7 ms·
Apple loses patent retrial to the litigious VirnetX, ordered to pay $300M
- tf2manu994 10y agoWasn't this the patent that stopped FaceTime from being an open standard? Sad. Damn patent trolls :(
- ianlevesque 10y agoYes, and forced them to move from a P2P architecture to proxying through their servers instead.
- briankwest 10y agoThen why aren't they going after Google for WebRTC? Chrome uses P2P to accomplish the same thing.
- ComodoHacker 10y agoWait, is this same troll responsible for Microsoft ruined P2P in Skype?
- briankwest 10y agoThis underscores the idiocy of our patent system.
- lifeisstillgood 10y agoSorry, Apple wanted FaceTime to be a p2p open protocol?! I assumed it was Apple marketing bullshit not external forces?
- eknkc 10y agoIt was in the announcement keynote. They said it would be open, which never happened due to patent issues.
- artursapek 10y agoI'm stunned that this is still a problem we're wasting so much time and money on in this world.
- IshKebab 10y agoHow would patent issues stop it being an open standard? H.264 is an open standard but still subject to patents.
- jpalomaki 10y agoMaybe the problem was that they had to change the original design due patent issues and with the new design (proxy servers etc) the openness would not have worked out so well.
- gwright 10y agoBecause the patent owners bought into the intellectual property regime created by H.264. H.264 happened because the patent owners agreed to the standard not because the H.264 committee had some sort of legal authority to ignore the patent owners.
- xenadu02 10y agoVirnetX claims to have patents covering the P2P mechanism behind the original FaceTime. Originally it worked similar to iMessage in that you had a system to exchange identities but the actual communication was all P2P after that. Apple had to change it to use their servers to get around the patents (which VirnetX claimed wasn't enough and was still infringing). Once that changed there was no point in releasing it as an open standard since it required Apple's servers to operate. If VirnetX prevails then Skype, Google Hangouts, and everyone else is infringing too and VirnetX will use the precedent to go after them as well. It's a common strategy: go after a couple of people first, establish a win, then use that to leverage settlements out of the remaining players.
- speeder 10y agoAnother crappy patent troll case: someone started suing hdd manufacturers over acoustic management, claiming (maybe in truth) that they patented the algorithm that actually make the hdd head move silently when it is active. The manufacturers proposed as settlement disable the feature being toggleable, and this was accepted. The patent holder never got money, and people never stopped using his patent, they only made users unable to select if theg wanted silent mode or not. A rrsult of this: WD has been for a while making low end WD Black and high end WD Blue with shared mechanics. One model in particular, the WD Black 1TB is almost 100% identical to the blue version. Except it had acoustic management off, while blue had it on. After noise complaints (people even returned hdds thinking it was broken) they made the black have it 100% identical to the blue... but as result despite being now silent, it is 30% slower, slow enough to cause buffer problems for musicians and video editors. (or to make megatexture problematic in id software games). So in the end everyone lost. No money for troll, algorithm is still in use, but consumers now have problems to find the hdd they want (almost no manufacturer advertise the hdd is not silent... so if you need to buy a fast hdd, it is trial and error)
- swayvil 10y agoIsn't this the same Apple that patented rounded corners? Fuck em. Live by the sword etc...
- skummetmaelk 10y agoetc... being code for "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ffggvv 10y agoSo by your logic everyone should be blind except apple? Fuck them. They must sacrifice their eye and pay their due taxes.
- gareim 10y agoSure, reduce history to a single liner that doesn't truly represent the patent and apply it in a sweeping manner. http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/09/claim-check-if-apple-patented-rounded.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/09/claim-check-if-apple-pate...
- piyush_soni 10y agoWell, the actual design patent (670286) was really only about a device with rounded rectangles (if you look at the solid lines in their drawing as declared by them). And it was one of the points in their litigation. People remember history incidences with one lines that made them famous, but that doesn't make the fact incorrect. Also, the other points were almost equally ludicrous. There is no sweeping generalization here.
- moogly 10y agoFlorian Mueller isn't the greatest source to quote, mind you.
- camillomiller 10y ago
- josho 10y agoI don't understand why Apple, ms, Cisco, etc don't just set up a shell company that works to invalidate patents owned by these companies. For example, set up an EFF like non-profit whose mission is to invalidate bad patents. Then these tech. companies can just throw money at the non-profit as a preventive strike against patent trolls working in their solution space.
- asdfologist 10y agoAgreed, that's a great idea to deal with those companies patenting stupid things like rounded corners.
- dboreham 10y agoBecause they've told their shareholders they own a crapton worth of valuable patent IP? (And once the emperor's clothes are shown to be gone, that IP is worth zero.)
- fludlight 10y agoThe value of software IP in public companies is generally considered to be immaterial. It is surprising, however, that the "risk factors" section of publicly traded US companies does not contain a clause that says that the software IP on the balance sheet is one SCOTUS ruling or federal law away from a logarithmic re(valuation|statement). This is covered by more general "laws and regulations" clauses, but IMHO software IP legal climate risk should have its own subsection in firms with substantial software divisions.
- DasIch 10y agoThese companies are forced to play a game with no end. Such an effort would allow them to win a few rounds but without a doubt they'd continue to lose some. If you really want to do something about this, you need to get political and change the rules. A stronger combined effort into lobbying would be a much better approach to solve this problem once and for all. It would also open up a path for other issues such as crypto, net neutrality and immigration that's also important to all of these companies.
- 10y ago
- swehner 10y agoThey call it checks and balances
- camillomiller 10y ago"And here above, kids, you can all observe a natural occurrence of the straw man argument phenomenon in its purest form."
- Yetanfou 10y agoNot really a straw man, this is quite relevant in the context of companies like Apple which act on both sides of the patent dispute field. Apple did try to enforce patents which should not have been granted in the first place because the claims were either not new (slide to unlock is a good example) or overly broad (the mentioned design patent on 'rounded corners', read the actual patent application to see why it is called such). On the other hand Apple does get sued by companies holding equally nonsensical patents. This is really a case of 'live by the sword, die by the sword', although the actual sum - even though every cent paid out to a patent troll is one too many - will not hurt Apple very much.
- hluska 10y agoThere are two things wrong with your comment. 1. Between the use of a fake quote and the use of the term 'kids', it as overly rude. 2. It is factually incorrect (http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1701443/USD670286S1.pdf http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1701443/USD670286S1.pdf)
- sctb 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619323 and marked it off-topic.
- alricb 10y agoIt should be noted that the patents in that case have already been invalidated by the Patent Office: "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office conducted parallel reviews of the four patents and on Sept. 9 said none covered new inventions." [1] So now it's up to the Federal Circuit to determine whether the Patent Office's ruling is right. [1]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-01/virnetx-wins-302-4-million-trial-against-apple-in-texas http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-01/virnetx-wi...
- laurencei 10y ago...so how can Apple lose the case, if the patent itself is not valid? I'm confused?
- alricb 10y agoThe patents may be invalid; Mangrove Partners filed a petition with the Patent Office to have them declared invalid, and the Patent and Trial Appeals Board agreed. But VirnetX has appealed the declaration to the Federal Circuit, which could find the patents valid. If the Federal Circuit does find the patents invalid, the trial will have been for nought. (You could argue that it would have been better to wait for the validity to be determined before proceeding with the trial, and indeed I think Apple did, but East Texas being East Texas the judge went ahead with the trial anyway)
- paulddraper 10y agoI'm unfamiliar with East Texas. What exactly is is reputation?
- boren_ave11 10y agoGood. IP law is badly broken, and as it happens, those who are most disparately impacted by its flaws (startups, individuals) are also the least well equipped to fix it. Nothing will change without pain being felt by those who are capable of influence.
- ilaksh 10y agoHere are some details on part of it: From https://search.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/9720690 https://search.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/9720690 > infringe at least system claims 10 and 12 of the ’135 patent which are: > 10. A system that transparently creates a virtual private network (VPN) between a client computer and a secure target computer, comprising: > a DNS proxy server that receives a request from the client computer to look up an IP address for a domain name, wherein the DNS proxy server returns the IP address for the requested domain name if it is determined that access to a non-secure web site has been requested, and wherein the DNS proxy server generates a request to create the VPN between the client computer and the secure target computer if it is determined that access to a secure web site has been requested; and a gatekeeper computer that allocates resources for the VPN between the client computer and the secure web computer in response to the request by the DNS proxy server. > ... > 12. The system of claim 10, wherein the gatekeeper computer determines whether the client computer has sufficient security privileges to create the VPN and, if the client computer lacks sufficient security privileges, rejecting the request to create the VPN. So basically they are saying if you make a VPN that uses DNS as a trigger for creating connections and it and does a privilege check then you are infringing on their patent. Which means you are supposed to get their permission or pay them or something before you can sell software or services that do that? To me, using the DNS server as a trigger for creating VPN connections seems like a good idea. But this in particular or something very similar might almost might be completely necessary unless you were going to pre-establish connections or paths between every single user in the network, which is absolutely infeasible in such potentially large networks. Its like if someone spent a few minutes thinking about they would like DNS to work in their VPN, they would come up with this idea, or something similar. How is it a good idea to give control over this sort of basic research concept to one company (or two working together)? Software patents are just dumb.
- moon_of_moon 10y agoStraight out of Jason Bourne. There is a cancer...
- bbarn 10y ago> " VirnetX, a Nevada-based patent licensor, filed suit in an East Texas federal court" Always East Texas. How is that crooked court still operating?
- ajmurmann 10y agoIs there a way to get judges in East Texas prosecuted?