5 ms·
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, A
by el_dot 17y ago
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.
You know this whole business of patents, and IP as a whole, is fundamentally flawed in that there is no objective way to decide what is influence and what is blatant copying/theft. The Justice route simply doesn't work. And because patents are public documents, you are basically inviting competitors to modify your inventions.
I can think of two better ways to protect your IP. One is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself. Up to now nobody can crack their search black box. And two, keep innovating. If you do those 2 things in conjunction, I doubt you'd have to worry about people "stealing" your IP.
I believe that it’s good business, in the long run, for a company’s acts of aggression to take place in the market, not in the courts. My concern regarding this litigation against HTC is that it looks like an act of competitive aggression, not defense.
I completely agree. The sad part is it maybe too late for them to reverse course.
- macrael 17y agoInterestingly, I think this is a big part of why patents were invented in the first place. The idea was to give companies incentive for publishing their methods in detail because doing so benefited the industry as a whole. You show the world how you are doing what you do and you get to control that process for a while but in the end it becomes part of the common practice.
- warfangle 17y agoAnd the problem with applying this to software - as alluded to in the article - is that software is advancing at (disputedly but ostensibly) exponential paces. If software patent timeout was geared towards progress instead of hindrance, it would follow the inverse of the path that copyright has taken: shortening the enforcable term instead of lengthening it.
- abecedarius 17y agoThat rationale was invented after the fact, as I understand it. The actual reason was royal revenue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law#England http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law#England
- jnoller 17y ago"The sad part is it maybe too late for them to reverse course." I think you're correct. Now the cards are on the table - I have a feeling if they were to withdraw this, it would hurt the countersuit against Nokia - who could then point at Apple's selective/questionable enforcement.
- natrius 17y agoMy understanding is that enforcement only affects trademarks, not patents.
- jnoller 17y agoThank you; you're probably right. Some part of me thinks it would still harm the case. I need to go find a lawyer.
- Terretta 17y agoEnforcement affects perception of validity and enforceability which can matter both at negotiation and court. To quote a non-neutral party, note the phrase "lax attitude": > "Neglecting stick licensing [enforcement] has two problems. First, it results in a loss of potential royalty and damages revenues from infringed patents. Second, it undermines carrot licensing of both infringed and noninfringed patents. If an industry perceives a lax attitude on the part of a university in enforcing its patents, it will think it can infringe with impunity. Under these circumstances, taking a license would be tantamount to making a charitable gift, which few in this economic climate are inclined to do." -- Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corporation in http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patents:+why+it+pays+to+protect+patent+...-a0209901861 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patent...
- GHFigs 17y agoOne is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself. Any suggestions on how to do that with a product as opposed to a service?
- swombat 17y agoGoogle also sell search as a product - Enterprises can buy "google black boxes" that index their corporate network and make it easier to find stuff (supposedly... I haven't seen one at work yet, but the bar is pretty low, considering how shitty most enterprise search engines are).
- avinashv 17y agoThese are basically rack-mounted boxes (the one I worked with was bright yellow and looked pretty awesome) that quite literally are, under contract, not allowed to be tampered with besides providing power and plugging in cables. They do work, though I wonder whether it is worth the cost. I can't recall exactly, but I think it cost in the region of $10,000/yr. There's also a baby version for significantly cheaper that indexes less docs.
- jonknee 17y agoI'm sure their search technology is significantly different as well. A large part of Google's success is being able to crawl well (their index is incredibly fresh), sort through spam and SEO gaming and then raw speed over many billions of documents. It's a lot easier to efficiently crawl and search an intranet.
- netcan 17y agoOr how to do it with a UI.
- bad_user 17y agoPatents where created to replace trade secrets. If an idea is so fucking-obvious in hindsight that you don't need the patent's description to re-implement it, than that shouldn't be patentable. Yeah, Apple did a great job designing the UI ... but sooner or later somebody else would've done it anyway. 10 years ago I owned an HP iPaq ... with a big screen, a stylus, wifi, sound input/output and no physical keyboard. Sooner or later somebody would've thought to add GSM capabilities to it and replace that stylus with fingers. Apple did it first, and they have a great sense for aesthetics ... but this whole suing stuff is ridiculous. I was kind of feeling sorry for them when Nokia sued (and I'm pretty sure Nokia has patents more enforceable than Apple does).
- bobbyi 17y agoIf you do those 2 things in conjunction, I doubt you'd have to worry about people "stealing" your IP. And yet Google is potentially pulling out of China due to having its IP stolen.
- tsally 17y agoI'm pretty sure el_dot wasn't claiming that his strategy protects against sophisticated cyber attacks on the nation-state level. Regardless, anything on the nation-state level is not worth debating about because other nations are not obligated to respect US patent, trade-secret, copyright, or any other law. It doesn't matter whether a US company patents its stuff or keeps it a secret, companies in China will do what they want.