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"In January, Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court seeking a ruling that it wasn’t infringing on seven of Ericsso

by Arjuna 11y ago

"In January, Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court seeking a ruling that it wasn’t infringing on seven of Ericsson’s patents." For those curious, I believe that these are the 7 patents in question: 1. 6445917 - Mobile station measurements with event-based reporting [1] 2. 6985474 - Random access in a mobile telecommunications system [2] 3. 7660417 - Enhanced security design for cryptography in mobile communication systems [3] 4. 8023990 - Uplink scheduling in a cellular system [4] 5. 8036150 - Method and a device for improved status reports [5] 6. 8169992 - Uplink scrambling during random access [6] 7. 8214710 - Methods and apparatus for processing error control messages in a wireless communication system [7] [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6445917B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6445917B1/en [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6985474B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6985474B2/en [3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en [4] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8023990B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8023990B2/en [5] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8036150B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8036150B2/en [6] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8169992B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8169992B2/en [7] https://patents.google.com/patent/US8214710B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8214710B2/en

gnarbarian 11y ago
I'm not a big fan of patent trolling but I do like to see apple get a taste of their own medicine after what happened with samsung.
- IBM 11y ago
  This isn't patent trolling. Apple and Ericsson had a license agreement and when it ended they couldn't agree on a new price and went to court about it. They've now reached a price they both agree to in this settlement.
  - gnarbarian 11y ago
    I think some of these patents are pretty bogus. Take this patent for example: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en Is this a patent for an encryption handshake? I'm pretty sure I can find very similar flowcharts in my security textbook from 2002. http://www.slashroot.in/understanding-ssl-handshake-protocol http://www.slashroot.in/understanding-ssl-handshake-protocol
    - throwawaykf05 11y ago
      Yes, it is for one specific handshake, similar to many others. At a quick glance, the claims don't seem to cover any earthshaking innovation, but the introduction claims this makes it resistant to weaknesses in the underlying crypto algorithms that have been shown to be broken.
- __jal 11y ago
  Schadenfreude may amuse, but what we have here is not even a casino. It is a massive negative-sum (to the non-lawyer participants) game where winning usually turns on procedural points having nothing relevant to do with the actual conflict. (If you disagree, then kindly explain the Eastern District Court of Texas.) The result is this huge coercion machine that pretty much randomly chews up small companies and rewards attorneys and (somewhat randomly) large ones.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - magicalist 11y ago
    > It is a massive negative-sum (to the non-lawyer participants) To be fair, in this case Ericsson is a practicing entity and they probably have a salaried legal staff, so your specific criticisms don't really apply here. More just general patent criticisms: ease of acquisition, non-specificity, valuation on market and legal leverage instead of marginal value, (if any of the above patents are software patents) software patents in general, etc
    - __jal 11y ago
      > Ericsson is a practicing entity and they probably have a salaried legal staff I didn't say anything about NPEs. Ericsson may have a stable of in-house patent litigators; it is one enterprise where that probably makes economic sense (I know Google has their own IP litigators). But most patent litigation that makes it to trial is handled by specialist firms.
- TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
  It is trolling. Nobody would pay a license for these crap patents for the technology. They have to pay a license for this trivial obvious garbage because the USPTO doesn't know better.
grecy 11y ago
So utterly absurd that those things can be patented. All I need to do is drop tens of thousands of dollars patenting anything and everything to do with anything up and coming - drones and delivery, autonomous cars, autonomous taxis, space stuff, solar stuff, energy storage and selling etc. etc. "Method to hail autonomous taxi" "Method to identify and optimize autonomous taxi routes" Etc. etc.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 11y ago
  > So utterly absurd that those things can be patented Your comment was posted just 30 minutes after the comment listing the patents, so am I correct in guessing that you are judging based on the titles, or perhaps the titles plus the abstracts? If so, then you very likely don't have anywhere near enough information to figure out whether they are absurd. A patent title just tells you the very general area that the patent is in. If patents were books, the title would just be telling you what section of the library it goes in. Continuing the book analogy, the abstract is like the description on the back of the book. It will give you a better idea of what area the patent is in, but still doesn't tell you what is actually patented. You have to read and understand the claims to know what the patent is actually covering. To understand the claims you must read the specification, because the claims are interpreted in light of the specification. In particular, the specification can narrow the meaning of the claims. If you really want to be thorough, you also should get the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documents associated with the application. In particular, the file wrapper includes copies of any correspondence between the examiner and the applicant. In such correspondence the applicant may say things that narrow some of the claims.
  - noselasd 11y ago
    What I don't like about many of these patents though, independent of whether they are novel or not, is they're part of the 3GPP specs. The specs for creating a 2G/3G/4G cellular network are all open specs and gratis, but man parts are covered by patents - meaning if you want to create a device that's part of such a network, including a mobile phone - there's a forest of patents in your way - something I don't agree with and that imo. should not be part of open specs.

by Arjuna 11y ago

gnarbarian 11y ago

I'm not a big fan of patent trolling but I do like to see apple get a taste of their own medicine after what happened with samsung.

IBM 11y ago
This isn't patent trolling. Apple and Ericsson had a license agreement and when it ended they couldn't agree on a new price and went to court about it. They've now reached a price they both agree to in this settlement.
- gnarbarian 11y ago
  I think some of these patents are pretty bogus. Take this patent for example: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660417B2/en Is this a patent for an encryption handshake? I'm pretty sure I can find very similar flowcharts in my security textbook from 2002. http://www.slashroot.in/understanding-ssl-handshake-protocol http://www.slashroot.in/understanding-ssl-handshake-protocol
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    Yes, it is for one specific handshake, similar to many others. At a quick glance, the claims don't seem to cover any earthshaking innovation, but the introduction claims this makes it resistant to weaknesses in the underlying crypto algorithms that have been shown to be broken.
__jal 11y ago
Schadenfreude may amuse, but what we have here is not even a casino. It is a massive negative-sum (to the non-lawyer participants) game where winning usually turns on procedural points having nothing relevant to do with the actual conflict. (If you disagree, then kindly explain the Eastern District Court of Texas.) The result is this huge coercion machine that pretty much randomly chews up small companies and rewards attorneys and (somewhat randomly) large ones.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- magicalist 11y ago
  > It is a massive negative-sum (to the non-lawyer participants) To be fair, in this case Ericsson is a practicing entity and they probably have a salaried legal staff, so your specific criticisms don't really apply here. More just general patent criticisms: ease of acquisition, non-specificity, valuation on market and legal leverage instead of marginal value, (if any of the above patents are software patents) software patents in general, etc
  - __jal 11y ago
    > Ericsson is a practicing entity and they probably have a salaried legal staff I didn't say anything about NPEs. Ericsson may have a stable of in-house patent litigators; it is one enterprise where that probably makes economic sense (I know Google has their own IP litigators). But most patent litigation that makes it to trial is handled by specialist firms.
TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
It is trolling. Nobody would pay a license for these crap patents for the technology. They have to pay a license for this trivial obvious garbage because the USPTO doesn't know better.

grecy 11y ago

So utterly absurd that those things can be patented. All I need to do is drop tens of thousands of dollars patenting anything and everything to do with anything up and coming - drones and delivery, autonomous cars, autonomous taxis, space stuff, solar stuff, energy storage and selling etc. etc. "Method to hail autonomous taxi" "Method to identify and optimize autonomous taxi routes" Etc. etc.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tzs 11y ago
> So utterly absurd that those things can be patented Your comment was posted just 30 minutes after the comment listing the patents, so am I correct in guessing that you are judging based on the titles, or perhaps the titles plus the abstracts? If so, then you very likely don't have anywhere near enough information to figure out whether they are absurd. A patent title just tells you the very general area that the patent is in. If patents were books, the title would just be telling you what section of the library it goes in. Continuing the book analogy, the abstract is like the description on the back of the book. It will give you a better idea of what area the patent is in, but still doesn't tell you what is actually patented. You have to read and understand the claims to know what the patent is actually covering. To understand the claims you must read the specification, because the claims are interpreted in light of the specification. In particular, the specification can narrow the meaning of the claims. If you really want to be thorough, you also should get the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documents associated with the application. In particular, the file wrapper includes copies of any correspondence between the examiner and the applicant. In such correspondence the applicant may say things that narrow some of the claims.
- noselasd 11y ago
  What I don't like about many of these patents though, independent of whether they are novel or not, is they're part of the 3GPP specs. The specs for creating a 2G/3G/4G cellular network are all open specs and gratis, but man parts are covered by patents - meaning if you want to create a device that's part of such a network, including a mobile phone - there's a forest of patents in your way - something I don't agree with and that imo. should not be part of open specs.