4 ms·

If the patents were used to block android out of market, then maybe it is harming the consumers. But I see no problem with demanding license fees and maintainin

If the patents were used to block android out of market, then maybe it is harming the consumers. But I see no problem with demanding license fees and maintaining certain feature exclusivity, even that means Android become not so free or less user-friendly. Google does not represent all people and Android has no inherent right to be free.

Krylez 15y ago
You make it sound so reasonable. There is a patent gold rush right now. The USPTO is approving thousands of patents that cover the same obvious ideas. Parties that have lost in the marketplace or haven't even participated are effectively taxing the winners by extorting patent fees. Google could pay the fees to the losers and acquire enough patents the reach an equilibrium via mutually assured destruction with their competition, but the market is effectively closed to anyone without the extremely deep pockets.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  First I hate patent trolls, but the ill effects are financially not that devastating. Trolls do not kill the geese. No geese, no egg. And then there are the tech giants, they do not notice you until you get real big yourself. So yeah, the situation sure is depressing, but then again at the end of the tunnel is money and fame, it is only reasonable the path shall be difficult.
azakai 15y ago
I have many problems with demands of license fees for patents that are trivial. All of the patents mentioned so far in this battle have been of that sort. This isn't a valid use of the patent system - it's an abuse of that system. This is very clear to both people that suppose software patents and that oppose them. If someone can show a valid, nontrivial patent that Android is being attacked with, I might change my mind. Lawsuits over trivial patents scare me because I might be the next target. If I found another startup some day, and develop all my own technology, I can still be sued over trivial patents. If it can happen to Google, what's to stop it from happening to any of us, if we become successful enough to be targets for this sort of thing?
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Me think Sun's java patents are very non-trivial. But legally speaking, none of us have the authority to determine what qualifies as trivial. Google certainly has the fund to battle it out and demands re-examination of every patents involved. Just recently Apple got USPTO to declare several S3 patents invalid. Just do it.
  - azakai 15y ago
    > But legally speaking, none of us have the authority to determine what qualifies as trivial. Technically we can be sued and the court will decide what is 'trivial'. But that is completely messed up. We, the software engineers, know what is trivial or not in our field - software engineering. If lawyers decide what is trivial and what isn't in software, then every software engineer founding a startup needs a lawyer to go over all the code he or she writes. That's a horrible burden on innovation!
    - AllenKids 15y ago
      What's obvious and trivial to professionals may not be trivial at all in common sense. What's obvious and trivial after the fact may not be trivial at all before someone come up with it in the first place. The question remains to what extend do we protect IP so the system yields net benefit to the society, not the opposite? I have no answer, but I'm Chinese, I've witnessed a complete disregard for IP in practice facilitates intellectual cesspool and general lack of innovation. I hesitate to join the chant for total software patents abolishment.
      - azakai 15y ago
        > What's obvious and trivial to professionals may not be trivial at all in common sense. And should not the professionals in this case - software engineers - be the right people to make that determination? > What's obvious and trivial after the fact may not be trivial at all before someone come up with it in the first place. Yes. But in practice, no one reads patent filings. So the act of filing patents doesn't spread information that makes an idea seem trivial later on. Of course the act of making a successful product might do that. > The question remains to what extend do we protect IP so the system yields net benefit to the society, not the opposite? That's a tough question. But it is clear that suing over trivial patents is detrimental to innovation. Software patents of actual substance, on the other hand, are a debatable issue. None of the patents being sued over in the mobile space so far appear to have any substance. Note that I don't count the Java patents here - Oracle isn't a mobile company, and the patents aren't mobile in particular. Oracle's lawsuit against Google isn't of the same category as the other anti-Android lawsuits. The other ones come from competitors in the mobile space. Regarding the Java patents themselves, I haven't read any, so I can't say I have an opinion.
yock 15y ago
It isn't the demand for fees, per se, it's the intended result of those fees. Those fees are to be charged at such a rate, a rate practically guaranteed by the monopoly promised by the patent, as to make Android infeasible economically. That behavior is at the very heart of anti-competitive law.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  I don't get it. The fees are always in 5-20 ranges from what can be gathered. Collectively Microsoft, Apple and Oracle would get $40 tops per phone. Why is it economically infeasible? Adding $40 to COGS at about $200 sure is not pretty, but impossible? Also Google is making money off of the platform, let it subsides Android manufacturors if necessary. After all by giving out decent mobile OS for free, Google also makes Microsoft's business model "infeasible economically". Live by the sword, at least expect a few cuts.
nitrogen 15y ago
...Android has no inherent right to be free. The core idea of Free Software is the notion that one's own creations have every right to be free. If I create something independently, it is my right to give it away for free. Why should some other company I've never heard of and/or never done business with get to charge license fees for something I created myself, without their help?
- AllenKids 15y ago
  See the problem is quite a few companies do not think Android is 100% Google's own creation. Oracle is asking a price for the Java part. Apple does not want its own UI to be a part. And FSM knows what parts Microsoft feels entitled to.
  - danenania 15y ago
    Right, and those companies are full of shit, because Apple's UI is just an amalgamation of shiny icons and features that have been used countless times in countless places--in mobile, the web, standard oses, everywhere. Do they do a great job of packaging all these features together for a good user experience? Certainly. But 'good design' shouldn't be patentable. Same with Java. Name one feature of Java that hasn't been done 100 times in one form or another in some other language This is why software patents are absurd. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.
    - AllenKids 15y ago
      And we all pay for the right to stand there, for no longer than 20 years. In the tech industry, 20 years are couple of lifetimes long. I'm in favor of shorten the period too.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Regarding Apple's UI claims, IIUC that's mostly against Samsung's modifications of Android. Further, how many ways can you arrange finger-sized square icons on a portrait-mode screen? If two phones have two screens of similar size, and one puts 48x48 (or whatever) pixel icons on them, they will form similar grids. Oracle is another matter entirely, and arguing that case requires discussing whether an unoriginal programming language and associated virtual machine should be patentable. Oracle gets no sympathy from me because of the way they've treated the various communities that built up around Sun's products, but beyond that, I think a rational case can be made that Google's independent implementation of a register-based VM should not be seen as infringing patents on Java's stack-based VM, and/or that Java's patents cover things that are obvious or non-novel.
notatoad 15y ago
you're making the mistake of assuming that these patents cover real features or inventions. they don't. they are just pages of incomprehensible text that lawyers use to extort money. should google really be paying licensing fees for "a system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data"? and in most of microsoft's existing licensing agreements with android vendors, that haven't even disclosed what patents are being licensed. there's just some vague threat that they have a claim, and you're expected to pay up if you don't want to get sued.
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Then challenge the patents, change the law. I'm not happy with the current system either. But I do not see IP legal actions as all evil, the purpose can be purely to set road blocks for competitors. But as long as it is within the bound of law. After all Android's price barrier is also pretty insurmountable. I'm very skeptical that HTC does not know what Microsoft's been licensing. Others do not, sure.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    i agree with you that not all IP action is evil. but the patent system is horribly broken, they grant patents for retarded things and it is nearly impossible to get a stupid patent overturned. it isn't nearly as simple as "challenge the patents, change the law". microsoft and others who abuse the patent system in this way are going to keep doing everything in their power to ensure it stays broken. and yes, i'm sure HTC knows what they are licensing. but they've signed NDAs as part of their agreement, and microsoft refuses to publicly disclose what patents they think they hold. if google could learn what patents microsoft is charging license fees for, they could potentially write android in a way that didn't infringe on those patents. microsoft doesn't want this. they want android to infringe, so they can continue to collect money off it. this is a malicious abuse of the patent system. there is no other way to describe it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

Krylez 15y ago

You make it sound so reasonable. There is a patent gold rush right now. The USPTO is approving thousands of patents that cover the same obvious ideas. Parties that have lost in the marketplace or haven't even participated are effectively taxing the winners by extorting patent fees. Google could pay the fees to the losers and acquire enough patents the reach an equilibrium via mutually assured destruction with their competition, but the market is effectively closed to anyone without the extremely deep pockets.

AllenKids 15y ago
First I hate patent trolls, but the ill effects are financially not that devastating. Trolls do not kill the geese. No geese, no egg. And then there are the tech giants, they do not notice you until you get real big yourself. So yeah, the situation sure is depressing, but then again at the end of the tunnel is money and fame, it is only reasonable the path shall be difficult.

azakai 15y ago

I have many problems with demands of license fees for patents that are trivial. All of the patents mentioned so far in this battle have been of that sort. This isn't a valid use of the patent system - it's an abuse of that system. This is very clear to both people that suppose software patents and that oppose them. If someone can show a valid, nontrivial patent that Android is being attacked with, I might change my mind. Lawsuits over trivial patents scare me because I might be the next target. If I found another startup some day, and develop all my own technology, I can still be sued over trivial patents. If it can happen to Google, what's to stop it from happening to any of us, if we become successful enough to be targets for this sort of thing?

AllenKids 15y ago
Me think Sun's java patents are very non-trivial. But legally speaking, none of us have the authority to determine what qualifies as trivial. Google certainly has the fund to battle it out and demands re-examination of every patents involved. Just recently Apple got USPTO to declare several S3 patents invalid. Just do it.
- azakai 15y ago
  > But legally speaking, none of us have the authority to determine what qualifies as trivial. Technically we can be sued and the court will decide what is 'trivial'. But that is completely messed up. We, the software engineers, know what is trivial or not in our field - software engineering. If lawyers decide what is trivial and what isn't in software, then every software engineer founding a startup needs a lawyer to go over all the code he or she writes. That's a horrible burden on innovation!
  - AllenKids 15y ago
    What's obvious and trivial to professionals may not be trivial at all in common sense. What's obvious and trivial after the fact may not be trivial at all before someone come up with it in the first place. The question remains to what extend do we protect IP so the system yields net benefit to the society, not the opposite? I have no answer, but I'm Chinese, I've witnessed a complete disregard for IP in practice facilitates intellectual cesspool and general lack of innovation. I hesitate to join the chant for total software patents abolishment.
    - azakai 15y ago
      > What's obvious and trivial to professionals may not be trivial at all in common sense. And should not the professionals in this case - software engineers - be the right people to make that determination? > What's obvious and trivial after the fact may not be trivial at all before someone come up with it in the first place. Yes. But in practice, no one reads patent filings. So the act of filing patents doesn't spread information that makes an idea seem trivial later on. Of course the act of making a successful product might do that. > The question remains to what extend do we protect IP so the system yields net benefit to the society, not the opposite? That's a tough question. But it is clear that suing over trivial patents is detrimental to innovation. Software patents of actual substance, on the other hand, are a debatable issue. None of the patents being sued over in the mobile space so far appear to have any substance. Note that I don't count the Java patents here - Oracle isn't a mobile company, and the patents aren't mobile in particular. Oracle's lawsuit against Google isn't of the same category as the other anti-Android lawsuits. The other ones come from competitors in the mobile space. Regarding the Java patents themselves, I haven't read any, so I can't say I have an opinion.

yock 15y ago

It isn't the demand for fees, per se, it's the intended result of those fees. Those fees are to be charged at such a rate, a rate practically guaranteed by the monopoly promised by the patent, as to make Android infeasible economically. That behavior is at the very heart of anti-competitive law.

AllenKids 15y ago
I don't get it. The fees are always in 5-20 ranges from what can be gathered. Collectively Microsoft, Apple and Oracle would get $40 tops per phone. Why is it economically infeasible? Adding $40 to COGS at about $200 sure is not pretty, but impossible? Also Google is making money off of the platform, let it subsides Android manufacturors if necessary. After all by giving out decent mobile OS for free, Google also makes Microsoft's business model "infeasible economically". Live by the sword, at least expect a few cuts.

nitrogen 15y ago

...Android has no inherent right to be free. The core idea of Free Software is the notion that one's own creations have every right to be free. If I create something independently, it is my right to give it away for free. Why should some other company I've never heard of and/or never done business with get to charge license fees for something I created myself, without their help?

AllenKids 15y ago
See the problem is quite a few companies do not think Android is 100% Google's own creation. Oracle is asking a price for the Java part. Apple does not want its own UI to be a part. And FSM knows what parts Microsoft feels entitled to.
- danenania 15y ago
  Right, and those companies are full of shit, because Apple's UI is just an amalgamation of shiny icons and features that have been used countless times in countless places--in mobile, the web, standard oses, everywhere. Do they do a great job of packaging all these features together for a good user experience? Certainly. But 'good design' shouldn't be patentable. Same with Java. Name one feature of Java that hasn't been done 100 times in one form or another in some other language This is why software patents are absurd. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.
  - AllenKids 15y ago
    And we all pay for the right to stand there, for no longer than 20 years. In the tech industry, 20 years are couple of lifetimes long. I'm in favor of shorten the period too.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Regarding Apple's UI claims, IIUC that's mostly against Samsung's modifications of Android. Further, how many ways can you arrange finger-sized square icons on a portrait-mode screen? If two phones have two screens of similar size, and one puts 48x48 (or whatever) pixel icons on them, they will form similar grids. Oracle is another matter entirely, and arguing that case requires discussing whether an unoriginal programming language and associated virtual machine should be patentable. Oracle gets no sympathy from me because of the way they've treated the various communities that built up around Sun's products, but beyond that, I think a rational case can be made that Google's independent implementation of a register-based VM should not be seen as infringing patents on Java's stack-based VM, and/or that Java's patents cover things that are obvious or non-novel.

notatoad 15y ago

you're making the mistake of assuming that these patents cover real features or inventions. they don't. they are just pages of incomprehensible text that lawyers use to extort money. should google really be paying licensing fees for "a system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data"? and in most of microsoft's existing licensing agreements with android vendors, that haven't even disclosed what patents are being licensed. there's just some vague threat that they have a claim, and you're expected to pay up if you don't want to get sued.

AllenKids 15y ago
Then challenge the patents, change the law. I'm not happy with the current system either. But I do not see IP legal actions as all evil, the purpose can be purely to set road blocks for competitors. But as long as it is within the bound of law. After all Android's price barrier is also pretty insurmountable. I'm very skeptical that HTC does not know what Microsoft's been licensing. Others do not, sure.
- notatoad 15y ago
  i agree with you that not all IP action is evil. but the patent system is horribly broken, they grant patents for retarded things and it is nearly impossible to get a stupid patent overturned. it isn't nearly as simple as "challenge the patents, change the law". microsoft and others who abuse the patent system in this way are going to keep doing everything in their power to ensure it stays broken. and yes, i'm sure HTC knows what they are licensing. but they've signed NDAs as part of their agreement, and microsoft refuses to publicly disclose what patents they think they hold. if google could learn what patents microsoft is charging license fees for, they could potentially write android in a way that didn't infringe on those patents. microsoft doesn't want this. they want android to infringe, so they can continue to collect money off it. this is a malicious abuse of the patent system. there is no other way to describe it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]