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ITC Rules For Apple in Patent Case, Bans Some HTC Imports [Update: HTC Responds]
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I don't know about better. Steve certainly was put off by Android specifically, that was clear in his biography.
I will say this though - seeing Apple bring all these suits frustrates me enough to consider tossing my iPhone and going to an Android phone.
This is not about copying or stealing code. It's about programmers coming up with a method that others had gotten a patent on so long ago that the developers couldn't possibly know about it offhand.
Sure. They've never heard about the iPhone. They must have came up with the same ideas due to them not copying Apple.
Like many Apple patents used in these fights, it's NOT about iPhone code.
In this case, it's an obscure computer patent filed in 1996. It's actually pretty vague (typical for Apple) and doesn't really list any method in detail.
So yes, it would be very easy to independently come up with an offending implementation. If you used facts instead of emotions and actually read the patent, you could figure that out.
The headline is a little misleading. That's my only real objection here.
There's no ban yet. The ban WOULD be in April. That's 4 months away. There's a potential ban or a proposed ban.
As of now - HTC can move as many of their devices - even ones that violate the ruling up until the ban takes affect.
There's no ban yet. The ban WOULD be in April. That's 4 months away. There's a potential ban or a proposed ban.
As of now - HTC can move as many of their devices - even ones that violate the ruling up until the ban takes affect.
I'm marginally considering to discontinue buying Apple products. It seems to me that instead of innovating their products, they would rather file lawsuits.
I know Steve Jobs hated Android because he said it "ripped off iOS." Yet Mike Lazaridis didn't think iOS ripped off BBOS. Which he could have said. Steve Jobs was never my favorite person anyway.
1. Exactly. It's so common or a natural process that it's entirely feasible to think there wasn't a patent.
2. You are asking a lot from many members of this forum who mostly respond out of emotion and not facts
Just showing how software patents lifespan should be reduced to say, 6-12 months. Tops. Make it 6+6. 6 months to implement. 6 months after implementation. More than that is absurd.
Speaking of emoticons, Samsung apparently has a patent on those that they're now throwing at Apple in germany. Equally absurd, of course.
I have a serious question, I'm not trolling. If iOS is proprietary isn't this just clean room reverse enginerring at worst, which as far as I know is legal. Also if the method is too similar doesn't the proprietary nature mean it is just coincidence. Reading posts I hear this has been around a long time, doesn't this show google didn't copy apple all they did was stumble upon an implementation a little too similar?
Funnily enough, that's exactly how I feel.
I'd rather not buy Apple BECAUSE of the way they are acting.
I don't like negative companies and that's the way, to me, they are coming across.
I want a company that produces the very best, focusses 100% of it's effort, time and money into making the very best product and (NOTE TO APPLE......) RANGE of products so that everyone wants to buy them as this company (Apple) produces a range of products that fit various peoples needs and budgets.
If Anything, people like Samsung, Nokia etc do this. Producing everything from 50 to 500 dollar devices to appeal to all budgets and needs.
We have a company that want to make an incredibly tiny range of products and then tries to stop others making alternatives unless they are so ridiculously different (Apple wanting Samsung to make lumpy, non rectangle computer tablets) that they are starting to look bad.
I have an iPad one, and really honestly, I'd love something non Apple to come along that I can in the not too distant future replace it with.
I was actually even thinking of a very high end iMac also early this year, but after all the nasty legal rubbish coming out of Apple these days, I decided to put together a very nice (and faster than a mac) PC myself.
I see nothing positive, attitude wide coming from Apple these days I'm sorry to say
"Clean room reverse engineering" is a defense against copyright infringement, not patent infringement.
THIS.
Prior art, people.
This court decision is fucking retarded and will without a doubt be overturned on appeal.
They can compete all the same. Just don't copy.
Notice, there's no lawsuits against Windows Phone 7. Very different from Apple. Stolen methods, though, will be tossed out.
It's funny how Apple is doomed and all, but they've got most of the profit in the smartphone area, and HTC had a very bad year last year.
Geez... Enough is enough. Can't people see the obvious here?
Apple has gone from centering on innovation to centering on litigation.
Name one great innovation from apple since the iPhone 4. Name one. If you can. Something that they were first with.
This might just be the beginning of the end.
Apple has gone from centering on innovation to centering on litigation.
Name one great innovation from apple since the iPhone 4. Name one. If you can. Something that they were first with.
This might just be the beginning of the end.
1. Exactly. It's so common or a natural process that it's entirely feasible to think there wasn't a patent.
2. You are asking a lot from many members of this forum who mostly respond out of emotion and not facts
That's so funny. Look at your own heart, see the hatred bubbling for Apple.
I'm not entirely sure how we establish patent law to work this way, and then Apple isn't supposed to use it.
Showing the absurdity of a software patent since it essentially is then nothing more than a highly abstracted conceptual implementation of an idea, which in itself is nothing more than a vague idea of how to solve a problem. Idea patents, thats what we should really call them. Cause that is what they, in essence, are. Absurd.
Since the iPhone 4? The 4S? Siri? The iPad 2? Lion? iCloud? iTunes Match? New versions of all their hardware with Thunderbolt connections? New Mac Pros coming down? Or something completely new, Final Cut Pro X? I'm forgetting some things.
Are you guys serious or are you trolling? Did you even read the link?
This patent applied to the following functionality:
A redditor discovered that this functionality was actually seen in software from the 1980s - a good 13 years before Apple obtained the patent.
Prior art is a huge component of U.S. patent law so I have no idea how Apple won this case, but either way your posts don't really say anything of value as to why you think it doesn't apply.
Apple has "stolen" things from WP*, and most likely, the same can be said for the vice versa. There are no lawsuits cause a) more than likely theres a x-licensing agreement in place, b) Apple would crash and burn if they tried, and c) MSFT and Apple both want to put Google out of their misery.
* e.g. two patents related to the camera. 1) accessing camera from lock-screen 2) swipe-to-roll. Conversely, if I'm not mistaken, WP utilizes the rubber-banding scroll effect.
Yep.
However, obviousness is a defense, if it gets the patent claims invalidated.
@ chris200x9:
This is just one of many examples why a lot of people are against software patents altogether.
Given the requirement to do something, it's not at all uncommon for programmers to come up with the same methodology independently, sometimes years apart as in this case.
Apple's slide-to-unlock patent is another good example, and judges are already letting them know it's too obvious. (Apple has withdrawn it from a couple of cases already.)
If you're using the same computer language, the code implementation can even come out amazingly similar. Just last month both I and another developer halfway around the world were accidentally given the same assignment for a rather unusual product addition. Two days later we found out and compared our code, and dang if about 50 complicated lines of it weren't almost exactly the same. We are both very experienced and we had simply both come up with the most efficient method.
(re: what Apple ha innovated since iPhone 4)
And the list gets worse from there... Innovation doesn't mean what you think it will means.
How is just a spec bump innovation?
Bought.
Spec bump.
What part of Lion is innovative?
Cloud storage and syncing is not new.
And the list gets worse from there... Innovation doesn't mean what you think it will means.
wow if it frustrates you that much then you should really just get an Android phone. nothing is stopping you. Apple is way too greedy/protective/childish.