rip-off of Newton is like calling the iphone a rip-off of random pre-iphone (had you said that about Zoomer you might've had a point).

Second, like stated in the top part of the quoted post there is nothing innovative about a cell phone extension of the desktop using icons in a matrix/grid pattern. Indeed, it has been the de facto standard way of displaying icons for as long as we've had screens capable of displaying them that way - not because Apple "invented it", but because its by far the most efficient way of utilizing the screen space under the established paradigm.

Don't burst his bubble.

Image

I rest my case.

 

[dethmaShine]

First, calling the palm a rip-off of Newton is like calling the iphone a rip-off of random pre-iphone (had you said that about Zoomer you might've had a point).

How?

Second, like stated in the top part of the quoted post there is nothing innovative about a cell phone extension of the desktop using icons in a matrix/grid pattern. Indeed, it has been the de facto standard way of displaying icons for as long as we've had screens capable of displaying them that way - not because Apple "invented it", but because its by far the most efficient way of utilizing the screen space under the established paradigm.

It is definitely NOT the most efficient way of utilising the space. The most efficient way for any kind of algorithm which has a dependency on space is:

read();
flush();
clear();
read();

Implying that Coverflow in itself and the new finder in Lion 10.7 is much more efficient in terms of the space used to display the content. This space is not related to the space used to hold that content; but still Coverflow and the new finder highlight the most efficient use of space to display items in either context.

On another note, it is possible that I haven't come across some other UI paradigm; so claiming this to use space in the most efficient way would be wrong too. This is the most efficient of way of displaying(that kind of content) as far as I know.

Image

I rest my case.

On another note, no one is claiming a grid of icons to be Apple's invention. Get over it.

Oh! well, someone actually is?
You yourself were arguing with a fellow here that 'Apple' stole the iPhone GUI from some random Sony Ericsson phone. Maybe it was sarcasm, but you were the one who actually started it. And then someone argued that Newton was probably the first portable device to come out with that grid-icon UI which was then adopted by Nokia, Ericsson and others.

Here's what you said:

Sorry to break it to you, but Apples iOS in large parts look just like my old Sony Ericsson from the early 2000, which in turn looks just like my old Nokia from the mid 90's (the last part being a blatant lie as the low resolution on the 3210 did not allow for such interfaces). Thing is, there is nothing new about using icons in a grid style. Rather, it was the de facto standard of the time - and to a large extent still is, with the notable exception of Wp7 which brings something somewhat new and innovative to the table with regards to UI:s. That said, the samsung galaxy is a disgrace form-wise (just like software patents are, in general).

Image

As you can see that phone blatantly copies iOS innovative GUI. Thus, this phone must be yet another iphone clone.

p.s. if not sure, read first part of this post.

 

[MH01]

Why? i kinda like being right.

When reality happens to suck, and some of us point that out (and have pointed it out well in advance), we're not fan-anythings.

Total and utter BS. You have no grib of reality when it comes to Apple.

What is really annoying is that you are allowed to keep posting on this site, given I consitute your contribution to these forums as "SPAM".

In every single post, your replies can be predicted. And as soon as someone raises a valid point to argue your blind faith in Apple, you just ingore there posts and continue spamming.

Please start contributing to this site, but for the love of god stop the constant SPAM! I do not need to be told in every single story that Apple is right or they just revolutionariesd / are going going to change a segement of the industry.

If the moderators will not ban you for spamming then at least introduce some functionality in the site where you can ignore individuals posts.

 

[divinox]

How?

Read up on your history and see for yourself.

It is definitely NOT the most efficient way of utilising the space. The most efficient way for any kind of algorithm which has a dependency on space is:

read();
flush();
clear();
read();

Implying that Coverflow in itself and the new finder in Lion 10.7 is much more efficient in terms of the space used to display the content. This space is not related to the space used to hold that content; but still Coverflow and the new finder highlight the most efficient use of space to display items in either context.

On another note, it is possible that I haven't come across some other UI paradigm; so claiming this to use space in the most efficient way would be wrong too. This is the most efficient of way of displaying(that kind of content) as far as I know.

First, i guess you failed to comprehend the meaning of "under the current paradigm".

Second, i guess all the companies are totally mistaken in their HCI, including Apple. I guess you should make your services available on the market. With your expertize you must be able to earn a fortune.

Third, there is no 'most efficient way of displaying content' as content is in itself not neutral. Depending on type and nature (along with context and purpose of course) one way of displaying content is better or worse. As we all know the classic desktop metaphor has been with us for well over 30 years. Are you implying that it is so without good cause? That Apples allegedly innovative iOS interface is in fact crap?

(just for fun i could also add that "cover flow-esque" ways of navigating through mobile phones have indeed been used; e.g. by Sony Ericsson. Most people however seem to prefer to the grid-matrix icon setup. Cant say that i blame them).

On another note, no one is claiming a grid of icons to be Apple's invention. Get over it.

Read the thread, and others like this. There are tons of people out there praising Apples "innovative UI". If you are intelligent enough not to join that crowd, good for you. It doesnt make them go away though.

Oh! well, someone actually is?
You yourself were arguing with a fellow here that 'Apple' stole the iPhone GUI from some random Sony Ericsson phone. Maybe it was sarcasm, but you were the one who actually started it. And then someone argued that Newton was probably the first portable device to come out with that matrix/grid-icon GUI which was then adopted by Nokia, Ericsson and others.

Here's what you said:

No, i didnt say that they stole it from some random SE-phone, what i did, or rather tried to do as i obviously failed, was to show but one example of how this grid/matrix layout was indeed common (in fact, standard) long before the birth of the iphone. I never said that Apple stole this layout. I said that the UI of the iphone builds on a de facto standard and that there is very few things about it that can be called innovative.

As for the second part the sarcasm should be quite obvious, given the fact that the device shown in the picture came out long before the iphone and thus a time machine would be needed for the designers of said phone to be able to copy the iphone.

Finally, as for Newton (which isnt iphone - and doesnt make the GUI of the iphone any more innovative at all - in fact i would argue less, as the Newton dates even further back) i kindly refer you to have a look at the picture i just posted of the "original desktop", dating back to 1976.

It clearly shows that neither the Newton nor the iphone GUI can be considered as particularly innovative.

 

[shompa]

I've always wondered: If Apple has the FingerWorks patent for multitouch- how does Android, Samsung, HP and everyone else get away with using it on their phones/tablets?

The patent was granted 3 weeks ago.

Time to sue.

 

[rjohnstone]

The patent was granted 3 weeks ago.

Time to sue.

The patent that was granted was for a gesture control in a web browser session, not all things multi touch.
Try reading... saves one from embarrassment.

Even the Fingerworks patents do not cover all multi touch implementations, they only cover certain implementations and those are extremely limited in themselves.

For the last time... Apple does not own patents for all things multi touch.

The two patents that HTC got busted for are not even critical and not related to multi touch anyway.
I know one is for data detection in emails and SMS messages.

 

[Xenc]

Fair to Apple to have a big slice of the smartphone cake since they were the ones who sparked the smartphone market in the first place. But if Apple becomes the sole competitor in a race the rest will fall behind just because of things like patents. What I'm trying to say is that I would like to see what the competitors could come up with if they weren't restricted by patents.

It's almost as though all of these patent restrictions are suffocating the growth of the industry as a whole.

For the last time... Apple does not own patents for all things multi touch.

The two patents that HTC got busted for are not even critical and not related to multi touch anyway.
I know one is for data detection in emails and SMS messages.

It involves working out if an email or a phone number exists in a string of text, then opening the relevant application when it's selected by the user. Hardly a strong reason to block imports of HTC devices!

 

[cmaier]

It's almost as though all of these patent restrictions are suffocating the growth of the industry as a whole.

How so? Prior to the recent rash of patent lawsuits, smartphone sales were miniscule, and most of them looked more or less like the blackberry/treo (brick with tiny keyboard, resistive screen/stylus and/or trackball).

In the time since the lawsuits have begun, we have a proliferation of smartphones gaining share rapidly in the overall market, from a far wider number of suppliers and with more variety than ever before.

It involves working out if an email or a phone number exists in a string of text, then opening the relevant application when it's selected by the user. Hardly a strong reason to block imports of HTC devices!

That's not the reason. The reason would be that by infringing the patents (if true), HTC is infringing Apple's patents and damaging Apple. It doesn't matter that you find the patent simplistic.

 

[hchung]

I don't know the S3 patents in question, but I'd be inclined to think they're just as legit as both the Apple patents discussed here in that they'll sound obvious to us, but are actually innovative with respects to the technology at the time of filing.

Anybody know the patent numbers?

One simple rule for you. Before reading "between the lines" try reading the lines themselves first. Then you would read the following: "The “infringed” patents in question were over a type of chips, primarily used for playing video games on phones. The lawsuit filed by S3 Graphics with the ITC claimed that Apple was exploiting some of its patented technologies in its iPhone, iPod, Mac as well as its iPad devices."

I did not know that iPad was Apple' "past".

Full article link.

 

[ViViDboarder]

How so? Prior to the recent rash of patent lawsuits, smartphone sales were miniscule, and most of them looked more or less like the blackberry/treo (brick with tiny keyboard, resistive screen/stylus and/or trackball).

In the time since the lawsuits have begun, we have a proliferation of smartphones gaining share rapidly in the overall market, from a far wider number of suppliers and with more variety than ever before.

I think you have cause and effect mixed up...

There is only a market for pouring money into lawsuits BECAUSE smartphone sales have picked up. Anyone can take two trends and make a surface claim about the cause (number of iPhone sales and number of dollars spent on NASA budget! Apple is killing it!), but you have to think more deeply to derive the real relationship.

These lawsuits hurt innovation. If something so broad is going to be brought up out of context, how can you release a new product without tons of cash to defend yourself legally? Even if you had no knowledge of the patent or other product you are still not protected. Patents these days are a joke. It's not like these companies are stealing algorithms or code from each other.

Just like what I said about correlation earlier, patent cases should be looked at in context. "Was there any reason that HTC would have insider information about the technology Apple was using? No?" Then it should be no problem. If the answer is yes, then they should be licensing it. This also protects the Little Guy. If I show my idea to Apple and they steal it, then I would be protected since they did have inside information into my design and the means to steal it.

This whole system is broke and it's not helping anyone but the lawyers.

 

[cmaier]

I think you have cause and effect mixed up...

There is only a market for pouring money into lawsuits BECAUSE smartphone sales have picked up. Anyone can take two trends and make a surface claim about the cause (number of iPhone sales and number of dollars spent on NASA budget! Apple is killing it!), but you have to think more deeply to derive the real relationship.

These lawsuits hurt innovation. If something so broad is going to be brought up out of context, how can you release a new product without tons of cash to defend yourself legally? Even if you had no knowledge of the patent or other product you are still not protected. Patents these days are a joke. It's not like these companies are stealing algorithms or code from each other.

Just like what I said about correlation earlier, patent cases should be looked at in context. "Was there any reason that HTC would have insider information about the technology Apple was using? No?" Then it should be no problem. If the answer is yes, then they should be licensing it. This also protects the Little Guy. If I show my idea to Apple and they steal it, then I would be protected since they did have inside information into my design and the means to steal it.

This whole system is broke and it's not helping anyone but the lawyers.

Wrong. The lawsuits HELP innovation. If a company is forced to come up with a new solution instead of using the solution patented by someone else, something NEW has been created - and that's what "innovation" means. Merely copying what someone else does (intentionally or not) is not innovation.

 

[hchung]

Maybe you can explain the essence of what is being patented and how it differs substantially from the idea behind Lotus Agenda, because I can't.

Extracting information from freeform text and having the program do some action based on this text was not a new idea. I don't know if Lotus Agenda required a confirmation before adding stuff to the database but even if it it didn't the patent would be reduced to "only do an action is the user confirms it". Do you consider that worhty of a patent?

Like I said before, I'm not an expert on this, nor am I a past user of Lotus Agenda, but based off what other users have said about it and what I saw in the patent, there are differences. At a glance, it sounds the same, but hey, we're talking about law stuff, so being nit-picky matters.

1)
Lotus Agenda uses freeform entry to provide a way of inputting data and then filtering. The freeform input is used as a command with integrated data. Like a natural-language style command console.
From reading http://guterman.com/guterman_clips/..._HowItWor/guterman_clips_agenda_howitwor.html
it seems that Agenda actually would be a very early implementation of sorting by tags or smart playlists/collections/db-views/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
The "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" example, in Lotus Agenda, would let you tag Wendy as a person, but until you do so, would not actually know it's a person. A "when" field exists by default so it'll capture one date automatically from the phrase.

Apple Data Detectors (ADD) takes existing data and tries to infer meaning by itself so that you can insert data extracted from other data. (as in, NOT a command console) With a simple example of "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm", both ADD and Agenda will infer that "Tuesday 3pm" is significant. But ADD should be able to infer "see wendy" as significant too on its own, where Agenda will depend on you organizing "wendy" into a field first. That "see" is a verb will never be taken into account in Agenda.

From the user's standpoint, and for a simple example and overview, the two technologies appear to be the same and in many cases will act the same once the environment is set up. But the underlying mechanics are completely different.

Given that Lotus Agenda was created in the DOS era, that's kinda cool that they got this going, but ADD is by far more advanced.

This is kind of similar to the difference between the iPhone Voice Control and Dragon Dictate. They're both speech recognizers, but completely different usage. Dragon is primarily freeform which is much harder to implement, and hence lower accuracy. Voice Control is easier to implement and higher accuracy, but a heavily restricted command space. They're both awesome in their own right, but how awesome they are depends on if you're picking the right one for the task.

2) Oh, one more difference, there's this thing about this service being provided by a server in Apple's patent for integration amongst multiple services/apps. Lotus Agenda doesn't export its services simply because you're on DOS. You have no other running apps.

 

[grindcor]

Apple invents?

If you think Apple invented multi-touch, then you should watch this video of what looks like an oversized iPad, a video taken one full year BEFORE the iPhone was released, and FOUR YEARS before the iPad was released. So maybe, Apple aren't geniuses who invented the technology, they simply licensed it from its creator and tried to stifle competition by filing exclusive corporate patents on something an academic devised and created... Don't credit without thinking.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html

Also, if a "system and method causes a computer to detect and perform actions on structures identified in computer data," or "data transmission system having a real-time data engine for processing isochronous streams of data includes an interface device that provides a physical and logical connection of a computer to any one or more of a variety of different types of data networks," doesn't sound like an overly complex description of an input device, such as a keyboard or even a mouse, I don't understand what lines the judge and fanboys are reading between.

 

[gohanmzt]

I have not seen Skype's toolbar - I am not a Skype user. But it would only infringe if it parsed content and inferred actionable things from the content, made those parts actionable and provided the action handler for responding to the user input to initiate the action.

What Skype tool bar does is find phone numbers in the text of webpages and show them as links, clicking on that link starts a phone call through Skype. I think it does infringe then.

 

[hchung]

If you think Apple invented multi-touch, then you should watch this video of what looks like an oversized iPad, a video taken one full year BEFORE the iPhone was released, and FOUR YEARS before the iPad was released. So maybe, Apple aren't geniuses who invented the technology, they simply licensed it from its creator and tried to stifle competition by filing exclusive corporate patents on something an academic devised and created... Don't credit without thinking.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html

Also, if a "system and method causes a computer to detect and perform actions on structures identified in computer data," or "data transmission system having a real-time data engine for processing isochronous streams of data includes an interface device that provides a physical and logical connection of a computer to any one or more of a variety of different types of data networks," doesn't sound like an overly complex description of an input device, such as a keyboard or even a mouse, I don't understand what lines the judge and fanboys are reading between.

*sigh*

If you're only reading the 4 lines of the patent, of course it doesn't sound like anything. That's why there are pages and pages. Read them.

Next...

Yeah yeah, we know about Jeff Han. Now dig further back into history.

It seems you're not aware of the details of this discussion.

"Multi-touch", as fanboys and haters talk about it, is not simply this one thing that got invented somewhere and is not simply one technology either. But many seem to think that.

The idea of using a touch pad is old. The use of a touch sensitive screen (see-through touch pad on a screen) is old. The use of multiple fingers on a touch sensitive pad or screen is old too. This stuff was thought up in the 60s. Just watch an old episode of Star Trek.

The problem was how to implement it for use. Over the course of the last ~40 years, many different ways have been created. Jeff Han's table is multitouch, but is not relevant to the mobile multi-touch discussion because it works on completely different mechanics. Neither Apple nor Jeff claim to have invented multi-touch itself. But Apple claims to have invented implementation details that improve on multitouch hardware, as well as certain UI constructs of which I'd have to read the patents to list. Jeff, as well, claims to have invented another type of multi-touch screen which uses a different method of sensing touches.

Jeff does good work. Apple does good work. Their inventions were not multi-touch itself, but how to make it work for us.

 

[grindcor]

*sigh*

If you're only reading the 4 lines of the patent, of course it doesn't sound like anything. That's why there are pages and pages. Read them.

Next...

Yeah yeah, we know about Jeff Han. Now dig further back into history.

It seems you're not aware of the details of this discussion.

"Multi-touch", as fanboys and haters talk about it, is not simply this one thing that got invented somewhere and is not simply one technology either. But many seem to think that.

The idea of using a touch pad is old. The use of a touch sensitive screen (see-through touch pad on a screen) is old. The use of multiple fingers on a touch sensitive pad or screen is old too. This stuff was thought up in the 60s. Just watch an old episode of Star Trek.

The problem was how to implement it for use. Over the course of the last ~40 years, many different ways have been created. Jeff Han's table is multitouch, but is not relevant to the mobile multi-touch discussion because it works on completely different mechanics. Neither Apple nor Jeff claim to have invented multi-touch itself. But Apple claims to have invented implementation details that improve on multitouch hardware, as well as certain UI constructs of which I'd have to read the patents to list. Jeff, as well, claims to have invented another type of multi-touch screen which uses a different method of sensing touches.

Jeff does good work. Apple does good work. Their inventions were not multi-touch itself, but how to make it work for us.

This was just an example of how apple has simply purchased licensing for inventions that were not their own. Certainly not the only example, you need only to read up on the acquisition of fingerworks. The argument is not about the underlying UI software/hardware being infringed, its the basic idea about how the user interacts with the device. Who cares whether capacitative, resistive or the internal data pipelines? The fingerworks patent is overly general and generally ONLY applies to the interaction, hardly the underlying technology. Read the bloody fingerworks patents, don't post patronizing and irrelevant tripe and give undeserved credit to someone who only "perfected" a good idea, but still claims the original is their own.

 

[unicorn025]

There was never any doubt that Nokia had valid patents that Apple had to license, and Apple never claimed otherwise. There was also never any doubt that Nokia had to license these patents to Apple, and Nokia never claimed otherwise. The argument was always about the amount of license fees, with Nokia asking for more than Apple claimed they should be allowed to ask for.

I don't know exactly where these numbers came from, but it is quite possible that $300 million is what Apple said was the fair license payment and $600 million is what Nokia demanded. In which case that report would be completely true and completely void of any information. There was also never any doubt that Apple would have to pay license fees for future phones, to the same amount as for past phones, so if Apple paid "between 300 and 600 million" for the first 111 million iPhones, they are going to pay "between 300 and 600 million" for the next 111 million iPhones as well. That's nothing unusual going on at all.

What nobody has told us at all is how close the license fees are to what Apple was offering, and how close to what Nokia was demanding. (And how close to what Apple was willing to pay, which is obviously more than they were offering, and how much Nokia wanted, which is obviously less than they demanded).

from what i read apple wanted to pay a flat rate to lincense the patence but nokia whated them to pay per unit (every phone apple sell), which is fine , it nokia tech they can charge whatever they want ,htc pays microsoft 5.oo for every android phone they sell to a tune of 150million so far.

 

[macsmurf]

Like I said before, I'm not an expert on this, nor am I a past user of Lotus Agenda, but based off what other users have said about it and what I saw in the patent, there are differences. At a glance, it sounds the same, but hey, we're talking about law stuff, so being nit-picky matters.

1)
Lotus Agenda uses freeform entry to provide a way of inputting data and then filtering. The freeform input is used as a command with integrated data. Like a natural-language style command console.
From reading http://guterman.com/guterman_clips/..._HowItWor/guterman_clips_agenda_howitwor.html
it seems that Agenda actually would be a very early implementation of sorting by tags or smart playlists/collections/db-views/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
The "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" example, in Lotus Agenda, would let you tag Wendy as a person, but until you do so, would not actually know it's a person. A "when" field exists by default so it'll capture one date automatically from the phrase.

Apple Data Detectors (ADD) takes existing data and tries to infer meaning by itself so that you can insert data extracted from other data. (as in, NOT a command console) With a simple example of "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm", both ADD and Agenda will infer that "Tuesday 3pm" is significant. But ADD should be able to infer "see wendy" as significant too on its own, where Agenda will depend on you organizing "wendy" into a field first. That "see" is a verb will never be taken into account in Agenda.

From the user's standpoint, and for a simple example and overview, the two technologies appear to be the same and in many cases will act the same once the environment is set up. But the underlying mechanics are completely different.

Given that Lotus Agenda was created in the DOS era, that's kinda cool that they got this going, but ADD is by far more advanced.

This is kind of similar to the difference between the iPhone Voice Control and Dragon Dictate. They're both speech recognizers, but completely different usage. Dragon is primarily freeform which is much harder to implement, and hence lower accuracy. Voice Control is easier to implement and higher accuracy, but a heavily restricted command space. They're both awesome in their own right, but how awesome they are depends on if you're picking the right one for the task.

2) Oh, one more difference, there's this thing about this service being provided by a server in Apple's patent for integration amongst multiple services/apps. Lotus Agenda doesn't export its services simply because you're on DOS. You have no other running apps.

That's a very reasonable post. I'll try to respond in kind

First of all, you should try sending an email to yourself with the text "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" and read it on an iDevice. You'll notice that only "on Tuesday 3pm" is recognized. Wendy is not, regardless of whether she is in you address book or not.

If you'll read the patent you'll notice that it almost entirely describes the user interaction with the software so it's actually quite significant that a user might see the two processes as very similar.

What the patent describes is a button you can click within an application over a freeform textual message. When the button is clicked the program will mark interesting parts of the text. When a user clicks a marked portion of the text he will be presented with a number of options.

This mechanism is the same a right clicking a link in any browser today. A context-sensitive menu was not novel at the time. Marking text as links is called hyperlinking and was not novel at the time (or invented by Apple).

The non-trivial part of the program, the analyzing server, is not described in detail other than to say that it contains a parser, one or more grammars, a list of keywords and handlers that will be attached to parts of the text. This is standard procedure in any compiler and was not in any way novel at the time.

The part about the analyzer being a server is actually not a significant difference. If you think of the program in an object oriented way you would consider the analyzing part separate from the rest of the program. Whether you implement it as an object or as an object on a remote server is not significant. Any experienced programmer will end up with a design with several boxes containing some sort of encapsulated functionality. That's how most programmers work. Object oriented programming was not novel at the time.

The non-trivial part of the program, the analyzer, is not described in more than the most general terms. Any programmer will think of parsers and grammers and perhaps some sort of algorithmic learning mechanism. The patent mentions a neutral network which was not novel at the time or invented by Apple and it is extremely unlikely that Apples or HTC implementation actually use one.

Furthermore, I can guarantee you that neither Apple's nor HTC use an actual server to analyze the text. If that is the "invention" then HTC does not infringe.

IMHO most programmers with knowledge of compiler theory and object-oriented programming (any well educated programmer, really) will independently come up with a very similar solution to Apple's patent. I also believe that this would be the case in the 90s.

I believe that patents should be non-obvious and not just reiterate ideas from somewhere else in a slightly different setting. It think this patent is and was obvious and was based on original (unpatented) ideas from Lotus. I don't think many competent software developers would disagree.