U.S. International Trade Commission Investigating Whether Apple Infringed on Maxell Patents

[I7guy]

Red herring.

Are you suggesting it's inconceivable that a company with a $2 trillion market cap can or would infringe on a patent(s)?

It's not as if Apple's never done it before.

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It's very conceivable Apple could be found for infringing on patents. Maxell is unlikely to get an injunction to stop iphone shipments into the US though.

 

[pasamio]

It's very conceivable Apple could be found for infringing on patents. Maxell is unlikely to get an injunction to stop iphone shipments into the US though.

Without seeing the filing, getting an injunction to stop Apple from selling products it's sold for a while now wouldn't cause an irreparable harm to Maxell. It's obviously standard foreplay for these sorts of deals because if you don't try you'll never get it but it seems unlikely to benefit the US consumer that the largest smartphone seller is prohibited from selling products on the off chance they might infringe a patent. And who knows maybe they will be found infringing and at that point Maxell will get some cash.

 

[jlc1978]

Before we get into the "troll" argument nonsense, it should be noted that Maxell is a big international company with an office in Texas, and has licensed these patents to BLU, ZTE, ASUS, Olympus, and Canon. This is, most definitely, not a troll.

Yea, they aren't a troll but a legitimate technology company. I would expect Apple's patent attorneys and agents are reviewing Maxell's claims and patents to find reasons why Maxell's patent may be invalid or where Maxell violates Apple patents. In the end the best course may simply be to cross license.

 

[macfacts]

Typical apple

 

[DEXTERITY]

Typical apple

Typical dumb response

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

"passcode unlocking, WiFi assist, mobile communications, facial recognition in the Photos app"

...What took them this long to complain about the fundamentals of iPhone?

About a trillion dollars.

 

[Apple Freak]

Maxell, pfffft....when I need a blank for my next mix tape I'll call Maxell.

 

[cmaier]

On an IMSAI 8080 you had to toggle in a short binary "program" to tell it how to run the cassette recorder, then load the OS from the recorder. Back when things just worked...or it was usually your own fault when they didn't.

I was more of an Altair guy, but same deal.

 

[japanime]

Grab your popcorn and take a seat.

 

[jayducharme]

This must be open season on Apple. Everybody and their brother is suing the company for something, coincidentally right after Apple stock hit a record high. It reminds me of sharks smelling blood.

 

[pasamio]

I don't think it's ever really stopped. You don't sue the ones that don't have money after all.

 

[Aston441]

Still have 2x4packs unopened purchased at Costco. Those were the days when a weekend was spent unspooling the tape stuck in the car's tape deck

Maxell magnetic tape was always garbage propped by fantastic marketing.

Not unlike recent iPhones except the SE2020.

 

[sinoka56]

Apple needs all the money it can get to pay all the legal fees for patents that they violate, and hope that patent owners don't sue.

 

[Crowbot]

In systems as complex as an iPhone it is almost to be expected that there might be some tech that might be seen as a patent infringement. This will be weighed by the courts.

 

[ryanmp]

It's about time the US overhaul the archaic patent system. Remove the ability to patent software and software features.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Without seeing the filing, getting an injunction to stop Apple from selling products it's sold for a while now wouldn't cause an irreparable harm to Maxell. It's obviously standard foreplay for these sorts of deals because if you don't try you'll never get it but it seems unlikely to benefit the US consumer that the largest smartphone seller is prohibited from selling products on the off chance they might infringe a patent. And who knows maybe they will be found infringing and at that point Maxell will get some cash.

This is in the ITC - the only remedy available is an injunction from importing infringing products. The default rule is that the public interest favors protecting intellectual property rights. Uniquity is only one factor, and a relatively unimportant one, for public interest.

The only times the ITC has declined to issue an injunction on a valid infringed patent was when the item was a literal life or death medical device, a device required to comply with national fuel-efficiency standards, and a device required for national atomic energy research.

I'm sure Apple will argue that first respondents, cops, firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, etc. use iPhones and iPads and their exclusion would harm the public. Maxell will argue that licensed Android devices can do all those things just as well.

At the end of the day, behind closed doors deep in the ITC, the overriding factor will be that Apple makes up about 10% of the Dow Jones and nobody at the ITC wants to be blamed for a massive dip in the US economy. So I highly doubt there will actually ever be a perfect injunction.

If Apple doesn't settle and Maxell wins on all the issues - I am sure the ITC will craft their exclusion order to be extremely soft on Apple, probably giving them a 1-year grace period to design around and things like that.

 

[cmaier]

It's about time the US overhaul the archaic patent system. Remove the ability to patent software and software features.

So if you build a bunch of transistors to do something it’s patentable, but if those transistors access RAM to determine what to do it’s not?

 

[ryanmp]

So if you build a bunch of transistors to do something it’s patentable, but if those transistors access RAM to determine what to do it’s not?

Nope not at all. The issue comes down to defining what is hardware and what is software and what defines the link between them. Patenting the software that is directly linked the functioning of the hardware, as you describe above makes sense.

But just look at some of the Patents in questions. Take U.S. Patent No. 10,176,848 as an example. The problem is well understood, you want to identify faces in a photos and videos and the patent envisages a software that would do this. But come on, do you really think this should be patentable from a software vision alone? My iPhone identifies faces, my video editing software does this, my EufyCam security cameras do this... why doesn't Maxell just take the whole world to court.

My post is not a defence of Apple, who are just as much to blame for patenting software and software features.

 

[cmaier]

Nope not at all. The issue comes down to defining what is hardware and what is software and what defines the link between them. Patenting the software that is directly linked the functioning of the hardware, as you describe above makes sense.

But just look at some of the Patents in questions. Take U.S. Patent No. 10,176,848 as an example. The problem is well understood, you want to identify faces in a photos and videos and the patent envisages a software that would do this. But come on, do you really think this should be patentable from a software vision alone? My iPhone identifies faces, my video editing software does this, my EufyCam security cameras do this... why doesn't Maxell just take the whole world to court.

My post is not a defence of Apple, who are just as much to blame for patenting software and software features.

Reading patent claim 1, seems like it’s not just software?

 

[ryanmp]

Reading patent claim 1, seems like it’s not just software?

Yea didn't have time today to read them all unfortunately and was making more of a generalised comment rather than specific to every claim in this case. Either way, an overhaul is long overdue.

 

[cmaier]

Yea didn't have time today to read them all unfortunately and was making more of a generalised comment rather than specific to every claim in this case. Either way, an overhaul is long overdue.

Seems to me that Alice has taken care of most of the truly objectionable patents, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

 

[cbaca51]

This pandemic got companies suing left and right for some money

 

[seclusion]

Thinking Apple needs a lawyer app,

 

[cmaier]

Thinking Apple needs a lawyer app,

I have one I can sell them!