http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/16/apple-vs-google-inside-an-android-patent-violation/?hpt=hp_c2
Patent violation!! Thou shalt not UNDERLINE!!
Patent violation!! Thou shalt not UNDERLINE!!
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Attn syadasti: Steve Jobs owns the underline!!
- Thread starter MMike
- Start date
That's the squiggly line, you see, not the underline
comments from HTC in light of latest lawsuit from apple:
at this point, i'm starting to wonder how many people in the US patent office are on apple's payroll. i question how some of apple's patents got approved in the first place, many of them are grossly generic and don't really represent a unique or novel idea.
they beat them by 15 years for the patent. get over it
They should mention Apple lost cases against - Nokia, S3 (now owned by HTC), and Kodak. I don't think think their Samsung suit will be successful either. Apple was also not first to market with a touchscreen phone (IBM Simon launched in 1993) or even a modern one (LG Prada came first and Apple copied some of their GUI style elements - http://www.applematters.com/article/the-iphone-lawsuits/)
An alliance including Apple just bought some Nortel Patents so they can steal those ideas too - http://www.engadget.com/20​11/07/01/rim-apple-sony-mi​crosoft-consortium-snags-n​ortel-wireless-pat/
Samsung and Intrinisity exclusively designed and Samsung manufactures the Apple A4 processor. Samsung also had a significant role in the A5 and they make that too - it was designed before Apple bought Intrinsity. Jobs is putting them down in public and trying to sue when Samsung was essential in Apple's consumer electronic success throughout the years.
An alliance including Apple just bought some Nortel Patents so they can steal those ideas too - http://www.engadget.com/20​11/07/01/rim-apple-sony-mi​crosoft-consortium-snags-n​ortel-wireless-pat/
Samsung and Intrinisity exclusively designed and Samsung manufactures the Apple A4 processor. Samsung also had a significant role in the A5 and they make that too - it was designed before Apple bought Intrinsity. Jobs is putting them down in public and trying to sue when Samsung was essential in Apple's consumer electronic success throughout the years.
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all of that means nothing towards this patent violation.
Wrong, S3 is now property of HTC. Apple violates S3 patents proven in court.
Completely relevant in patent cases like these. When Apple sued Nokia the final outcome was that Apple was the net violator to Nokia patents - Apple lost in a big way:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/14/nokia-patent-settlement-a-sweet-defeat-for-apple/
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so you are saying S3/HTC filed their patent prior to 1996 on using underlines?
funny you should mention that, design patents are only valid for 14 years.
hmm good point. but i need 50 references about something not at all related.
i can reference like 5000 misc patents.
granted, this is a design patent, so its good for 14 years from date of issue (not date of application), so apple still has 2 years with it. I wonder what they're going to do when all these patents start expiring...
also, HTC's best best is to try and argue that the patent is invalid. Underlining text indicating an action associated with it was old hat when apple filed the patent; its basic protocol for a http link. Recognizing and underlining and phone number is essentially an extension of this, and doesn't really qualify for the "unique and novel" requirement of a patent. They could possibly patent the underlying methods for how phone number's are recognized in their software, but underlining what's basically a link is certainly not worthy of a patent.
one thing worth pointing out... Blackberrys do this too. If this holds, I wonder if they'll actually go after RIM. (not like it really matters, but RIM still has a TON of capital)
Nokia and Apple's lawsuits clearly show that unrelated IP is relevant in these type of legal battles.
Forced cross-licensing agreements is one of the prime drivers and Apple would be hoping for advantageous S3 licensing from HTC.
Only you would somehow equate buying with stealing. Pro-tip: just because used car dealers use the phrase "a steal" doesn't mean that legitimate commerce and theft are the same thing.
It actually takes a lot of humility to say "Oh, that's a good idea. We should purchase it. At a price negotiated with the inventors/owners." Crazy, but that is the exact way patents are supposed to work. Though since apple did it, I'm sure it's evil and corrupt.
So you mean, like they did?
this all makes entirely too much sense. i think you should edit this post to ensure it no longer contains any rationality.
what this looks like to me is apple aggressively protecting their 'brand'. the function of their devices plus the look are what make apple products apple, good or bad. any company who has a brand that is probably worth more than their actual products would want to protect that brand in any way possible. taking on a suit like this is exactly this type of move.
car companies do it, luxury goods companies do it, even fast food companies do it. thinking that jobs is doing this for some emotional payoff is nuts. remember - its the shareholders who essentially decided to do this. if they didn't agree with the way jobs and board run the company, jobs and the board wouldn't be there to make these kinds of decisions.
if i had apple stock, honestly, i would be psyched with a move like this. potentially freezing your competition in its tracks due to a technicality? brilliant.
If its not your idea, you are copying/ripping it off. That's not innovation as Apple constantly markets themselves, its the same thing Steve Jobs and others put down Microsoft for. plagiarism/knock-off/copycat its worse when Apple does it because they constant proclaim they are original.
core functionality doesn't create a brand. that's like saying Ford is a brand of cars because they have internal combustion engines that run on unleaded gasoline.
they're competing in the market increasingly through litigation rather than innovation.
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it was tl;dr. have they examined HTC's source code to see what methods were invoked?
That's how the whole industry works. They sue each other and settle through cross-licensing the IP that they own. Only man out in this game is Google/Android, and they may well get screwed in the end for it.
so the mobile phone industry is just a bunch of lawyers and executives ejaculating money at each other every time one of them releases a device?
sounds kinda like the health insurance industry
i dunno, i would say core functionality in tech gadgets does create a brand. part of the apple marketing schtick is to claim how 'easy' apple products are to use. think of a desktop mac. it has one way to click it - no right click/left click stuff. that's part of the brand - its different, slicker and (supposedly) simpler.
who cares how they are competing anyway. this isn't anything about honor or morals, its about bringing shareholders a better and better return every year. once you go public, that's what your company becomes - a money raking machine. the main thing that matters to every publicily held company is bringing home the bacon in everyway possible, whether thats through development of products, suing the crap out of your competition, or both.
apple is just doing what anyone would do that is making money off an idea. if you step too close to their idea, they are going to take the chance of losing to protect it. if you win - awesome, you made money. if you lose - doesn't matter - your competition will think twice about throwing their new idea on the market, and spend more time getting that new idea out there.
does it squash some ideas? probably. but does it make new ideas have to be that much newer/better/different? probably too.
so how again does this apply to their patent on the underline?....which they had since 1996
remember... we're talking business here - right and wrong really doesn't apply.
blackberry was using this feature before the iphone ever hit the market, so no, it's not "brand defining".
as the end users, we should all care. it wasn't until the last few years that the US was starting to catch up to other markets in terms of cutting edge phones.
fixed it for you
exactly. and now - apple could make it brand defining. they possibly have a patent on record that could make our current reality, which is:
all phones share the same technology
to:
apple is the only product out there that can do this. our stuff is better. and it probably isn't.
that i'll totally agree with. it sucks we can't get what users in europe and japan have been using. moves like this definitely slow down the process of development, but i think the overall issue is not with little patents like this. i think we aren't seeing the good stuff like people have overseas because the network companies don't want to invest in better e-infrastructure (spelling?) constantly because their shareholders would be pissed to see consant expenditures related to support someone else's stuff, not their own.
The iphone was first released in the USA.
how exactly could apple make something as generic as what's essentially a hyperlink into a brand defining feature?
geographical coverage does play a part, but there's other non-network aspects that have lagged and are device specific. IE phones with a fast cpu so the UI is snappy and not laggy.
keep up with the conversation chief. my point was that US phones were basically garbage in comparison with what was available internationally until smartphones started becoming prevalent in the last few years.
Yeah, I bet all of those inventors desperately trying to get large companies to license their inventions constantly complain they were "ripped off" when the large companies actually pay them to license the patent.
Here's a shocker - HTC doesn't make their own LCD screens. They purchase them from someone else and then, gasp, still put "HTC" on the phone as if they built it themselves. They don't even give credit to the screen manufacturer. Those THIEVING BASTARDS!!!
You're saying that in 1996 it was obvious that browsers should comb through text and identify raw text that was likely a phone number, then connect it to phone call functionality? Before you answer, ask yourself when the first IP phone appeared and when the first mobile browser appeared.
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i don't think you can point to one specific feature and say its brand-defining, well, maybe for a few products, like coke, but even then, its the combination of the red can, the swooshy wave under the logo, and the final thing - the taste. its a combination of features that create "coke". throw a bunch of coke in a RC cola bottle, and its just not coke anymore.
take that coke scenario and throw it into apple's situation. if they can get a bunch of different features working for them at the same time, it makes them different. it adds to the apple "thing" of "easy".
so you're right, the software that allows an iphone to auto-identify phone numbers is not brand-defining on its own, but when combined with all the other apple features and style, it becomes more "apple" and less "other guys". not allowing your competition to have a feature, or even limit their ability to use that feature keeps you apart from them, even if the distance is hairline, it could be the difference you need to get those customers who are on the fence between a driod or iphone.
and who knows - maybe apple isn't looking to shut them down at all from using the feature - maybe they just are looking for a one-time settlement - a "royalty" - to snag some cash out of someone else's pocket.
the coke example refers to what's known as "trade dress" - ie the aesthetics of the product.
Apple has its own aesthetics. again, a lot of it is the physical appearance of the device itself. Trade dress also applies to the user interface (gui).
the problem here is that apple is overreaching what should and can be patented (shortcomings of the US patent office are another boondoggle of a discussion). imagine if microsoft tried to patent half the most commonly used tags in HTML... the internet wouldn't exist as we know it today.
nice - i learndid something today - never heard of that. if brands get fat, do you think they opt to buy the next dress size up, or do they try to diet to stay in that same size?
but here you're talking about patenting the actual language, the actual code tools, not a tool created by the code.
so sure, you wouldn't want someone to try to patent "<b>" so we could never have bold font again.
i'm kinda lost here in how to say it exactly, especially since i'm about to pack up to drive my car that's filled with patents (yet we can all drive one, even tho they all have different features)... but trying to protect something you created through public-use tools should be able to be protected in one way or another. but if you create a tool - say its for public use, then try to pull it away, you lost out. so if MS were to try to limit HTML use, that would be MS trying to prevent me from using a hammer they manufacturered to build the (slightly) unique house i designed.
i don't think i made sense there.
HTC doesn't market their screens or processors as exclusive HTC innovation. They don't call their components from Samsung (say a processor like the Samsung S5PC110A01 a HTC H4 like Apple does with their A4). And they don't have BS tag lines like "Think Different".
It was obvious in 1992 prior art to IBM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon
Think different, think again.
http://web.archive.org/web/19990221174856/byte.com/art/9412/sec11/art3.htm
*sigh*
Are you sure you understand how patents work? This is really simple - if the IBM patent is prior art, then it is very easy and very cheap to have the Apple patent tossed. The fact that it was awarded doesn't point to anything nefarious by Apple, nor incompetent by the USPTO - the system by design creates some redundant patents, and then puts the onus on the patent owner to defend their patent.
If the Apple patent isn't tossed out, it's because it is shown to either build on, or not conflict with the IBM work.
We get it, you hate Apple. Understandable considering how they violated your grandmother and kicked you out of your home. Unfortunately that doesn't change reality, in particular, the legal system.
I answered YOUR question and called in to question Apple's patent validity, what more do you want?
Except you didn't - because the IBM Simon doesn't make Apple's invention obvious and it certainly doesn't invalidate their patent, at least not by definition as you seem to think.
You showed that their may be prior art, and that the defendants may be able to invalidate Apple's patent - which is exactly how the system is supposed to work, and is not a major expense on anyone's part. The dual facts that the Simon actually made it to market and Apple's patent has not yet been tossed out points to the likelihood that Apple's claims either differ or extend beyond the capabilities of the Simon.
All that reflects is obscurity (poor promotion/sales) and being ahead of its time (like IBM's Portalplayer MP3 player they never launched - even Portalplayer's senior manager Knauss had doubts about their own Apple design). The Simon was demoed in 1992, launched in 1993, and didn't get significant press coverage until nearly 1995 (and Byte isn't a high circulation mainstream IT publication like PC Magazine or PC World was back then).
browsers, email, etc yes. If a device had the built-in telephony capabilities then yes, that would most certainly be an obvious feature.
You seem to forget not forget that computers were capable of making phone calls long before VoIP existed. Some of us used to connect via dial up (which, subsequently enabled you to make phone calls from your computer as well).
in other apple patent news... ITC just upheld a judge's ruling that invalidated another patent belonging to apple
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/19/itc-patent-ruling-against-apple-will-stand-kodak-nods-approving/
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/19/itc-patent-ruling-against-apple-will-stand-kodak-nods-approving/