8 ms·

Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

79 points by tomh- 15y ago

StavrosK 15y ago
How this is fair, I fail to comprehend. When laws allow things like this, maybe it's time for laws to change?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
llambda 15y ago
"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of all Google Android phones and tablets." Yawn Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this tripe yet?
- danieldk 15y ago
  As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or settling). Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already? If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything. Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
  - llambda 15y ago
    Your points are valid and should not be down voted! Come on guys, that isn't how this community works. :( I completely agree with you in regards to how things /should/ be. But it goes without saying, we aren't living in that perfect world. I don't think the ultimate impact of this ruling is going to be the banning of "all Google Android phones and tablets." I imagine in the worst case scenario HTC, et al, have to fork over some money to license the patents.
  - Terretta 15y ago
    I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the results of your theory, and it's not pretty. > Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? No. To be worth while, investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even produced by the same factory) matching quality. Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original or copy. (A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100% of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are relatively rare.) > doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already? No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the streets during the original marketing push.
    - va_coder 15y ago
      >>I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced Which countries are not innovating because of weak copyright and patent law enforcement?
    - gvb 15y ago
      "Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important. Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws. Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable. For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME [2] In a country that the MP3 encoding patents are registered, of course.
  - benihana 15y ago
    Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days? Do we care about our karma on a website on the internet?
asknemo 15y ago
This will serve nothing but encourage patent trolls and big corporations to invest more and more in ridiculously broad patents. Apple sues others, patent troll sues Apple and others, some other competitors dig out obscure patents and start sueing; someone gonna benefit from this, but definitely not entrepreneurs or customers.
soulinafishbowl 15y ago
Apple and Lodsys are in the same category.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Right because Lodsys also transformed the landscape of the mobile industry by selling a revolutionary new device that everyone else is competing with.
  - soulinafishbowl 15y ago
    Ah, I sense sarcasm. I suppose without explanation, my comment is too harsh, and I come off as an Apple hater. Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to hate. In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better spent on innovation or solving real problems.
    - rbarooah 15y ago
      Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking. I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players. On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led to very real and significant innovations. Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators and executives in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did the competitors suddenly jump into action. The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that Apple has done - not less. Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation', and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide value. But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.
jlampart 15y ago
I say this will spell the end of the US patent system before it spells the end of HTC or Android.
- soulinafishbowl 15y ago
  It has got to come to an end soon. Too much time and energy is being spent on these ridiculous legal issues and not enough on moving forward.
markokocic 15y ago
US patents can't be enforced outside of the USA. Why not just ignore US market and go on with the product in the rest of the world?
- kiiski 15y ago
  US market is kinda big.
  - markokocic 15y ago
    Not only big, the biggest one. But given increase in costs (MS tax, now Apple tax, tomorrow who knows) at some point it could be more cost effective for HTC to stop paying anyone and just not sell in the states. WO patents are much harder to get and very expensive to keep, so no big problem there.
    - Terretta 15y ago
      > Not only big, the biggest one. On the other hand, Nokia was the largest global handset seller at a time virtually nobody in the US market knew what it was. Ignoring the US market is viable, and the US market isn't for everyone. Look how many car manufacturers have tried and failed to make a go of it. (At least Americans can pronounce Nokia. Peugeot didn't stand a chance.)
    - piotrSikora 15y ago
      > Not only big, the biggest one. Statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...) would disagree with you.
      - mbreese 15y ago
        I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a market. If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a company would care about: profits.
meow 15y ago
I don't get it, isn't licensing the whole point of software patents.. sharing IP with the world and receiving royalties in return ? So how can Apple refuse to license the patent to HTC ?
- semanticist 15y ago
  The purpose of patents is to share the IP with the world, in return for a period of exclusivity. The decision to licence the technology in return for money is entirely down to the patent holder.
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    In particular there is no requirement that patents be licensable on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, nor that what society at large pays for access to the invention is less than it would have cost to have each competitor independently recreate it. Terms this generous should only be offered for inventions we're confident wouldn't have existed otherwise for any price. We shouldn't be enabling massive rent-seeking for straightforward improvements.
rickdale 15y ago
I really think Apple needs to take a page from Google's book here and adopt the 'don't be evil' philosophy. This is very disappointing to me because I see Apple like a tennis player who can tell you where he is going to hit the ball, yet still beat you there every time. I think they should welcome the competition and view copycats with pride. You don't get it right all the time.
- flocial 15y ago
  Well I think they remember all too well what happened last time with PC wars. This time they're playing for keeps.
  - Niten 15y ago
    That they tried to exert too much control over their platform and lost out to competitors who could offer more choice and better value? Yes the same thing has happened here, but the answer is not for Apple to abuse the legal system as a substitute for competing on the merits of their product.
    - mbreese 15y ago
      I'm pretty sure Apple learned a different lesson...
- podperson 15y ago
  I'm sure it was nice viewing Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 with pride. It was probably wonderful being proud of Bill Gates trademarking the term "PDA" after hearing John Sculley use it in a talk. It's probably pretty flattering to see Google switching from designing Android as a blackberry clone to designing it as an iPhone clone. To paraphrase a joke from the last depression: $5 and some pride gets you a nice cup of coffee at starbucks.
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    I'm sure it was nice viewing MacOS v1.0 with pride (if you worked at Xeroc PARC). It's kleptomaniac turtles all the way down!
nextparadigms 15y ago
Someone mentioned that the patents are from 1994 and 1996. So Apple is winning this battle in the smartphone industry, with something they had way, way before iPhone. How is that fair?
- Terretta 15y ago
  "Development of the Apple Newton platform started in 1987 and officially ended on February 27, 1998."[1] "HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou."[2] Apple's been investing in mobile usability (e.g., recognizing and acting on structured data with a tap) for a very long time. That an iPhone has a phone attached to it is arguably a secondary characteristic. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
The first patent is described as a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data," which Apple says applies, for example, to tapping a phone number and being prompted options to call or look it up on the web. So they have basically patented the context menu. How broken can a patent system possibly become before it crashes an entire economy?
- va_coder 15y ago
  Apple patented a popup menu. lol
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- garbowza 15y ago
  You must examine a patent based on the specific claims, not the title. Many people make this mistake and assume the patent is much broader than it actually is.
  - cema 15y ago
    Every patent is different, but the patent system is broken all the same. Does not mean no patents make sense (although I have yet to see one in software in algorithms; but meaningful hardware patents are not unusual). The system needs to be completely rethought. As of now, the software patent system is not only easily abused, but itself is an abuse of common sense. [/opinion]
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    Apple's claim does sound pretty broad and the court apparently found their claim to be legit. I have not read a single software patent (and I have read some, if not this one) that was not completely obvious to me, and I am "one of ordinary skill in the art".
  - chc 15y ago
    This is a good thing to keep in mind, but in this case, the patent really does appear to be about that vague as far as I've been able to find anyone explainng. The only difference from the title is that the patent requires the contextual action to have been automatically generated based on the content (it does not, however, detail any method for this "automatically generate" step). It seems to me that Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb ought to be prior art, but maybe there's a technicality I'm missing, because that seems like a big one for the lawyers to miss.
flocial 15y ago
These patent stories get more and more ridiculous by the day. We need a major software patent amnesty event to just wipe the slate clean. Patents were originally for protecting tinkerers and original thinkers from getting their ideas ripped off by some corporation. I love myself too much to read through the meat of the patents but it sure sounds so vague and general to software in general. Any idiot who took CS101 could dream up a parser that auto-recognizes a phone number and make it clickable. I mean scrolling, like really? Do I need written permission from Steve Jobs to implement it on a touch device? So now we wait until year 2050 before we see it on anything other than a iPhone? I wonder who will be winning then, oh right probably Apple because now they cornered all the hologram related patents with their trademark "no touch" interface in iOS 21 and OSX Sea Lion while the rest of the companies were busy getting sued. We need to rethink software patents. Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil. Software, especially UI innovation with all the metaphors drawn from the physical world is nothing like inventing the cotton gin. Sure we need to reward the the innovators but Apple engineers, brilliant though they may be, are intellectual slaves who don't own their own thoughts. Whoever actually came up with these things for Apple isn't retiring early that's for sure. All this is great but smart companies are going to flock to countries where saner laws prevail or even the wild wild east like China where nothing is safe but at least they can focus on innovation and not second guess the ideas coming from their own engineers brains.
- Terretta 15y ago
  > Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil. You were on a roll, saying people shouldn't have to innovate, then suddenly you worry about hampering innovation. Which is it? You want to be able to copy freely instead of innovating, or you want innovation to be protected? Many comments in these threads seem to think Apple woke up one day in 2007 with the completely obvious idea of an iPhone. That's not how it happened. Apple had been researching hand held computing since the 80's, bringing the most advanced handheld anyone had ever seen to the market, and iterating the ideas of how the software should work and the usability of that software, in directions quite different from those pursued by others such as Palm or PocketPC focused on limited capabilities more in line with what that era's hardware could actually pull off. The market wasn't ready for Newton then, but its ideas seeped into engineering consciousness, making its innovations seem "obvious" later. Eventually, physical technology caught up with Apple's ideas, enabling the iPhone and iPod touch. The Johnny-come-lately copycats are close enough already without their copies having to be "slavish". Whining about this or that feature they can't copy isn't becoming. If inventing's so easy, invent something better that everyone else will complain, after they see it, is obvious. Or, have the foresight or folly to go spend nearly two decades pouring money and hard work into a product the market isn't ready for, build a huge portfolio of research-driven ideas supporting making the product, finally bring a product to market that for the first time just "feels" to everyman it works exactly the way such a product should work, and then see how you feel about that twenty years of investment being protected. Arguably, making something feel obvious is an art. What's not obvious is that obviousness can take so much work.
photon_off 15y ago
I dislike pretty much everything about Apple except the MacBook Pro.
- scrrr 15y ago
  May be so. But how does this comment help to create an interesting discussion? Don't take it personally, please. But HN has always been great because of good comments. I'm not saying I've always contributed well, but let's try. :)
raganwald 15y ago
There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken? I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. If Apple isn't entitled to patent protection for it's discoveries, I'd argue nobody is. Which is a fine argument to make, but we should leave Apple out of it and say that even when a company uses the system as it was intended to be used, the system is broken. If Apple's victory over HTC is scary, the real conclusion is that all patents are scary, even those that protect companies doing actual research and who sell actual products. Meanwhile, I think that Google are the actual villains. Do they spend billions dismantling the patent system? No. Do they spend billions protecting their partners from lawsuits? No. What they do is aid and abet other companies to violate patents, and then they shrug their shoulders and sell a few more text ads for Viagra or ambulance chasing lawyers.
- sek 15y ago
  They are abusing the patent system to push competitors out of the market. They used a trivial patent to do this, these things are not valid in Europe. These things are not a problem for the real innovation guys the USA likes so much. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729720 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729720
  - raganwald 15y ago
    So is your argument that patents are ok, and a functional entity suing a patent violator is ok, but this specific patent is not ok? Or that patents are ok, but using them to push competitors violating the patents out of the market is not ok? Or that patents altogether are not ok?
    - sek 15y ago
shareme 15y ago
Lets shed some light... 1. HTC and Moto were both sued by Apple concerning same two patents. Hence alleged infringement in OS. 2. If alleged infringement is in OS than Google might have a way in to the proceedings to invalidate patents on OHA members behalf..ie not what Apple wants to face. 3. HP by its purchase of Palm has similar patents, hence why Apple never went after Palm or HP. Considering the way Google is currently shredding Oracle patents in the invalidation processes I have a feeling that Apple may be in for a surprise. why? Why do you think MS has been so careful not provoke any OEM to challenge them to a lawsuit? Its called do not expose patents to the opportunity to have them invalidated or narrowed in claims.
- raganwald 15y ago
  MS is currently extorting $15 per handset from Samsung for patent licenses, so perhaps they haven't provoked an OEM or challenged them to a lawsuit, but then again, perhaps they have.
kleptco 15y ago
These mostly absurd laws are intended to protect consumers not corps. Feeling protected yet? And why is the ITC deciding what devices we can use? Who are these people accountable too?
cageface 15y ago
We've all seen this but people seem to forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU Steve himself: "We have been shameless about stealing great ideas". It's sad to see him now, reduced to these tactics.
- mamp 15y ago
  I think Steve is particularly pissed about Android. Consider that Eric Schmidt stayed in the board of Apple during the development of the iPhone without declaring a conflict of interest while Google were secretly developing Android. I imagine that apple vs android is personal. Basically google had a head start because of this inside information.
- jdq 15y ago
  There is a difference between stealing an idea and blatant copying.
rufugee 15y ago
Why do we not see video game patents? Why don't we see, for example, Rockstar patenting "a mechanism for allowing a character to navigate a three dimensional space" and then suing the hell out of everyone else?
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  That wouldn't be fun.
- astrange 15y ago
  Namco owns a patent on minigames during loading screens.
alain94040 15y ago
I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996, and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a phone number or a date in an email: it automatically detects it and gives me contextual choices, such as move the phone number into my address book (automatically extracting the sender's name), or create an appointement based on a piece of text that says "let's talk tomorrow at 3pm". I'd say it's pretty smart. I can't guarantee it had never been done before 1996, but if I had come up with that at the time, I would have felt happy to file a patent for it. That being said, that patent is not critical to Android. Worst case, you can't auto-extract phone numbers and emails from random text. Big deal.
- exit 15y ago
  it's a completely trivial idea and apple just happens to be the clown that handed in their paper work first. or bought the stamped paper work from whoever. i've lost a lot of respect for apple for trying to leverage this patent.
- FiddlerClamp 15y ago
  I wonder if ACT had that functionality at the time...or the Newton, a bit earlier.
- ww520 15y ago
  I seem to remember Lotus Agenda did that long time ago back in the PC era. Should that be a prior art?
  - alain94040 15y ago
    Good catch. Per Wikipedia: Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing. Since that software is from 1992, it would definitely be prior art.
ajays 15y ago
17 year software patents make absolutely no sense. The computer world changes fast (insert Moore's Law, etc.). 17 years ago, the Web was tiny. Most people didn't have cellphones. "Broadband" was a 19.2kbaud modem. If we're going to have software patents, there should be a separate category for them; and they should be limited to, say, 5 years tops.
dataminer 15y ago
HTC has bought S3 graphics, which has successfully gone after Apple at ITC. ITC has found Apple infringing on two S3 graphics patents (final verdict in November). Now, HTC has been found infringing on two Apple patents (final verdict in December), will it force the two companies into cross licensing.
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  This is probably the most relevant comment of this thread, I hope it gets on top.
patentavenger 15y ago
One of the patents is for registering regular expressions to extract telephone numbers and contact information out of documents. This is a stupid patent for several reasons: #1 It's bloody obvious. Pretty much everyone reinvents it (Microsoft Smart Links anyone?) SMS->Extract Phone number, etc #2 It's so bloody obvious that there is prior open-source applications prior to 1996 that have this feature (turning phone numbers in web documents into clickable action links/context actions) I will say no more, but I have one in my possession. #3 It's bloody LAME! Really Apple, you want consumers to not be able to use ANY Android device based on the ability to turn text links into actions that was originally issues for the NeXT Desktop? Is that really the competitive advantage between the iPhone and other devices, that it has phone number detection in text documents!?!? Apple has proven with this that they are a patent troll. Are they suing over iPhone exclusive inventions, like multitouch, proximity sensor, using accelerometers to detect orientation, the "Swipe to Unlock" stuff and all of the things we saw in the original Jesus Phone presentation? No. They are trying to hurt competition over something developed for the desktop in 1996. Total losers.
- abecedarius 15y ago
  Multitouch was not an iPhone invention, though I'd believe details of how they did it were. (Or anyway inventions of the company they bought before starting the project.) And using accelerometers to infer orientation -- wasn't that what accelerometers were invented for in the first place? (With other applications like triggering airbags coming later? I'm not sure but that's the impression I'm under.)
RyanKearney 15y ago
Just in case anyone forgot, Steve Jobs once said: "We have always been shameless of stealing great ideas" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
- jdq 15y ago
  Windows Phone 7 is 'stealing' the idea [of a touch-screen smart phone]. That is very different than just copying. Ex: http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-vs-ios-homescreen-icons/91126 http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-vs-...

79 points by tomh- 15y ago

StavrosK 15y ago

How this is fair, I fail to comprehend. When laws allow things like this, maybe it's time for laws to change?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

llambda 15y ago

"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of all Google Android phones and tablets." Yawn Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this tripe yet?

danieldk 15y ago
As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or settling). Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already? If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything. Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?
- llambda 15y ago
  Your points are valid and should not be down voted! Come on guys, that isn't how this community works. :( I completely agree with you in regards to how things /should/ be. But it goes without saying, we aren't living in that perfect world. I don't think the ultimate impact of this ruling is going to be the banning of "all Google Android phones and tablets." I imagine in the worst case scenario HTC, et al, have to fork over some money to license the patents.
- Terretta 15y ago
  I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the results of your theory, and it's not pretty. > Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? No. To be worth while, investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even produced by the same factory) matching quality. Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original or copy. (A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100% of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are relatively rare.) > doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already? No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the streets during the original marketing push.
  - va_coder 15y ago
    >>I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced Which countries are not innovating because of weak copyright and patent law enforcement?
  - gvb 15y ago
    "Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together, e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are important. Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright laws, typically not with patent laws. Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical implementation to be patentable. For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's copyrights, but anybody that does any MP3 encoding[2] without having an appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME [2] In a country that the MP3 encoding patents are registered, of course.
- benihana 15y ago
  Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days? Do we care about our karma on a website on the internet?

asknemo 15y ago

This will serve nothing but encourage patent trolls and big corporations to invest more and more in ridiculously broad patents. Apple sues others, patent troll sues Apple and others, some other competitors dig out obscure patents and start sueing; someone gonna benefit from this, but definitely not entrepreneurs or customers.

soulinafishbowl 15y ago

Apple and Lodsys are in the same category.

rbarooah 15y ago
Right because Lodsys also transformed the landscape of the mobile industry by selling a revolutionary new device that everyone else is competing with.
- soulinafishbowl 15y ago
  Ah, I sense sarcasm. I suppose without explanation, my comment is too harsh, and I come off as an Apple hater. Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to hate. In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better spent on innovation or solving real problems.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking. I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players. On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led to very real and significant innovations. Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators and executives in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did the competitors suddenly jump into action. The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that Apple has done - not less. Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation', and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide value. But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.

jlampart 15y ago

I say this will spell the end of the US patent system before it spells the end of HTC or Android.

soulinafishbowl 15y ago
It has got to come to an end soon. Too much time and energy is being spent on these ridiculous legal issues and not enough on moving forward.

markokocic 15y ago

US patents can't be enforced outside of the USA. Why not just ignore US market and go on with the product in the rest of the world?

kiiski 15y ago
US market is kinda big.
- markokocic 15y ago
  Not only big, the biggest one. But given increase in costs (MS tax, now Apple tax, tomorrow who knows) at some point it could be more cost effective for HTC to stop paying anyone and just not sell in the states. WO patents are much harder to get and very expensive to keep, so no big problem there.
  - Terretta 15y ago
    > Not only big, the biggest one. On the other hand, Nokia was the largest global handset seller at a time virtually nobody in the US market knew what it was. Ignoring the US market is viable, and the US market isn't for everyone. Look how many car manufacturers have tried and failed to make a go of it. (At least Americans can pronounce Nokia. Peugeot didn't stand a chance.)
  - piotrSikora 15y ago
    > Not only big, the biggest one. Statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...) would disagree with you.
    - mbreese 15y ago
      I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a market. If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a company would care about: profits.

meow 15y ago

I don't get it, isn't licensing the whole point of software patents.. sharing IP with the world and receiving royalties in return ? So how can Apple refuse to license the patent to HTC ?

semanticist 15y ago
The purpose of patents is to share the IP with the world, in return for a period of exclusivity. The decision to licence the technology in return for money is entirely down to the patent holder.
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  In particular there is no requirement that patents be licensable on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, nor that what society at large pays for access to the invention is less than it would have cost to have each competitor independently recreate it. Terms this generous should only be offered for inventions we're confident wouldn't have existed otherwise for any price. We shouldn't be enabling massive rent-seeking for straightforward improvements.

rickdale 15y ago

I really think Apple needs to take a page from Google's book here and adopt the 'don't be evil' philosophy. This is very disappointing to me because I see Apple like a tennis player who can tell you where he is going to hit the ball, yet still beat you there every time. I think they should welcome the competition and view copycats with pride. You don't get it right all the time.

flocial 15y ago
Well I think they remember all too well what happened last time with PC wars. This time they're playing for keeps.
- Niten 15y ago
  That they tried to exert too much control over their platform and lost out to competitors who could offer more choice and better value? Yes the same thing has happened here, but the answer is not for Apple to abuse the legal system as a substitute for competing on the merits of their product.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure Apple learned a different lesson...
podperson 15y ago
I'm sure it was nice viewing Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 with pride. It was probably wonderful being proud of Bill Gates trademarking the term "PDA" after hearing John Sculley use it in a talk. It's probably pretty flattering to see Google switching from designing Android as a blackberry clone to designing it as an iPhone clone. To paraphrase a joke from the last depression: $5 and some pride gets you a nice cup of coffee at starbucks.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  I'm sure it was nice viewing MacOS v1.0 with pride (if you worked at Xeroc PARC). It's kleptomaniac turtles all the way down!

nextparadigms 15y ago

Someone mentioned that the patents are from 1994 and 1996. So Apple is winning this battle in the smartphone industry, with something they had way, way before iPhone. How is that fair?

Terretta 15y ago
"Development of the Apple Newton platform started in 1987 and officially ended on February 27, 1998."[1] "HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou."[2] Apple's been investing in mobile usability (e.g., recognizing and acting on structured data with a tap) for a very long time. That an iPhone has a phone attached to it is arguably a secondary characteristic. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC

fauigerzigerk 15y ago

The first patent is described as a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data," which Apple says applies, for example, to tapping a phone number and being prompted options to call or look it up on the web. So they have basically patented the context menu. How broken can a patent system possibly become before it crashes an entire economy?

va_coder 15y ago
Apple patented a popup menu. lol
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
garbowza 15y ago
You must examine a patent based on the specific claims, not the title. Many people make this mistake and assume the patent is much broader than it actually is.
- cema 15y ago
  Every patent is different, but the patent system is broken all the same. Does not mean no patents make sense (although I have yet to see one in software in algorithms; but meaningful hardware patents are not unusual). The system needs to be completely rethought. As of now, the software patent system is not only easily abused, but itself is an abuse of common sense. [/opinion]
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  Apple's claim does sound pretty broad and the court apparently found their claim to be legit. I have not read a single software patent (and I have read some, if not this one) that was not completely obvious to me, and I am "one of ordinary skill in the art".
- chc 15y ago
  This is a good thing to keep in mind, but in this case, the patent really does appear to be about that vague as far as I've been able to find anyone explainng. The only difference from the title is that the patent requires the contextual action to have been automatically generated based on the content (it does not, however, detail any method for this "automatically generate" step). It seems to me that Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb ought to be prior art, but maybe there's a technicality I'm missing, because that seems like a big one for the lawyers to miss.

flocial 15y ago

These patent stories get more and more ridiculous by the day. We need a major software patent amnesty event to just wipe the slate clean. Patents were originally for protecting tinkerers and original thinkers from getting their ideas ripped off by some corporation. I love myself too much to read through the meat of the patents but it sure sounds so vague and general to software in general. Any idiot who took CS101 could dream up a parser that auto-recognizes a phone number and make it clickable. I mean scrolling, like really? Do I need written permission from Steve Jobs to implement it on a touch device? So now we wait until year 2050 before we see it on anything other than a iPhone? I wonder who will be winning then, oh right probably Apple because now they cornered all the hologram related patents with their trademark "no touch" interface in iOS 21 and OSX Sea Lion while the rest of the companies were busy getting sued. We need to rethink software patents. Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil. Software, especially UI innovation with all the metaphors drawn from the physical world is nothing like inventing the cotton gin. Sure we need to reward the the innovators but Apple engineers, brilliant though they may be, are intellectual slaves who don't own their own thoughts. Whoever actually came up with these things for Apple isn't retiring early that's for sure. All this is great but smart companies are going to flock to countries where saner laws prevail or even the wild wild east like China where nothing is safe but at least they can focus on innovation and not second guess the ideas coming from their own engineers brains.

Terretta 15y ago
> Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil. You were on a roll, saying people shouldn't have to innovate, then suddenly you worry about hampering innovation. Which is it? You want to be able to copy freely instead of innovating, or you want innovation to be protected? Many comments in these threads seem to think Apple woke up one day in 2007 with the completely obvious idea of an iPhone. That's not how it happened. Apple had been researching hand held computing since the 80's, bringing the most advanced handheld anyone had ever seen to the market, and iterating the ideas of how the software should work and the usability of that software, in directions quite different from those pursued by others such as Palm or PocketPC focused on limited capabilities more in line with what that era's hardware could actually pull off. The market wasn't ready for Newton then, but its ideas seeped into engineering consciousness, making its innovations seem "obvious" later. Eventually, physical technology caught up with Apple's ideas, enabling the iPhone and iPod touch. The Johnny-come-lately copycats are close enough already without their copies having to be "slavish". Whining about this or that feature they can't copy isn't becoming. If inventing's so easy, invent something better that everyone else will complain, after they see it, is obvious. Or, have the foresight or folly to go spend nearly two decades pouring money and hard work into a product the market isn't ready for, build a huge portfolio of research-driven ideas supporting making the product, finally bring a product to market that for the first time just "feels" to everyman it works exactly the way such a product should work, and then see how you feel about that twenty years of investment being protected. Arguably, making something feel obvious is an art. What's not obvious is that obviousness can take so much work.

photon_off 15y ago

I dislike pretty much everything about Apple except the MacBook Pro.

scrrr 15y ago
May be so. But how does this comment help to create an interesting discussion? Don't take it personally, please. But HN has always been great because of good comments. I'm not saying I've always contributed well, but let's try. :)

raganwald 15y ago

There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken? I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. If Apple isn't entitled to patent protection for it's discoveries, I'd argue nobody is. Which is a fine argument to make, but we should leave Apple out of it and say that even when a company uses the system as it was intended to be used, the system is broken. If Apple's victory over HTC is scary, the real conclusion is that all patents are scary, even those that protect companies doing actual research and who sell actual products. Meanwhile, I think that Google are the actual villains. Do they spend billions dismantling the patent system? No. Do they spend billions protecting their partners from lawsuits? No. What they do is aid and abet other companies to violate patents, and then they shrug their shoulders and sell a few more text ads for Viagra or ambulance chasing lawyers.

sek 15y ago
They are abusing the patent system to push competitors out of the market. They used a trivial patent to do this, these things are not valid in Europe. These things are not a problem for the real innovation guys the USA likes so much. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729720 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729720
- raganwald 15y ago
  So is your argument that patents are ok, and a functional entity suing a patent violator is ok, but this specific patent is not ok? Or that patents are ok, but using them to push competitors violating the patents out of the market is not ok? Or that patents altogether are not ok?
  - sek 15y ago

shareme 15y ago

Lets shed some light... 1. HTC and Moto were both sued by Apple concerning same two patents. Hence alleged infringement in OS. 2. If alleged infringement is in OS than Google might have a way in to the proceedings to invalidate patents on OHA members behalf..ie not what Apple wants to face. 3. HP by its purchase of Palm has similar patents, hence why Apple never went after Palm or HP. Considering the way Google is currently shredding Oracle patents in the invalidation processes I have a feeling that Apple may be in for a surprise. why? Why do you think MS has been so careful not provoke any OEM to challenge them to a lawsuit? Its called do not expose patents to the opportunity to have them invalidated or narrowed in claims.

raganwald 15y ago
MS is currently extorting $15 per handset from Samsung for patent licenses, so perhaps they haven't provoked an OEM or challenged them to a lawsuit, but then again, perhaps they have.

kleptco 15y ago

These mostly absurd laws are intended to protect consumers not corps. Feeling protected yet? And why is the ITC deciding what devices we can use? Who are these people accountable too?

cageface 15y ago

We've all seen this but people seem to forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU Steve himself: "We have been shameless about stealing great ideas". It's sad to see him now, reduced to these tactics.

mamp 15y ago
I think Steve is particularly pissed about Android. Consider that Eric Schmidt stayed in the board of Apple during the development of the iPhone without declaring a conflict of interest while Google were secretly developing Android. I imagine that apple vs android is personal. Basically google had a head start because of this inside information.
jdq 15y ago
There is a difference between stealing an idea and blatant copying.

rufugee 15y ago

Why do we not see video game patents? Why don't we see, for example, Rockstar patenting "a mechanism for allowing a character to navigate a three dimensional space" and then suing the hell out of everyone else?

erikpukinskis 15y ago
That wouldn't be fun.
astrange 15y ago
Namco owns a patent on minigames during loading screens.

alain94040 15y ago

I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996, and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a phone number or a date in an email: it automatically detects it and gives me contextual choices, such as move the phone number into my address book (automatically extracting the sender's name), or create an appointement based on a piece of text that says "let's talk tomorrow at 3pm". I'd say it's pretty smart. I can't guarantee it had never been done before 1996, but if I had come up with that at the time, I would have felt happy to file a patent for it. That being said, that patent is not critical to Android. Worst case, you can't auto-extract phone numbers and emails from random text. Big deal.

exit 15y ago
it's a completely trivial idea and apple just happens to be the clown that handed in their paper work first. or bought the stamped paper work from whoever. i've lost a lot of respect for apple for trying to leverage this patent.
FiddlerClamp 15y ago
I wonder if ACT had that functionality at the time...or the Newton, a bit earlier.
ww520 15y ago
I seem to remember Lotus Agenda did that long time ago back in the PC era. Should that be a prior art?
- alain94040 15y ago
  Good catch. Per Wikipedia: Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing. Since that software is from 1992, it would definitely be prior art.

ajays 15y ago

17 year software patents make absolutely no sense. The computer world changes fast (insert Moore's Law, etc.). 17 years ago, the Web was tiny. Most people didn't have cellphones. "Broadband" was a 19.2kbaud modem. If we're going to have software patents, there should be a separate category for them; and they should be limited to, say, 5 years tops.

dataminer 15y ago

HTC has bought S3 graphics, which has successfully gone after Apple at ITC. ITC has found Apple infringing on two S3 graphics patents (final verdict in November). Now, HTC has been found infringing on two Apple patents (final verdict in December), will it force the two companies into cross licensing.

patrickaljord 15y ago
This is probably the most relevant comment of this thread, I hope it gets on top.

patentavenger 15y ago

One of the patents is for registering regular expressions to extract telephone numbers and contact information out of documents. This is a stupid patent for several reasons: #1 It's bloody obvious. Pretty much everyone reinvents it (Microsoft Smart Links anyone?) SMS->Extract Phone number, etc #2 It's so bloody obvious that there is prior open-source applications prior to 1996 that have this feature (turning phone numbers in web documents into clickable action links/context actions) I will say no more, but I have one in my possession. #3 It's bloody LAME! Really Apple, you want consumers to not be able to use ANY Android device based on the ability to turn text links into actions that was originally issues for the NeXT Desktop? Is that really the competitive advantage between the iPhone and other devices, that it has phone number detection in text documents!?!? Apple has proven with this that they are a patent troll. Are they suing over iPhone exclusive inventions, like multitouch, proximity sensor, using accelerometers to detect orientation, the "Swipe to Unlock" stuff and all of the things we saw in the original Jesus Phone presentation? No. They are trying to hurt competition over something developed for the desktop in 1996. Total losers.

abecedarius 15y ago
Multitouch was not an iPhone invention, though I'd believe details of how they did it were. (Or anyway inventions of the company they bought before starting the project.) And using accelerometers to infer orientation -- wasn't that what accelerometers were invented for in the first place? (With other applications like triggering airbags coming later? I'm not sure but that's the impression I'm under.)

RyanKearney 15y ago

Just in case anyone forgot, Steve Jobs once said: "We have always been shameless of stealing great ideas" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

jdq 15y ago
Windows Phone 7 is 'stealing' the idea [of a touch-screen smart phone]. That is very different than just copying. Ex: http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-vs-ios-homescreen-icons/91126 http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-vs-...