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Microsoft Co-Founder's Firm Sues Apple and Others in Patent Dispute

ratings

So, are most car companies also guilty of stealing intellectual property? They tell you when you need fuel or oil.


Positive ratings on this article= Fanboys/Trolls

Really, sueing for alerting users of items of current interest? Come on!
 
Originally Posted by Bodypainter
patents should be stopped. this is getting even more ridicolous!

i can understand that someone wants to protect his idea that really is unique. but it should have a certain basis and substance. imagine someone had a patent for wheels and only one company was able to produce wheels. i don't think that society would have come far. patents are about making money. sad, sad!


No, patents are good. If a company sues like this, they lose. You can't make money off of pantenting something like wheels. You CAN sue if, say, Ford makes the Ford Edge and Chevy makes the Chevy Edge that looks exactly the same as the Ford Edge. This is just an example, not real.
 
Patents these days are like "domain squatting", think of an idea, patient it, hope companies profit off of it, then sue. Excellent scam.
 
iEvolution said:
Patents these days are like "domain squatting", think of an idea, patient it, hope companies profit off of it, then sue. Excellent scam.
Click to expand...

For many large established companies - patent portfolios are defensive. You encourage your employees with bonuses and benefits (for example, "inventor weekends" in the Caribbean - those were a blast) to patent every conceivable thing.

If some other company sues you for a patent transgression, it's quite possible that you'll have some patent that they're violating. End result - out-of-court settlement with a cross-licensing agreement.

Two golden examples are the Microsoft/Apple cross-licensing agreement, and the Intel/AMD agreement.

I am the inventor on a handful of patents owned by my company, and have been involved with our IP (Intellectual Property) lawyers on several occasions when I noticed that a major competitor has released a product that violates my patents. We didn't sue, but the issue was noted and recorded, in case it needs to be used defensively in the future.
 
Didn't bother reading the article. Honestly, there's so much new tech floating around out there I'm amazed any one can keep track of what anyone else is producing. Apple sues so-and-so, Microsoft sues so-and-so, Google sues so-and-so - it's a patent lawsuit frenzy. In the end, it's all about the money. My mom always said, "follow the money," and she's right. Greed. It's not even about integrity or humility. Capitalism man, it's corrupting 'cause people have free will, and when it comes down to it, people will s4!t all over you to get what they want. It's the American way.

So glasses up, and let's toast to all the frivolous patent lawsuits, civil lawsuits, medical malpractice lawsuits. You know who loses in the end? Us, the insurance holders, whose premiums rise cause America is a trigger happy nation full of "me's". It's amazing actually, in E.U., Canada, U.K., ask what people do for a living, they generally say "paint", "golf", "travel". In the states, we always state our jobs, we identify with what we do, what we own, it defines us... cause we're jonesing for the money...
 
Suits About Ideas

Let us not forget that when Apple sued MS for infringing on the "look and feel" of Mac OS, the Court at that time (which appeared to be absolutely clueless about technology) ruled that despite the fact that MS reverse engineered the MAC OS to come up with Window, look and feel (GUI) was an idea already in the public domain, even though no company had produced one successfully except for Apple. The fact that they produced computers that actually used it was irrelevant. Now, of course, the judiciary is slightly more savvy, and results of these lawsuits is far from certain.:confused:
 
*yawn* Typical MR fanboys... :rolleyes:

1r45zs.jpg


This is why when it comes down to it, the "reporting" that goes on here isn't worth the e-ink it's printed on.

You want an opinion on a tech. company's lawsuit, you go to CNet or Arstechnica or even PC Mag/World. 'Cause here, you'll get nothing but "baa!" sheeple ("How DARE anyone -- anyone at ALL! -- sue my precious fanboy company? *stomps feet childishly*"). Lame.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” -- Steve Jobs
http://www.edibleapple.com/steve-jobs-referenced-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal/

Oh, but let's go back to wanting to see Balmer executed or something for some sort of treasonous act (suing Apple, an American company??!! what a blasphemy! why you must hate America then!). That's you're typical fanboy in a nutshell. lol
 
maxlopez said:
*yawn* Typical MR fanboys... :rolleyes:

1r45zs.jpg


This is why when it comes down to it, the "reporting" that goes on here isn't worth the e-ink it's printed on.

You want an opinion on a tech. company's lawsuit, you go to CNet or Arstechnica or even PC Mag/World. 'Cause here, you'll get nothing but "baa!" sheeple ("How DARE anyone -- anyone at ALL! -- sue my precious fanboy company? *stomps feet childishly*"). Lame.
Click to expand...

Go to PCRumors and see what the hate ratio is over there.;)
 
Potus said:
Now, of course, the judiciary is slightly more savvy, and results of these lawsuits if far from certain.:confused:
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I'm glad that you used the adjective "slightly" ;) .

Remember when the judge in the Microsoft anti-trust case deleted the Internet Explorer icon from his desktop, and proclaimed that he'd "removed Internet Explorer from his system"? :eek:
 
First Grader Patent

Allen's patents illustrate what has become the symbol of U.S. decline, patents that any first grader could imagine -- needing only a patent attorney to make the obvious sound new.

Really!
 
Generic!

These are all extremely generic patents. :confused:

It's the truth though, so the judge can't rule against the facts.

This is the only instance in which I feel sorry for Apple...
 
Those patents are lame. I don't want an Attention Manager or something "Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest"
 
dona83 said:
Forget winning the lottery, I'm getting an intellectual patent.
Click to expand...

Christie: So, Mi-chelle! What are you up to?

Michele: Oh, okay. Um, I invented Post-Its.

Christie: No offense, Michele, but how in the world did *you* think of Post-Its?

Michele: Uh...

Romy: And I thought of them completely by myself. I mean, all Michele did was say: "What about making them yellow?"

Michele: [turns to the A Group] Actually I invented a special kind of glue.

Christie: Oh really? Well then I'm sure you wouldn't mind giving us a detailed account of exactly how you concocted this miracle glue, would you?

Michele: No. Um, well, ordinarily when you make glue first you need to thermoset your resin and then after it cools you have to mix in an epoxide, which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? And then I thought maybe, just maybe, you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process and it turns out I was right.
:D
 
faroZ06 said:
You CAN sue if, say, Ford makes the Ford Edge and Chevy makes the Chevy Edge that looks exactly the same as the Ford Edge. This is just an example, not real.
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You sound like a brilliant legal mind.

Where did you go to law school?
 
maxlopez said:
*yawn* Typical MR fanboys... :rolleyes:

1r45zs.jpg


This is why when it comes down to it, the "reporting" that goes on here isn't worth the e-ink it's printed on.

You want an opinion on a tech. company's lawsuit, you go to CNet or Arstechnica or even PC Mag/World. 'Cause here, you'll get nothing but "baa!" sheeple ("How DARE anyone -- anyone at ALL! -- sue my precious fanboy company? *stomps feet childishly*"). Lame.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” -- Steve Jobs
http://www.edibleapple.com/steve-jobs-referenced-good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal/

Oh, but let's go back to wanting to see Balmer executed or something for some sort of treasonous act (suing Apple, an American company??!! what a blasphemy! why you must hate America then!). That's you're typical fanboy in a nutshell. lol
Click to expand...
I suggest going to NEOWIN if you prefer a site with an anti-Apple slant.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Paul Allen happened to be a founder of MSFT but none of that matters. What matter is that he is a patent troll who is looking for money because of a series of bad business decisions which have drained his resources.
 
aristotle said:
I suggest going to NEOWIN if you prefer a site with an anti-Apple slant.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Paul Allen happened to be a founder of MSFT but none of that matters. What matter is that he is a patent troll who is looking for money because of a series of bad business decisions which have drained his resources.
Click to expand...

Yes this attack isn't even Apple specific, it is Paul Allen vs All internet companies ( minus Microsoft).

This is kind of like when Unisys wanted to get license fees for GIF format and received a lot of hate.

Except, in comparison, Unisys had been licensing it's technology in good faith (LZW) and CompuServe were the ones who screwed up and used it in GIF. Oh and LZW was actually a real technology with research behind it.

In this case these are just broad, common sense ideas, not researched technology. This is pure douche patent troll sues everything on the internet with what should be bogus patents.
 
aristotle said:
What matter is that he is a patent troll who is looking for money because of a series of bad business decisions which have drained his resources.
Click to expand...

Please post a link to support the idea that Paul Allen is short of money, or we'll have to assume that this is unsupported conjecture.

All things are relative, of course. I get nervous when I have less than $20K in my checking account - maybe for Paul Allen the "worry threshold" is less than $20G in cash....
 
Fender2112 said:
Here's a link to one of the patents:

Sounds to me like Mr. Allen owes me some money for all the freaking pop-up adds and other annoyances that are in my peripheral.
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Must have taken particular gall to patent a specific subset of multitasking in the year 2000. Perhaps they started work on it back in the 1970's or 1980's but only got around to patenting it in 2000. Probably was distracting with all the popups cluttering their entire computer screen while they were busy with their primary task of gazing aimlessly out the window dreaming of income from future patent litigation. Such dreamers!

Best argument against originality of a patent ever: an "inventor" who patents two ideas with exactly the same name (!)
 
AidenShaw said:
Please post a link to support the idea that Paul Allen is short of money, or we'll have to assume that this is unsupported conjecture.

All things are relative, of course. I get nervous when I have less than $20K in my checking account - maybe for Paul Allen the "worry threshold" is less than $20G in cash....
Click to expand...
For heaven's sake -- people in his financial universe don't handle their own money... some ethics-free financial advisor of his sees patent companies run by lawyers as a good investment. The real question is whether this PR is actually bad enough for Mr. Allen to care. My money's on no...
 
glimp7 said:
These are all extremely generic patents. :confused:

It's the truth though, so the judge can't rule against the facts.

This is the only instance in which I feel sorry for Apple...
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Hear that? That's the sound of a thousand more tech companies stampeding out of the US and far away from its ridiculous patent system.
 
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