Yeah, sorry. I think I’ll go with the final verdicts which are the result of several appeals including all the way to the Supreme Court as opposed to your opinion.
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U.S. ITC Judge Says Apple Infringed on Qualcomm Patent, Import Ban Recommended [Updated]
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Yeah, sorry. I think I’ll go with the final verdicts which are the result of several appeals including all the way to the Supreme Court as opposed to your opinion.
"Qualcomm provided Bloomberg with the following statement on the second ITC verdict: "We're pleased the ITC has found Qualcomm's latest patent claims invalid, it's another important step to making sure American companies are able to compete fairly in the marketplace. Qualcomm is using these cases to distract from having to answer for the real issues, their monopolistic business practices."
So Qualcom is pleased that they were ruled against in a courtroom
So Qualcom is pleased that they were ruled against in a courtroom
That was Apple’s statement, not Qualcomm’s."Qualcomm provided Bloomberg with the following statement on the second ITC verdict: "We're pleased the ITC has found Qualcomm's latest patent claims invalid, it's another important step to making sure American companies are able to compete fairly in the marketplace. Qualcomm is using these cases to distract from having to answer for the real issues, their monopolistic business practices."
So Qualcom is pleased that they were ruled against in a courtroom
Not necessarily. IPRs can only involve document prior art. If someone was actually making a circuit like this but didn’t publicize it, then even clearing an IPR doesn’t tell you much about whether the patent is ultimately valid; that’ll have to wait for a district court determination.
True, but it's super unlikely and rare these days that someone would be making a circuit without any documentation. I'm not sure how one would even make the claimed circuit without at least generating layouts.
In my experience, if I get to the point where I cannot find any patent, manual, spec sheet, thesis, article, or whitepaper (or similar) prior art, then I am really confident there is no good prior art out there. That said, this has only happened maybe once in my career.
Indeed still plenty of challenges and counter challenges ahead.
My point about baby steps and the addition of a single transistor wasn't aimed at you so much as the crowd who keeps acting like innovation is some massive and unambiguous leap forward. There are far more patents like this and remarkably few that look like divine inspiration.
I think it's because we tend to take a lone hero view of history. We say "Edison invented the lightbulb". He didn't-- there were vacuum sealed incandescent carbon bulbs before him. He patented a particular improvement to the carbon filament. EdisonRumors.com at the time was full of people yelling about how Edison wasn't really innovating and how he was just another American trying to steal credit for a British invention.
It's the incrementalism that makes patent defense so contentious. An incremental improvement that nobody else thought of seems obvious in hindsight. The lightbulb patent was also fought, invalidated, revalidated and then finally protected by a business agreement with Swan.
Likewise, the Wright Brothers patent wasn't for an airplane, it was for a specific type of control surface and there were lawsuits in all directions.
Swipe to unlock was really about moving a graphic onscreen along with the user's finger. Other companies had used the swipe gesture itself.
We don't stand on the shoulders of giants, we stand on the shoulders of people standing on shoulders all the way down...
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Feel free, but your basing your trust on the trust in institutions rather than reasoned fact, which is ironically the same reason we sometimes get these absurd judgements.
You may make documentation, but the documentation has to be published for the USPTO to consider it. So when I designed CPUs at AMD, for example, there were “documents” but those documents could not have been used at an IPR. In my new career I’ve seen product prior art save the day a handful of times. It is particularly common in the circuits arena, because of the hundreds of millions of circuits on a die, few are “published.”
No, I’m basing my judgment on logic and common sense. It just happened to align with the court.
So...
1. Apple shames Spotify for not wanting to pay 30% cut to Apple for doing nothing (no hosting, etc).
2. Apple shames Qualcomm for charging "excessive" fees, maybe 3% or whatever fee they were asking, nowhere near 30% for crucial modem/communications tech that has real life implications in performance/operation of smartphones.
A bit ironic and hypocritical no?
1. Apple shames Spotify for not wanting to pay 30% cut to Apple for doing nothing (no hosting, etc).
2. Apple shames Qualcomm for charging "excessive" fees, maybe 3% or whatever fee they were asking, nowhere near 30% for crucial modem/communications tech that has real life implications in performance/operation of smartphones.
A bit ironic and hypocritical no?
I've had the displeasure of dealing with documents describing a product at IPRs before. Usually it's come combination of a user manual or marketing materials that describe the functionality, and some kind of public website or whitepaper that describes how it works.
All of this is getting a bit off track. Of course if it's not public then its not prior art. My point is a bit broader: If it was a publicly available chip that is prior art, odds are it's functionality is described in some public documents (spec sheets, integration manuals, etc.). If it wasn't described in public documents, then it's probably not very good prior art anyway. Not impossible to prevail on, but certainly an uphill climb.
I think that's an inapt analogy, for at least two reasons that I can think of off the top of my head.
First, this patent doesn't cover 1/12 of the value of an iPhone. It covers like 1/300th (or whatever) of the value of an iPhone.
Second, as you acknowledge, intellectual property isn't like physical property. There's no grey area in stealing cookies. Either you paid for the cookie or you stole it. There's really no way you stole it but believed in good faith that you could take it without paying, and certainly not day after day.
IP is different. Apple could have had a totally good faith belief that their implementation of the tech at issue here didn't infringe Qualcomm's patent (and a subsequent court might yet agree with them). Unlike who owns a cookie, what a patent does and doesn't cover is extremely complex and subject to good faith debate among even highly trained and impartial observers.
So here's my analogy: I bake cookies that use 300 ingredients. Someone else claims that one of the ingredients I use, a particular spice, belongs to them because it grows on land that they claim to own through an arcane claim of legal title. I disagree that they own the land on which the spice is grown, and I contend that the land is publicly owned, such that anyone can pick the spice that grows there. We go to court, and the judge says, "nope, you're wrong, qcassidy352, that other guy's ancestral title is actually valid, and it turns out it's his land."
So in that scenario, what should happen? Should all my cookies get pulled off the market forever? Or should I have to pay a modest royalty to the other guy that accurately reflects the importance of his spice to my overall recipe?
I thought the ban was on iPhones using the Intel modems.
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Probably because buying a successful company for the sole purpose of running it into the ground is a bad investment strategy.
in screen fingerprint technology.
a higher megapixel camera, not a rehashed one.
airpods with an actual increase in sound quality.
batteries that don't die in a day.
curved display like samsung had 4 years ago.
i could go on...
Ok. It’s just that in this case the claims are directed to specific circuits. I’ve never seen a public disclosure of such a thing unless a patent app was filed on it or it was the subject of an academic paper, which is rare when the source of the product is a company. I’ve argued a few IPRs myself
Spoken like someone who doesn't know the difference between utility patents and design patents.
LoL and users here were accusing Spotify of being whiners. Looks like Apple is no better.
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LoL, good jokes.
Designing a competent all in one 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G modem without touching any of Qualcomm's patents is like trying to walk through a minefield while wearing a blindfold.
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LoL, good jokes.
So what? It will just allow Qualcomm to keep suing them.
Designing a competent all in one 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G modem without touching any of Qualcomm's patents is like trying to walk through a minefield while wearing a blindfold.
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That ship has probably sailed, as Apple reportedly stopped R&D on that feature several years ago. Arguably, FaceID is more innovative than Qualcomm’s ultrasonic fingerprint reader.
A higher megapixel count doesn’t necessarily equate to higher quality, by any means. But sure, who wouldn’t want better pictures? I’m sure Apple wants this more than you do; it’s a major selling point for both new and upgrade customers, and one of the few features that actually drive purchase decisions.
This wouldn’t as much take innovation as it would simply higher cost and a change in design philosophy, i.e. switching to an in-ear (likely not possible) or a sealed design. But sure I’m all-in for better sounding AirPods, even at a $200-400 selling price.
Incidentally, Apple has one of the most innovative inventors ever in audio engineering, Tomlinson Holman—the “TH” in THX—who has been at Apple since 2011. He was likely key to some of the innovative technologies and the excellent sound in general of HomePod, and he's probably also partly responsible, along with the larger audio engineering group, for the improvement in overall sound of Apple’s Macs in recent years. (He may also have some part in AirPods, who knows.)
Industry is spending billions on battery R&D but progress is more of the slow and steady variety rather than technology breakthroughs. Apple is likely spending tens/hundreds of millions a year on its own battery R&D, with results including the innovative terraced battery used in the 12” MacBook. Effective power management is also an important factor in prolonging battery life, and Apple just acquired part of Dialog, including some IP, to enhance their efforts in this key strategic technology.
Yikes, please no. Too much optical distortion, in addition to guaranteed glare from almost any viewing angle. People also complain about inadvertent touch events but I can’t speak to that.
btw, the flexible display that allows Apple to have such a small chin on their OLED iPhones is definitely innovative, and no one else has been able to duplicate that, afaik.
Ready when you are
Not a bad list, though some (not me) would complain that this type of incremental improvement, for which Apple is famous, isn’t “real” innovation. Not true.
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“Moves on to Presidential Review.” Anyone still curious about Tim’s cozy relationship with Mr. Trump?
They probably spend their time mostly discussing hair styles and fashion...
Doubtful; neither of them seem especially competent in either of those skills lol. (No offense just a snarky observation.)
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That ship has probably sailed, as Apple reportedly stopped R&D on that feature several years ago. Arguably, FaceID is more innovative than Qualcomm’s ultrasonic fingerprint reader.
A higher megapixel count doesn’t necessarily equate to higher quality, by any means. But sure, who wouldn’t want better pictures? I’m sure Apple wants this more than you do; it’s a major selling point for both new and upgrade customers, and one of the few features that actually drive purchase decisions.
This wouldn’t as much take innovation as it would simply higher cost and a change in design philosophy, i.e. switching to an in-ear (likely not possible) or a sealed design. But sure I’m all-in for better sounding AirPods, even at a $200-400 selling price.
Incidentally, Apple has one of the most innovative inventors ever in audio engineering, Tomlinson Holman—the “TH” in THX—who has been at Apple since 2011. He was likely key to some of the innovative technologies and the excellent sound in general of HomePod, and he's probably also partly responsible, along with the larger audio engineering group, for the improvement in overall sound of Apple’s Macs in recent years. (He may also have some part in AirPods, who knows.)
Industry is spending billions on battery R&D but progress is more of the slow and steady variety rather than technology breakthroughs. Apple is likely spending tens/hundreds of millions a year on its own battery R&D, with results including the innovative terraced battery used in the 12” MacBook. Effective power management is also an important factor in prolonging battery life, and Apple just acquired part of Dialog, including some IP, to enhance their efforts in this key strategic technology.
Yikes, please no. Too much optical distortion, in addition to guaranteed glare from almost any viewing angle. People also complain about inadvertent touch events but I can’t speak to that.
btw, the flexible display that allows Apple to have such a small chin on their OLED iPhones is definitely innovative, and no one else has been able to duplicate that, afaik.
Ready when you are
Not a bad list, though some (not me) would complain that this type of incremental improvement, for which Apple is famous, isn’t “real” innovation. Not true.
Of course others can replicate the curved OLED but why bother when it just necessitates programming a digital chin for swiping up easily and designing cases that leave the lower edge of the phone exposed?
It was a decision that put form ahead of function but doesn't even make artistic sense given the horror show of the notch on the opposite edge.
FaceID is just incremental XBox Kinect tech. Ultrasonic fingerprint is novel.