The basic idea of patents is clear enough. The details of the way the institutions work and the peculiarities of the precedents handed down by various courts, have provided me with many surprises.
For instance, I understand that CAFC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has been handing down decisions based on an interpretation of a crucial test in patent law that a concurring opinion to a majority SCOTUS ruling has said is not supported. Apparently, the system as it stands is not so much unjust as incoherent.
Google is cornered and is taking the appropriate stance. They did not get the patents from the Nortel sale and Apple is already successful in putting pressure on HTC and perhaps other Android manufacturers in the near future. If the situation was different, Google was successful, and released Android before the original iPhone, they would be the one holding the patents to fight off competition.
Unfortunately for them, they are late to the party and unwilling to invest enough in mobile intellectual property. They clearly are not only playing and supporting the game but also complaining about the rules.
"If the situation was different, Google was successful, and released Android before the original iPhone, they would be the one holding the patents to fight off competition."
I believe (some of) the patents HTC got dinged with were granted before Google or HTC were founded (1996 iirc).
Investing more or less, paying attention more or less to mobile or any other kind of patent wouldn't have helped them to not be in violation. Might have helped them to not get challenged, but they would just as surely be in violation. A time machine was required.
I realize this is an over-generalization, but it seems to me that any mobile software company (not just OS, but of any kind) must have a license agreement for basically all the patents from Microsoft, Apple, Motorola, and Nokia at a minimum or they can be assured to be in violation of a patent. It is all but guaranteed. Everyone, including those mentioned, certainly violate each others patents.
The ambiguity is that the law (or at least the system) is unjust. The patent system is supposed to promote innovation by granting a limited monopoly to truly revolutionary ideas, in order to encourage people to spread knowledge of these revolutionary ideas. In practice, almost all software patents are trivial to reproduce by a skilled practitioner of the art, so no knowledge is spread. Enforcing these patents kills competition without any corresponding benefit to society.
(The people who have the licenses and rights don't generally care about credit, only money.)
Depends if the other side also wants to keep patents going. They may be interested in patent reform too. Apple has Lodsys to deal with, for example. If you dont have patents then its all about execution. I'd say Apple is kicking everyone's arse on execution. Same for IBM.
Apple may be afraid the day will come when they stop kicking everyone's ass on execution. That seems to be the simplest explanation for the Samsung / HTC / Motorola lawsuits. If they were confident they'd keep winning in the marketplace, why waste the time and take the PR hit?
In any case, Microsoft and RIM (two of Apple's partners on the Nortel patent purchase) know that the day that their execution is no longer enough has already arrived.
It's hard to swallow Google claiming the high ground after according to their own analysis, they were willing to pay significantly more than they believed the patents were worth.
As they say, "We've established what kind of woman you are, now we are just negotiating price."
Confusing criticism for sour grapes shuts down discussion of externalities like this. Ignoble words can argue for noble ends, but won't when people shoot the messenger.
Improving the rules of the game should make it easier for the meritocracy, if that is what you value then you should pay extra attention to those who look like they should be winning but aren't rather than the opposite.
The criticism of the process would be more convincing had Google won the bidding because there would not be any appearance of self-interest. Given that the article concludes:
"So the hunt continues for some nuclear warheads to build towards mutual assured destruction, and eventually détente,"
It is hard to see Google's motives as meaningfully different from those who won the auction. In an arms race both sides can claim it is for defense - and I will point out that nuclear warheads may deter a powerful opponent, but they will invariably intimidate the weak.
Isn't the difference that Google is the one being sued and the others are doing the suing? Defensive patent holdings seem different from offensive ones to me.
If you look at Android phones from 2007 (to me the one in the link looks very similar to a Blackberry) and if you look at them now you cannot miss how much they have changed to look like the iPhone.
You can't even tell it's the same OS.
So when you copy you are sued. (If the copying/taking inspiration was reasonable or not is a different issue.) Samsung was sued to copy "look and feel".
I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever.
Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things? I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line.
"I'm sure that if you look at computers before and after the PC you'll see that most companies followed the leader. Probably same with various generations of cars, planes, televisions, toasters, whatever."
That's true. And I'm sure we all remember the lawsuits that followed. Like I said, it being reasonable or not is a different issue.
Of couse, if you ignore advances made towards "a better way to do things" to avoid being labelled as copying there will be no progress. At the same time you want to make sure there is incentive for them who put in the effort to come up with the "better way to do things" otherwise the competition will simply sit around and copy while those who bear the burden to innovate aren't rewarded. So where to draw the line? That's a difficult question.
"I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line." The line in the sand is there already and crystal clear. This dispute is nothing new. To be clear, Apple aren't arguing that the phones cannot have radiused corners or have silver bevels, they are saying that the look of the Galaxy S phone is too close to the look and feel of the iPhone to be anything other than plagiarism and therefore an infringement of copyright. When you compare the two phones I've linked here, one can clearly see that HTC have done their own thing. They have their own design language that differs significantly from their competitors. It would generous to claim that Samsung where only inspired by Apple's IP; the look of the icons, the grid layout, the shape of the icons, the look and feel of the hardware, the placement of the d-pad. It's all too similar.
But Samsung hasn't lost yet and IMHO it was a stupid move from Apple's part -- besides the fact that Samsung also produces chips for them, Samsung has the right patents to counter-sue; and they are doing just that. Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway.
Do a little exercise -- try patenting something worthy that people may want to "copy" and then go to IBM telling them "fuck you IBM, I patented this so you can't use it". You'll give them a good laugh ;-)
And if IBM ever thought about copying the iPhone, even if it made the most faithful replica ever including naming it something like "xPhone", there's practically nothing Apple could do without effectively getting bitch-slapped.
Also, the term "copy" itself is misleading: it makes people think that new developments should be original, when clearly nothing is original or evolutionary. Everybody copies from everybody.
The patents system is terribly broken and rewording the current mess as something moral and just is really ignoring reality.
> Apple also sued Nokia, but they ended up paying royalties to them anyway.
The question there was never whether Apple would be paying, but how much. Given the pittance (a few euros per phone) Nokia apparently ended up getting with the best mobile patent portfolio in the world, it hardly seems like a win for Nokia or a loss for Apple. More likely it was Nokia being desperate to get the cash now to make their Q2 results look a little bit better.
There are others who see this too. [1] Seems to me I'm being down voted un-objectively. To quote from another up voted post:
"Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone.
It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.)
Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone.
There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions."
25 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 59.1 ms ] threadThe problem, as the article implies, is that those monopolies are transferable and hoarded.
For instance, I understand that CAFC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has been handing down decisions based on an interpretation of a crucial test in patent law that a concurring opinion to a majority SCOTUS ruling has said is not supported. Apparently, the system as it stands is not so much unjust as incoherent.
Unfortunately for them, they are late to the party and unwilling to invest enough in mobile intellectual property. They clearly are not only playing and supporting the game but also complaining about the rules.
I believe (some of) the patents HTC got dinged with were granted before Google or HTC were founded (1996 iirc).
Investing more or less, paying attention more or less to mobile or any other kind of patent wouldn't have helped them to not be in violation. Might have helped them to not get challenged, but they would just as surely be in violation. A time machine was required.
I realize this is an over-generalization, but it seems to me that any mobile software company (not just OS, but of any kind) must have a license agreement for basically all the patents from Microsoft, Apple, Motorola, and Nokia at a minimum or they can be assured to be in violation of a patent. It is all but guaranteed. Everyone, including those mentioned, certainly violate each others patents.
(The people who have the licenses and rights don't generally care about credit, only money.)
Yes, Apple claims one of their patents covers recognizing certain kinds of text (e.g. URLs, phone numbers, etc.) and making them clickable actions.
In any case, Microsoft and RIM (two of Apple's partners on the Nortel patent purchase) know that the day that their execution is no longer enough has already arrived.
Why is PageRank patented?
As they say, "We've established what kind of woman you are, now we are just negotiating price."
[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/what...]
Improving the rules of the game should make it easier for the meritocracy, if that is what you value then you should pay extra attention to those who look like they should be winning but aren't rather than the opposite.
"So the hunt continues for some nuclear warheads to build towards mutual assured destruction, and eventually détente,"
It is hard to see Google's motives as meaningfully different from those who won the auction. In an arms race both sides can claim it is for defense - and I will point out that nuclear warheads may deter a powerful opponent, but they will invariably intimidate the weak.
You can't even tell it's the same OS.
So when you copy you are sued. (If the copying/taking inspiration was reasonable or not is a different issue.) Samsung was sued to copy "look and feel".
[http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-l...]
Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things? I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line.
That's true. And I'm sure we all remember the lawsuits that followed. Like I said, it being reasonable or not is a different issue.
Of couse, if you ignore advances made towards "a better way to do things" to avoid being labelled as copying there will be no progress. At the same time you want to make sure there is incentive for them who put in the effort to come up with the "better way to do things" otherwise the competition will simply sit around and copy while those who bear the burden to innovate aren't rewarded. So where to draw the line? That's a difficult question.
Somewhere between here; http://cl.ly/8lZ5 and here; http://cl.ly/8lIC
"I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line." The line in the sand is there already and crystal clear. This dispute is nothing new. To be clear, Apple aren't arguing that the phones cannot have radiused corners or have silver bevels, they are saying that the look of the Galaxy S phone is too close to the look and feel of the iPhone to be anything other than plagiarism and therefore an infringement of copyright. When you compare the two phones I've linked here, one can clearly see that HTC have done their own thing. They have their own design language that differs significantly from their competitors. It would generous to claim that Samsung where only inspired by Apple's IP; the look of the icons, the grid layout, the shape of the icons, the look and feel of the hardware, the placement of the d-pad. It's all too similar.
Do a little exercise -- try patenting something worthy that people may want to "copy" and then go to IBM telling them "fuck you IBM, I patented this so you can't use it". You'll give them a good laugh ;-)
And if IBM ever thought about copying the iPhone, even if it made the most faithful replica ever including naming it something like "xPhone", there's practically nothing Apple could do without effectively getting bitch-slapped.
Also, the term "copy" itself is misleading: it makes people think that new developments should be original, when clearly nothing is original or evolutionary. Everybody copies from everybody.
The patents system is terribly broken and rewording the current mess as something moral and just is really ignoring reality.
The question there was never whether Apple would be paying, but how much. Given the pittance (a few euros per phone) Nokia apparently ended up getting with the best mobile patent portfolio in the world, it hardly seems like a win for Nokia or a loss for Apple. More likely it was Nokia being desperate to get the cash now to make their Q2 results look a little bit better.
"Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone.
It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.)
Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone.
There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions."
1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770550