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Back in 2013, Apple had to redesign FaceTime to use server relayed connections instead of peer-to-peer to circumvent VirnetX's patent(s) [1]. I wonder if, after

Back in 2013, Apple had to redesign FaceTime to use server relayed connections instead of peer-to-peer to circumvent VirnetX's patent(s) [1]. I wonder if, after this verdict, they will (and are allowed to) undo this change and start doing peer-to-peer again; Apple will probably have invested quite a lot in their (cloud) infrastructure to support these server relayed connections. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-patent-loss-apple-tweaks-facetime-and-logs-500000-complaints/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pate...

bhhaskin 10y ago
I wonder if they could take action against VirnetX for the costs of switching to a new system.
- sverige 10y ago
  So, company A develops a different solution to avoid paying licensing fees for a patent owned by company B, and somehow company B is liable for A's costs to develop the new system? That makes no sense to me, frankly. It would be like demanding that your competitor subsidize your R&D.
  - wernercd 10y ago
    If Company B creates frivolous patents or is a NPE (Non Producing entity)? They deserve to be punished... (not sure if this is the case here)
  - FreeKill 10y ago
    Guess it would depend on whether the entire justification for the R&D and thus the expenses incurred as a result was due to a fraudulent claim that your original tech violated a patent. Without that fraudulent claim, would Company A have invested in any of that R&D?
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      That'd be a separate tort that would need to be proven. Simply having a difference of legal opinion and losing in court is not fraud. The outcome wasn't even thrown out on its merits, but on concerns about procedural fairness.
  - mgleason_3 10y ago
    You know, this is exactly why we should not have software patents. Company A invested nothing in the R&D, they simply did it first. The reason for patents is to promote the public good by giving inventors who discover a reason to release the details of their invention, rather than to keep it secret. But this isn't happening with software. Instead, things progress and something is needed. But, rather than an open standard being developed which everyone can use, the first one who patents it wins. Everyone else is hurt and the patent is sold to a troll who then abuses it.
    - chongli 10y ago
      What you've described is not restricted to software patents. It happens with everything else, too. I have yet to hear a compelling case for patents in any industry, let alone software. The truth of the matter is that ideas are cheap; the hard part is capitalization.
      - SpaceManiac 10y ago
        Your problem still seems to be with the sloppiness of the patent system, not patents themselves. Patents are meant to protect inventions, not ideas, and novel inventions are worth something.
        jfoutz 10y ago
        Here's a concrete flaw. The inventor must disclose the method. If you read the patent, and infringe, you're subject to triple damages. So there's a strong incentive to not read about how other people solve problems. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of promoting useful arts. Furthermore, non-patent readers wind up infringing anyway. I would argue that someone completely unaware of the patent, coming up with the exact same system means that it is in fact obvious, and not really novel.
        rtpg 10y ago
        Without patents, there are no incentives for publicly stating your methodology. Patents increase the sharing of information, they do not reduce it. The second point is covered by prior art.
  - flamedoge 10y ago
    Potential gain of margin had it not been for the increased R&D. Whatever way you put it. If it was unfair, it ought to be paid.
  - pmarreck 10y ago
    I think the insinuation was that Company B would be liable for A's costs only if Company B's patent claims are not held up in court
  - nnq 10y ago
    > company B is liable for A's costs to develop the new system No, just for the difference between the cost of developing system A' that could have been developed instead of A had it not been for the requirement for going around patent of company B that has since been invalidated. But good luck estimating that. Also since you're liable to pay for the consequences of future invalidation of you patent, the damages should be capped to the profit you've earned so far from the pattern to make things sensible. > It would be like demanding that your competitor subsidize your R&D This seems pretty fair if you've been on the market for much longer and did a lot of R&D. It would also move the balance a bit from competition to cooperation even if it would be labeled as anti-capitalist by some. It would also incentivize you to open-source and patent something, instead of keeping it closed but not patenting (both keeping all implementations of a patented algorithm closed and patenting it should not be allowed, at least one open-sourced fully working proof of concept should be required). You could still get a profit from the patents that came out of your R&D, even if your company failed, but a younger competitor that benefited from your exploration succeeds, which would probably incentivize more R&D spending! To go even further you could force attribution of pattents to individuals and never companies (even if they could end up owned in majority by your investors and not yourself), so that a company's bankruptcy and debt don't also suck the "profit from invention" into its black hole. ...but of course, I can't dream of such sensible systems of law until we have an above-human-level-AI actually writing the laws for humans to follow, hopefully for our own good :)
frandroid 10y ago
The case will be retried so Apple is not out of the woods yet. The judge even says he believes that VirnetX could have successfully won its suit without the references to the previous trial.
- comex 10y ago
  However, as one of the comments to the Ars article points out, the patents in question were apparently all invalidated by the PTO: http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82599/files/AppleRequestJuly25.pdf http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82599/files/AppleRequ...
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Can the case even be retried then? I would assume not.
    - aceperry 10y ago
      The case can be retried, but it runs the risk of being tossed out because of the invalidated patents. If that were to happen, Apple might be able to recover some court costs.
tehwebguy 10y ago
Wow, I never bothered to look up why FaceTime worked so well for me at the beginning and suddenly became completely unusable for me later on.
- lechevalierd3on 10y ago
  Software patent at its worst :(
- jrcii 10y ago
  It would be nice if they just used SIP in the first place so that other systems could interoperate with FaceTime. Typical Apple.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    Comment below says SIP was covered by this spurious patent, so that wouldn't have made much difference.
  - givinguflac 10y ago
    While you're irrationally hating, you should know FaceTime was originally planned to be cross platform. The need to completely change how it worked obviously stopped that from happening.
    - braderhart 10y ago
      What proof?
      - Navarr 10y ago
        Apple did initially claim Facetime would be an open standard. > Upon the launch of the iPhone 4, Jobs stated that Apple would immediately start working with standards bodies to make the FaceTime protocol an "open industry standard". claims Wikipedia. Other websites also highlight the "open standard" it was supposed to become: [1]: http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/facetime-open-standard-never-happened/2012-12-06 http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/facetime-open-standard-... [2]: https://redd.it/1xuzif https://redd.it/1xuzif [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605498 [4]: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4547345?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4547345?start=0&tstart=... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime
curt15 10y ago
Has VirnetX gone after Google yet? Hangouts uses peer to peer connections for video calls https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/6334301?hl=en https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/6334301?hl=en
- tjl 10y ago
  It may be that they were waiting for the outcome of this trial. If they are successful against Apple that would likely improve their chances of succeeding against Google. It's a pretty common patent litigation approach.
AckSyn 10y ago
Frankly that's a bullshit patent to begin with.
- draw_down 10y ago
  Yep, that's the idea.

bhhaskin 10y ago

I wonder if they could take action against VirnetX for the costs of switching to a new system.

sverige 10y ago
So, company A develops a different solution to avoid paying licensing fees for a patent owned by company B, and somehow company B is liable for A's costs to develop the new system? That makes no sense to me, frankly. It would be like demanding that your competitor subsidize your R&D.
- wernercd 10y ago
  If Company B creates frivolous patents or is a NPE (Non Producing entity)? They deserve to be punished... (not sure if this is the case here)
- FreeKill 10y ago
  Guess it would depend on whether the entire justification for the R&D and thus the expenses incurred as a result was due to a fraudulent claim that your original tech violated a patent. Without that fraudulent claim, would Company A have invested in any of that R&D?
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    That'd be a separate tort that would need to be proven. Simply having a difference of legal opinion and losing in court is not fraud. The outcome wasn't even thrown out on its merits, but on concerns about procedural fairness.
- mgleason_3 10y ago
  You know, this is exactly why we should not have software patents. Company A invested nothing in the R&D, they simply did it first. The reason for patents is to promote the public good by giving inventors who discover a reason to release the details of their invention, rather than to keep it secret. But this isn't happening with software. Instead, things progress and something is needed. But, rather than an open standard being developed which everyone can use, the first one who patents it wins. Everyone else is hurt and the patent is sold to a troll who then abuses it.
  - chongli 10y ago
    What you've described is not restricted to software patents. It happens with everything else, too. I have yet to hear a compelling case for patents in any industry, let alone software. The truth of the matter is that ideas are cheap; the hard part is capitalization.
    - SpaceManiac 10y ago
      Your problem still seems to be with the sloppiness of the patent system, not patents themselves. Patents are meant to protect inventions, not ideas, and novel inventions are worth something.
      - jfoutz 10y ago
        Here's a concrete flaw. The inventor must disclose the method. If you read the patent, and infringe, you're subject to triple damages. So there's a strong incentive to not read about how other people solve problems. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of promoting useful arts. Furthermore, non-patent readers wind up infringing anyway. I would argue that someone completely unaware of the patent, coming up with the exact same system means that it is in fact obvious, and not really novel.
        rtpg 10y ago
        Without patents, there are no incentives for publicly stating your methodology. Patents increase the sharing of information, they do not reduce it. The second point is covered by prior art.
- flamedoge 10y ago
  Potential gain of margin had it not been for the increased R&D. Whatever way you put it. If it was unfair, it ought to be paid.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  I think the insinuation was that Company B would be liable for A's costs only if Company B's patent claims are not held up in court
- nnq 10y ago
  > company B is liable for A's costs to develop the new system No, just for the difference between the cost of developing system A' that could have been developed instead of A had it not been for the requirement for going around patent of company B that has since been invalidated. But good luck estimating that. Also since you're liable to pay for the consequences of future invalidation of you patent, the damages should be capped to the profit you've earned so far from the pattern to make things sensible. > It would be like demanding that your competitor subsidize your R&D This seems pretty fair if you've been on the market for much longer and did a lot of R&D. It would also move the balance a bit from competition to cooperation even if it would be labeled as anti-capitalist by some. It would also incentivize you to open-source and patent something, instead of keeping it closed but not patenting (both keeping all implementations of a patented algorithm closed and patenting it should not be allowed, at least one open-sourced fully working proof of concept should be required). You could still get a profit from the patents that came out of your R&D, even if your company failed, but a younger competitor that benefited from your exploration succeeds, which would probably incentivize more R&D spending! To go even further you could force attribution of pattents to individuals and never companies (even if they could end up owned in majority by your investors and not yourself), so that a company's bankruptcy and debt don't also suck the "profit from invention" into its black hole. ...but of course, I can't dream of such sensible systems of law until we have an above-human-level-AI actually writing the laws for humans to follow, hopefully for our own good :)

frandroid 10y ago

The case will be retried so Apple is not out of the woods yet. The judge even says he believes that VirnetX could have successfully won its suit without the references to the previous trial.

comex 10y ago
However, as one of the comments to the Ars article points out, the patents in question were apparently all invalidated by the PTO: http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82599/files/AppleRequestJuly25.pdf http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82599/files/AppleRequ...
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Can the case even be retried then? I would assume not.
  - aceperry 10y ago
    The case can be retried, but it runs the risk of being tossed out because of the invalidated patents. If that were to happen, Apple might be able to recover some court costs.

tehwebguy 10y ago

Wow, I never bothered to look up why FaceTime worked so well for me at the beginning and suddenly became completely unusable for me later on.

lechevalierd3on 10y ago
Software patent at its worst :(
jrcii 10y ago
It would be nice if they just used SIP in the first place so that other systems could interoperate with FaceTime. Typical Apple.
- themartorana 10y ago
  Comment below says SIP was covered by this spurious patent, so that wouldn't have made much difference.
- givinguflac 10y ago
  While you're irrationally hating, you should know FaceTime was originally planned to be cross platform. The need to completely change how it worked obviously stopped that from happening.
  - braderhart 10y ago
    What proof?
    - Navarr 10y ago
      Apple did initially claim Facetime would be an open standard. > Upon the launch of the iPhone 4, Jobs stated that Apple would immediately start working with standards bodies to make the FaceTime protocol an "open industry standard". claims Wikipedia. Other websites also highlight the "open standard" it was supposed to become: [1]: http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/facetime-open-standard-never-happened/2012-12-06 http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/facetime-open-standard-... [2]: https://redd.it/1xuzif https://redd.it/1xuzif [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605498 [4]: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4547345?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4547345?start=0&tstart=... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime

curt15 10y ago

Has VirnetX gone after Google yet? Hangouts uses peer to peer connections for video calls https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/6334301?hl=en https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/6334301?hl=en

tjl 10y ago
It may be that they were waiting for the outcome of this trial. If they are successful against Apple that would likely improve their chances of succeeding against Google. It's a pretty common patent litigation approach.

AckSyn 10y ago

Frankly that's a bullshit patent to begin with.

draw_down 10y ago
Yep, that's the idea.