These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enacted in this way.
I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.
Agreed. I've been doing iOS dev for about a year now and I really enjoy the hardware and the APIs but I'm getting very close to the breaking point with their behavior.
I'm not proud of enabling them by contributing to their ecosystem.
First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers:
These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas.
Apple has undeniably pushed the entire cell phone industry forward, and in the process had a tremendous impact on the software, entertainment, and game industries.
If everyone is free to copy their work and compete with them on price, and Apple could lose the market position they (in theory) earned through innovation, and may not be able to get it back. At the same time, if nobody else is innovating to do things differently from Apple, all we get are clones.
To the contrary, what it tells me is that Apple has lost confidence in its own ability to win on good ideas and good execution and is now being run by investors looking for quarterly returns and lawyers thinking this is actually a constructive way to "leverage the money they spend on R&D".
Actually, it would have been good because competition is good, and Microsoft proceeded to sew up the market as a monopoly for decades, using a slew of underhanded tricks to do so, and grossly undermining the position of the primary innovator who held a far better product. It wasn't until Windows 2K that MS even began to catch up to Apple's work, and then Apple leapfrogged with the NeXT purchase.
Would people mind not downvoting a cogent devil's argument into oblivion just because they disagree with software patents?
I think this stuff is largely obvious too, but my devil's argument is predicated around the notion that it might still come out to consumer's benefit anyway.
It's not as if the mobile market was particularly on fire before Apple got involved and completely changed the game, if you can remember back 3-4 years.
+1 for arguing the other side clearly and with an absence of fanboyism, but I don't think it holds up in the software field:
* Apple would be where they are with or without these patents - copyright would probably be sufficient.
* They are holding back innovation by attempting to win via legal means what they should be winning by marketing better products.
* These patent wars exclude companies which do not have the deep pockets to fight with the 'big boys', who can and do use patents as a club to snuff out upstarts.
> Apple has undeniably pushed the entire cell phone industry forward, and in the process had a tremendous impact on the software, entertainment, and game industries.
Here's what I wrote a couple weeks back on the topic:
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"...Apple won the smartphone market, and certainly raised overall ease-of-use standards in the market, but that doesn't mean that smartphones would have been objectively worse otherwise - just different, possibly better or worse. We would possibly have much more freedom in terms of app stores.
The fact that Apple stamped its mark on the global phone market and is making huge profits is absolutely not an inherent reason to be thankful for them. They won most of the market and now enjoy a massive network effect advantage (larger market => more developers developing for iOS => improved and cheaper app offerings => larger market); why respect them for doing the equivalent of what Facebook did in the social networking arena (make the most popular UX in the market)?
To be sure, a few companies deserve actual respect - for me, those are the companies that treat their customers well, are highly socially responsible, encourage openness, and play fair with all. Even better if they go beyond immediate profit goals to genuinely drive innovation. Most companies just want to make a buck by winning the market - nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't inherently deserve respect.
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Ultimately, the innovative value of the patents in this case is very little, and people were doing similar things before the patents were granted. Apple's "impact" and massive success and dominance are not things I think we should be thankful for.
What disproves your argument that "all we get are clones" is that all manner of tech startups are clearly innovating all the time despite not receiving patents for their ideas. The market is simply too rich, and the network effect too rewarding, for developers to give up innovation simply because they can't patent ideas.
So apple should be off the hook for innovation once it's released a product and gained a "market position"?
I'm sorry but I'm always going to have trouble with the idea of a company resting on its laurels, yet bringing continual revenue in year after year after year because a piece of government paper says that no one else is allowed to do anything remotely resembling what that company is doing since they got there first.
Also:
"A means of searching multiple databases and sources for data." Last I checked federated search has had a wikipedia article since 2005. Hardly seems like innovation pioneered by Apple and stolen by evil Google.
Slide to unlock... have you used an airplane bathroom?
> So apple should be off the hook for innovation once it's released a product and gained a "market position"?
I don't see evidence that Apple is resting on their laurels, but I do remember what happened with Mac OS and Windows back in the 80s/early 90s.
> "A means of searching multiple databases and sources for data." Last I checked federated search has had a wikipedia article since 2005. Hardly seems like innovation pioneered by Apple and stolen by evil Google.
It's a one-line description of a patent. I have no idea what it actually covers, do you? It might be as obvious as slide-to-unlock, but I have no idea.
> Slide to unlock... have you used an airplane bathroom?
An airplane bathroom isn't solving the problem of how to prevent accidental unlock in your pocket without making unlocking unduly difficult.
I think slide-to-unlock is pretty obvious once you go down the road of touch interfaces, but it's worth remembering why we're down that road at all now.
It's a one-line description of a patent. I have no idea what it actually covers, do you?
This argument frequently pops up in discussions of some patent troll action.
While patents are always more specific than a one sentence description, when you read the patent claims, the extra bits that make the patent more specific are not the interesting part of the patents. That's why one-sentence descriptions exist; they distill the interesting novel parts of the patent and leave all the other crud out.
More importantly, how are we to know that it's impossible to develop devices with equivalent functionality not covered by patent, functionality that users will accept and will not result in lower marketshare? Companies expose themselves to 3 times the damages if they go looking for patents covering devices they want to make, and find one. "Then they shouldn't release the product then." Really? In the break-neck development cycle of modern handheld devices, it is not possible to challenge a patent that looks invalid before developing the product.
How can such a system hope to function properly?
The entire patent system is broken, and arguing that patents are more complex or specific than the summaries ("one click checkout", "slide to unlock") is true, but irrelevant.
I see prior art for slide to unlock: A door bolt. Apple would argue, and the USPTO and courts would probably agree, that translating the idea from a physical moving bolt to a virtual bar on a touchscreen device is novel and not obvious and therefore it's patentable, but distinctions like that don't seem important to me.
'Slide to unlock' on a door bolt serves a completely different purpose than slide to unlock on a touchscreen. They have nothing to do with each other, and the idea was novel. That's true whether or not you think software ideas deserve 20 year patent protection (I don't think they do)
When Apple's competitors copied the iPod Mini, Apple didn't sue them. Apple scrapped the Mini and came out with an even more popular product.
I guess now that Apple is without Steve, they have lost the creative drive to innovate. With how good Jelly Bean looks and how good the SIII looks, Apple does not need to worry about clones.
Arguably, forcing other company's to innovate could be a Good thing. Is a rectangle with rounded edges the one and only perfect tablet shape? I don't know, but if everyone just copy's the iPad it's going to take a even longer to find out.
The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.
We can argue whether or not it's right for Apple to fight to protect this design, but let's not pretend that these tablets were developed completely independent of the iPad's design.
Some of those earlier tablets had rounded corners.
I imagine many of them would have looked much more like the modern tablets had technology been available at the time. For example, the battery, the weight, the durable glass, the display, the wireless options... all these things contributed to the ability to make a tablet without big rubber bumpers on the side of it.
Yes, Apple's design is nicer looking and they should be respected for pushing forward the manufacturing technology. But we don't allow auto makers to sue each other and block the sales of entire models because curves are in fashion one year and more angular shapes in fashion the next.
>The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.
Well I owned three phones back in 2002-2006 which had rows to buttons and were not iPhone. I get that iPhone is a great phone but please give credit where its due. Even BB had rows of button.
I know the iPhone was not the first phone that had icon's like that, however the Black Berry and Windows phone had both buttons and a menu interface. Which IMO is better than the early iPhone style page interface when you have lot's of icons. Apple ended up improving things by adding folders, but I did notice a lot of other phones that IMO copy'd the bad design elements of the early iPhone simply because it was so popular.
Edit: Not that iPhone was the first to use those elements, just that they where copying whatever the leader did. If windows phone starts to win I expect a switch to a lot of 'tile' interfaces.
"A means of detecting and marking up data like a phone number or an e-mail address, and then initiating a phone call or an e-mail when the linked data is clicked" nobody should own a patent on that, what the heck? The patent system is seriously messed up. Don't get me started on the other patent: "A means of searching multiple databases and sources for data." how can anyone be awarded such a generic patent? I'm disgusted.
The automatic touch screen-based linkification of phone numbers, addresses, and calendar dates was fairly novel <edit>for smartphones</edit> when Apple introduced it. I don't believe anyone else was doing it <edit>on smartphones</edit> -- and if they were, there's prior art, and the patent should be invalidated.
What made it that especially interesting was that it alleviated a large part of the need for copy+paste. If you'll recall, the first iPhone OS didn't ship with copy+paste.
I'm having trouble figuring out what "A means of searching multiple databases and sources for data" actually refers to.
There was a whole HN thread throwing up prior art about the linkification patent (and also on Reddit). Linkification was being done in the '80s, based on one of the programs that someone managed to scrounge up in the thread, and the '90s as well. No patents issued - people just did it.
The fact that these programs were written tells us that software writers innovate regardless of whether patents are issued for their work or not. That's the nature of software (and technology in general). The difference is, some software makers don't expect to protect their new features from competitors with patents. That's the crux of it, imo.
I see your point. My counter-argument would be that it solved a unique touch-screen problem of a lack of keyboard/mouse and a lack of an easy way to highlight text.
I think the thing I'm hung up on is that Apple stormed into the phone market and did a whole bunch of smart things that nobody had thought of, but are obvious in retrospect.
I don't agree with software patents, but I can't help but hesitate before agreeing that it's beneficial to the industry to let Apple's competitors wholesale copy their work (even the small things).
So wrong. When will we have comprehensive reform on software-related patent law? In this age everything is powered by a computer of some sort, and it's very important to the intellectual future of the nation that we secure the right for individuals and corporations to innovate without fear of a patent lawsuit.
It's wrong because Apple isn't simply protecting their IP, they're waging a litigious war against a legitimate competitor in hopes that the courts will give them the edge in the marketplace and not their superior products.
They are using the legal system - an important part of modern business. I can assure you in economies with inefficient or nonexistent legal systems, things get much worse and doing business is next to impossible.
Should apple not do this? This is hardball, we're talking billions... and they know they have a limitied window to take advantage of this before they have to continue. They'll make more than the hundred million they put up to do this in the time it takes to settle things.
No fanboy-ism here - but the iPhone DID fundamentally change the close-minded walled-garden ripoff stagnant mobile world to get off it's ass and innovate.
Are the patents absurd? Blame the patent system, not Apple for using it. Be sure their competitors are just waiting for a patent opportunity to come along to smash Apple over the head with. Let the big boys play their game. Apple anted up 95 million dollars that they lose if the case does not go in their favour... this isn't a freebie by a longshot.
So until the legal system levels the playing field and fixes the patent system or otherwise makes this type of action impossible, it's dog eat dog.
And in the end - the courts will decide. Don't like the patent system? talk to your representatives in government. Don't want to do that because it "won't matter"? Then you don't have much standing in my books to argue either way. Think politicians care about money? they care about VOTES, which money really helps buy - but convince them they have your votes and they money doesn't matter, they don't need campaign money if they have their votes locked.
> Are the patents absurd? Blame the patent system, not Apple for using it.
I think viewpoints differ largely at this point. While I agree that Apple has every right to use any and all legal ways to defend itself and potentially harm competitors; given that everyone is aware of the absurdity of majority of patents, it does seem wrong to use them offensively. There is no law against being douch-stupid-ignorant; laws are not always moral/right - they follow morality only slowly and caters to only the most easiest morality questions. Rationality allows Apple to do whatever it can, only the current morality doesn't.
The 'patents' are so vague and fundamental that they shouldn't be legal. They only are because the system is badly in need of reform (read: abolition) and non-technical people weigh in on the issues.
I like Samsung stuff, I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I'm an Android guy. I'm not going to go buy an iPhone if the Gnex gets banned.
Ever since they sued that German cafe I have had very little hope for them ever to take the righteous path again.
This is like Honda trying to sue Toyota for making a car with a steering wheel.
Computer industry as we know it has got here because of sharing of ideas (someone once said "stealing ideas"), these patents wars just don't feel right and may hurt the industry a lot and stifle innovation.
When you work for a company that does this, you owe it to your integrity to resign.
The government is too incompetent to fix this mess, and market pressure isn't going to do it either. That leaves us, the actual engineers. It's our job to tell the companies we work for that litigating instead of competing isn't acceptable.
I don't expect that many apple engineers will take a look at the general, vague, and obvious wording of the patent in question and agree that it is general, vague, and obvious.
Take 2 otherwise identical people and give them a question where one of them has a personal stake in the answer, while the other one doesn't, and you will generally find that these seemingly rational individuals have come to different conclusions.
Since you work at Google I am assuming you're going to resign as well ?
Because the FRAND abuses originated by Motorola and supported by Google is some of the most disgraceful behaviour seen in the industry since the days of Rambus. You don't participate in the creation of a standard and then turn around and sue companies who adopt those standards in good faith. It undermines the entire industry. If other companies had done this there would be no WiFi, Bluetooth, USB etc.
Anyway I assume that you're fully supportive of the FTC/EU investigating Google for anti-competitive behaviour ?
"Because the FRAND abuses originated by Motorola and supported by Google is some of the most disgraceful behaviour seen in the industry since the days of Rambus. You don't participate in the creation of a standard and then turn around and sue companies who adopt those standards in good faith. It undermines the entire industry."
You do if you're grasping at straws to defend yourself against the initial patent aggressors. Can't really blame them.
No you absolutely, unequivocally do not. Under any circumstance.
Because it sets an example where every tiny little contributor to a standard can hold every implementer at ransom. It would be the unravelling of the entire IT industry.
This is a preliminary injunction. It doesn't mean Apple wins against Samsung. From TFA:
"Apple was ordered to post a bond of $95 million to enact the injunction, which would be used to pay Samsung damages if the decision is later reversed."
When Android surfaced, it did not look blatantly like the iPhone. That is, until the Galaxy appeared. From the moment I saw a Galaxy prototype it was obvious: they were going to get sued.
Whether or not the iOS vs Android war makes sense at a high level is an interesting discussion, but this is pretty simple: Samsung practically begged to be the first to get sued. There isn't a lot to say about it after that.
I'm no lawyer. Is this ruling stating that the court believes the patents are valid, or simply that if they are found to be valid that they are being infringed in this case?
There's a huge difference between the two, and the article isn't quite clear on what the finding is. The bond makes it sound like it could be the latter, but everybody here seems to be assuming it's the former.
It's a preliminary injunction to prevent damages - the court has been convinced that this will go to court and that the damage done to apple during the time it takes to resolve the case warrants an injunction. They also wanted a bond from apple in case it goes the other way so the opposition doesn't get too screwed over if THEY win.... that's money in their pocket - not sure how common that is... first time I've heard of it.
I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.