Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Lodsys Threatens to Sue App Store Developers Over In-App Purchases and Upgrade Links
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No software should be patentable. Software = math. Math cannot be patented. Ergo, software should not be patented. The sooner the Supreme Court realizes that and changes patent law, the better it will be for the software industry which will still have copyright law to protect themselves.
Software is not math. It can be expressed by math. Everything can be expressed by math.
Wonderful logic. How about this:
No chemical compound should be patentable. Chemical compound = atoms. Atoms cannot be patented since they occur naturally. Ergo, no chemical compound should be patented.
Software uses math, but it isn't a mathematical property or theory.
Sorry, all software is a way of mathematically expressing instructions, a form of speech. Copyright law is all you need. Patents are for inventions, not speech.
By no means the only example ...
No news, of course, that this is not an isolated case. But it does seem like it's becoming more "popular." For instance, Daniel Stenberg reports that curl is under seige:
No news, of course, that this is not an isolated case. But it does seem like it's becoming more "popular." For instance, Daniel Stenberg reports that curl is under seige:
Apple had better do something to protect the developers. Probably every app in the App Store violates someone's software patent, somewhere, somehow. How could anyone ever know?
Now there's blood in the water.
Now there's blood in the water.
Since you're going for weak arguments, why not just say all software is ones and zeroes, and both of those have been known for millennia.
I've asked this question before. Say you invent an unbreakable encryption algorithm. You can implement it in hardware or in software. Why is it that you would allow the hardware version to be patented but not the software version? Other than "software=speech" I mean.
Copyright protects implementation. Software is usually an implementation of a set of tasks to be performed by a computer, as documented in a specification. Patents are made on these specifications, which are neither maths nor an expression of instructions.
You should not comment if you have never done any kind of analyst work. There's more to software than just code.
Then you'd be entitled to the patent. But it would have expired by now.
No they didn't.
So no cease & desist? I guess you only use that if your company actually does something in the first place, no money in that.
Can't they just take down the lite versions and they no longer have a case?
In any case, software patents should be based on specific implementations, and not abstract ideas. But that won't change any time soon, so I hope Apple can invalidate their patents somehow as I doubt any of these small time developers will be able to hold up in court.
Can't they just take down the lite versions and they no longer have a case?
In any case, software patents should be based on specific implementations, and not abstract ideas. But that won't change any time soon, so I hope Apple can invalidate their patents somehow as I doubt any of these small time developers will be able to hold up in court.
You followed up a lame cliché with an actual invention. the Kamov Ka-50 has an ejection seat.
So I'm Lodsys. I patent the in-app purchase procedure.
What about the patent for a redirect?
What about the patent for clicking?
What about the patent for scrolling with a mouse or finger to click?
What about the little blue progress bar patent?
What about the patent for displaying text input on a screen?
I'm sure I could go on but everyone should get the absurdity here as I'm sure all of these things have been patented at some point.
Reading the Abstract :
I understand this is over the typical :
However, the App Store is not receiving information that was generated by that interaction. The App Store is not receiving the "Yes I did like it, no I didn't like it" response of the user, as the App Store has no such functionality (unless of course the dev implemented something of the sort). The App Store is only receiving a request to display and offer for purchase the full application, basically, like a link.
Otherwise, they have patented making links with a question. Like :
Would like to read news for nerds ?
Your computer (the commodity) is going to send a request to Slashdot's web server (central location) after generating "information" (your answer to this question) from a 2 way interaction (the post on this page asking the question and you answering it).
This is pretty vague and there's probably tons of prior art for this. Unless there's more to this in the details of the patent.
Um, something tells me you don't quite understand the patent system requirements. Your 'early priority date' point covers only one aspect of the requirements to get a patent. It *could* potentially be considered 'novel' at the time if, as you say, it is "before people were thinking about this sort of thing". However, it completely ignores the whole factor of the *non-obvious to a practitioner ordinarily skilled in the art* requirement.
Hmm. I have a GUI and I want to be able to send people to product X. How about I add a *button* that sends them there!
This is just another example of the early patent rush on Thing-that-has-been-done-with-paper-for-years *on a computer!*. (It was later supplanted with *over a network!* and then *on the internet!*, and has currently swung back around to *as software running on a general purpose computing device that isn't even remotely described in this patent application!*.)
You're arguing with a patent lawyer. Just throwing that out there so you don't embarrass yourself too much over it.
You're arguing with a patent lawyer. Just throwing that out there so you don't embarrass yourself too much over it.
Heh heh. Re: your abstract point, it's the claims that matter.
Why should tasks be patentable? That's like saying "I've patented the CAR! No one can build cars without my permission because I have patented the tasks for building a car!"
Tasks are not patentable in hardware, the hardware itself is what's patented, so in compliment, code is already protected therefore software patents have no place. Light was not patented, the Lightbulb was.
If I see something in someone elses software and can replicate that functionality with my own code I shouldn't be sued or have to pay someone to do it.
Oh, I *have* invented an unbreakable encryption algorithm. It's even implemented on nearly every computer OS in existence. The problem is it's completely useless, because it's *unbreakable*. Nobody can decrypt the encrypted content. (You do realize that that's what "unbreakable encryption" means, right?)
The other problem is that, like any piece of software, it is nothing more than mathematics, which is non-patentable subject matter.
Is this for real?
It can't be... There's gotta be hundreds of apps that use the upgrade button...
It can't be... There's gotta be hundreds of apps that use the upgrade button...
Great, so show us some prior art from before 1992 that would have made this obvious? It should be easy since this is so broad of a patent claim as to border on the absurd.
So to paraphrase, "I can't explain why doing something in hardware is patentable but doing the exact same thing in software isn't, so I'll be cute to try and hide the fact that I just said something idiotic like software=speech."
Last edited by a moderator:
That's not what I said. I said patents are over specifications usually. A group of tasks that is accomplished to get from an initial state to a result. That is what software patents are about and it happens to be what specifications are (think Processes, which are part of a specification. Is your process innovative and new ? Patent the heck out of it).
Think of the famous "Slide to unlock" patent. You have an initial state, a locked phone displaying a control to unlock it. The user then has to slide a finger across the control which will result in the phone changing the screen to the springboard UI which would let the user use the device as intended.
There's a specification somewhere at Apple that describes this process. Then there's code somewhere at Apple that implements this process as described by the specification. The code is copyrighted and no one can just take this code verbatim and distribute it in their own derivative work without a license from Apple. However, the actual process description itself would not be protected by mere copyright, as you could simply write your implementation of this specification from scratch and copyright would not cover it.
That's where Patents come in.
You're arguing with a patent lawyer. Just throwing that out there so you don't embarrass yourself too much over it.
Fair enough. That said, my point still stands. Early priority date has absolutely no impact on the non-obvious requirement.
Likewise, it also has no bearing on the fact that software, a branch of mathematics, is non-patentable subject matter according to the statute. (Of course, I can't help it that courts which don't understand that fact have consistently made the incorrect rulings on that matter.)