6 ms·

Out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say that Apple is the biggest patent troll in history? It's the first time I hear such a claim.

dogma1138 11y ago
Apple vs Samsung et al. Issuing patents on silly things like slide to unlock and mag lock even tho those functions existed before Apple has ever used them? Heck I'm surprised they haven't sue every kitchen appliance in Asia for violating their maglock patent.... Heck the first apple iPhone GUI related suit against Samsung was field before the first iPhone was even on the market.
- josephpmay 11y ago
  Can you provide an example of slide to unlock before the iPhone? Also, I (personally) feel that maglock for a power cable is very different from maglock for a refrigerator. (A ticket terminal and a vending machine are very different devices covered by different patents even if they both utilize the same basic mechanisms.)
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    In Asia small appliances had a magnet on the power cable for ages these aren't fridges but smaller appliances like kettles and hotplates and it was added exactly for the same reason that Apple added it to their laptops the only difference is that Asia has been doing so since the 60's.
    - Coincoin 11y ago
      Not just in Asia. I threw a couple of old (60s~70s) appliances with magnet power cables a few years ago. The cables were very north american.
  - esolyt 11y ago
    A touchscreen phone named Neonode N1 had slide-to-unlock 2 years before iPhone. http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/25/slide-to-unlock-patented/ http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/25/slide-to-unlock-patented/ But the point is, it is a very trivial way of interacting with a touchscreen. It is, in fact, one of the few ways one can interact with a touchscreen.
    - rubber_duck 11y ago
      >But the point is, it is a very trivial way of interacting with a touchscreen. It is, in fact, one of the few ways one can interact with a touchscreen. I don't get how people can argue stuff like this should even be covered by patents. What's the rationale ? Did Apple spend billions in R&D to develop this feature it now needs a mechanism to recoup it's investment ? I suppose they wouldn't "invent" swipe to unlock if it wasn't for the patent so they needed extra incentives to make it a viable investment ? The fact that you can get a patent for something trivial and inconsequential like this shows how flawed the system is IMO.
      - ams6110 11y ago
        Yeah that's supposed to be covered by the requirement that an invention be "novel" to qualify for a patent.
        rubber_duck 11y ago
        Who carea if it's novel or not ? Patents are a government granted monopoly defended on the premise that there would be a strong disincentive to invest in R&D if someone could just copy your deaign and a strong incentive for you to not share your invention. In my mind there is no universe in which Apple dosen't implement swipe to unlock just because it's not patentable - it's just abusing a flawed system (can't blame them for it - they didn't make the rules)
    - biot 11y ago
      Yes, the Neonode has "slide to unlock", but Apple's patent is for a very specific set of claims; items which the Neonode didn't implement. With Apple's patent, they claim novelty over having a single graphical element that the user needs to move with predefined start and end points. Another claim expands upon that saying there is a graphical arrow showing direction of movement. Another claim says there is help text explaining to the user what to do. So yeah, on the surface one can easily state "they both have slide to unlock" but in order to discount Apple's patent you need to show that there exists prior art for the specific claims Apple made in its patent. The Neonode is not prior art for those claims.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    > Can you provide an example of slide to unlock before the iPhone? A mediaeval church door bolt. Or whatever. Doing the same thing but "on a computer" shouldn't allow a patent.
    - rohamg 11y ago
      this. indeed from my understanding the USPTO has wizened up and is no longer issuing software patents as freely as before.
    - zaroth 11y ago
      By the "same thing" you mean unlocking a church door? There is nothing "the same" about unlocking a slide bolt, and unlocking your phone by swiping an graphic which responds to your touch by animating an element of the graphic along a predefined path. To the contrary, I think it's quite a clever implementation. If somehow inventions like this did not qualify for patent protection, then very little would. Which is a fine argument if you just hate all patents, but if you actually read and understand the slide-to-unlock patent, as far as software patents go, it's not a bad one. Some specific claims have been found to have prior art, but the patent as a whole is not invalid. And certainly not because of door bolts.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  And that is before we even start on the "design patents".
- mwfunk 11y ago
  I wouldn't defend any of those cases, but if that's your yardstick for "biggest patent troll in history", then you have a lot of disillusionment and disappointment ahead of you. There is no shortage of vastly sillier patent cases being won by organizations whose entire business model is "winning silly patent cases", in many cases against people who can't afford to defend themselves, but sometimes against giant tech companies as well. Big tech companies sue each other all the time over all sorts of stupid things. Everybody is suing everybody all the time and it's absurd that they have to play that game, but that's not even close to the bottom of the barrel of patent insanity. Don't mistake the handful of high-profile cases that bubble to the top of your RSS feeds (or whatever) as being a meaningful sample of what is actually going on in the world, because the reality is so much worse than that.

dogma1138 11y ago

Apple vs Samsung et al. Issuing patents on silly things like slide to unlock and mag lock even tho those functions existed before Apple has ever used them? Heck I'm surprised they haven't sue every kitchen appliance in Asia for violating their maglock patent.... Heck the first apple iPhone GUI related suit against Samsung was field before the first iPhone was even on the market.

josephpmay 11y ago
Can you provide an example of slide to unlock before the iPhone? Also, I (personally) feel that maglock for a power cable is very different from maglock for a refrigerator. (A ticket terminal and a vending machine are very different devices covered by different patents even if they both utilize the same basic mechanisms.)
- dogma1138 11y ago
  In Asia small appliances had a magnet on the power cable for ages these aren't fridges but smaller appliances like kettles and hotplates and it was added exactly for the same reason that Apple added it to their laptops the only difference is that Asia has been doing so since the 60's.
  - Coincoin 11y ago
    Not just in Asia. I threw a couple of old (60s~70s) appliances with magnet power cables a few years ago. The cables were very north american.
- esolyt 11y ago
  A touchscreen phone named Neonode N1 had slide-to-unlock 2 years before iPhone. http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/25/slide-to-unlock-patented/ http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/25/slide-to-unlock-patented/ But the point is, it is a very trivial way of interacting with a touchscreen. It is, in fact, one of the few ways one can interact with a touchscreen.
  - rubber_duck 11y ago
    >But the point is, it is a very trivial way of interacting with a touchscreen. It is, in fact, one of the few ways one can interact with a touchscreen. I don't get how people can argue stuff like this should even be covered by patents. What's the rationale ? Did Apple spend billions in R&D to develop this feature it now needs a mechanism to recoup it's investment ? I suppose they wouldn't "invent" swipe to unlock if it wasn't for the patent so they needed extra incentives to make it a viable investment ? The fact that you can get a patent for something trivial and inconsequential like this shows how flawed the system is IMO.
    - ams6110 11y ago
      Yeah that's supposed to be covered by the requirement that an invention be "novel" to qualify for a patent.
      - rubber_duck 11y ago
        Who carea if it's novel or not ? Patents are a government granted monopoly defended on the premise that there would be a strong disincentive to invest in R&D if someone could just copy your deaign and a strong incentive for you to not share your invention. In my mind there is no universe in which Apple dosen't implement swipe to unlock just because it's not patentable - it's just abusing a flawed system (can't blame them for it - they didn't make the rules)
  - biot 11y ago
    Yes, the Neonode has "slide to unlock", but Apple's patent is for a very specific set of claims; items which the Neonode didn't implement. With Apple's patent, they claim novelty over having a single graphical element that the user needs to move with predefined start and end points. Another claim expands upon that saying there is a graphical arrow showing direction of movement. Another claim says there is help text explaining to the user what to do. So yeah, on the surface one can easily state "they both have slide to unlock" but in order to discount Apple's patent you need to show that there exists prior art for the specific claims Apple made in its patent. The Neonode is not prior art for those claims.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  > Can you provide an example of slide to unlock before the iPhone? A mediaeval church door bolt. Or whatever. Doing the same thing but "on a computer" shouldn't allow a patent.
  - rohamg 11y ago
    this. indeed from my understanding the USPTO has wizened up and is no longer issuing software patents as freely as before.
  - zaroth 11y ago
    By the "same thing" you mean unlocking a church door? There is nothing "the same" about unlocking a slide bolt, and unlocking your phone by swiping an graphic which responds to your touch by animating an element of the graphic along a predefined path. To the contrary, I think it's quite a clever implementation. If somehow inventions like this did not qualify for patent protection, then very little would. Which is a fine argument if you just hate all patents, but if you actually read and understand the slide-to-unlock patent, as far as software patents go, it's not a bad one. Some specific claims have been found to have prior art, but the patent as a whole is not invalid. And certainly not because of door bolts.
reitanqild 11y ago
And that is before we even start on the "design patents".
mwfunk 11y ago
I wouldn't defend any of those cases, but if that's your yardstick for "biggest patent troll in history", then you have a lot of disillusionment and disappointment ahead of you. There is no shortage of vastly sillier patent cases being won by organizations whose entire business model is "winning silly patent cases", in many cases against people who can't afford to defend themselves, but sometimes against giant tech companies as well. Big tech companies sue each other all the time over all sorts of stupid things. Everybody is suing everybody all the time and it's absurd that they have to play that game, but that's not even close to the bottom of the barrel of patent insanity. Don't mistake the handful of high-profile cases that bubble to the top of your RSS feeds (or whatever) as being a meaningful sample of what is actually going on in the world, because the reality is so much worse than that.