8 ms·

Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

415 points by Wilya 15y ago

bradleyland 15y ago
The author's framing of Apple's patent applications isn't congruent with the way Apple views touch. The W3C, and standards advocates, view touch events in the same way they do mouse clicks. They're interactions that should be standardized and incorporated in to an event model for use in web applications. Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. Their already granted pinch to zoom patents reflect this view. So, to a standards body, Apple's actions are perceived as undermining standards. To Apple, they're perceived as an act to protect a R&D investment.
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  And yet Apple extended the web platform with these APIs, shipped them in a production browser, documented them (without labeling them as experimental or proprietary), published web content that used them, and encouraged other web developers to do the same [1]. Other WebKit vendors followed suit and implemented Apple's APIs, including Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia. Then other browser vendors like Opera followed. Mozilla had our own independently-developed multitouch API [2] but earlier this year we implemented WebKit-style touch events in Gecko and helped lead the standardization process at the W3C. They were already a de-facto standard; we had to implement them if we wanted mobile Firefox to work with popular sites like Google Maps. If Apple had no intention of ever allowing other browsers to implement touch events, then they could at least have shipped them with a vendor prefix, as Mozilla did with our "MozTouchMove" events (and other experimental or pre-standard APIs). Instead they polluted the global namespace, created a de-facto standard, and never gave a word of feedback to the standards effort that emerged around their work. Only at the very end of the process, after supporting the API in their production browser for four years, did they suddenly act to block the acceptance of a de-jure standard based on the de-facto standard they created. Touch events are not just for novel multi-touch scenarios; in browsers like Safari they are necessary even for single-touch drag and drop handling that has been possible in desktop browsers for over a decade. If the W3C and Apple can't work out a royalty-free licensing arrangement for Apple's essential claims, then this seems very likely to fragment the mobile web even further by creating yet more "works only in Safari" pages. While we don't know the outcome yet, the path Apple has taken so far does not reflect the responsibility or stewardship toward the web that I'd like to see from a major browser vendor. The mobile web is already in terrible shape when it comes to pages working across browsers. Do you think Google would ever push an update to Gmail that makes it not work in Firefox? Well they did exactly that to mobile Gmail this year, and didn't fix it until a month later [3]. It's like the 1990s browser war all over again. Keeping the web platform based on open standards is essential to keep it open to new browsers and technologies. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Apple... [2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla_experimental%29 https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla... [3]: http://bugzil.la/678150 http://bugzil.la/678150 (I work for Mozilla and I am co-editor of the W3C Touch Events spec, but these opinions are my own.) EDIT: I think your comment is an accurate reflection of Apple's priorities -- I'm arguing against Apple's actions, not against your comment.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.
    - notatoad 15y ago
      i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.
      - buster 15y ago
        Which probably (and hopefully) won't happen with Firefox.
      - glassx 15y ago
        I don't know... Charging royalties would be a PR disaster that would cost much more than the licensing in the long term, and if the incentive for charging isn't financial, then it means don't really want other browsers to have Safari-compatible touch events... that, or they're just trying to delay their adoption as much as they can.
- untog 15y ago
  The author doesn't seem that concerned with the patent applications themselves, rather Apple repeatedly throwing them at the standardisation process. Every time that it's happened so far they've done it at the last minute and halted the standardisation process, only to find that the patents weren't even relevant anyway. Given the insane amount of time that the standardisation bodies take anyway, Apple's approach is extremely unhelpful.
  - huxley 15y ago
    Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but read up about what Rambus did to the JEDEC standards body for an example of really nasty behaviour.
    - ajross 15y ago
      So... it's OK for Apple to do this because Rambus was worse? (edit: I don't disagree that Rambus was worse -- they were, and threatened to effectively kill the competetive and vibrant DRAM market with their antics. But Rambus lost, and died. Apple is still around, and behaving badly.)
      - iy56 15y ago
        Huxley said >Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better So why would you read it as a claim that "it's OK for Apple to do this"? He's just pointing out an interesting bit of history.
        untog 15y ago
        It's a linguistic thing, I think. Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but The 'but' implies "Not disagreeing, but not totally agreeing either". It might have been better to not mention Apple at all: "It's interesting to note that Rambus persued this tactic in an even worse way..."
- ajross 15y ago
  "Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? Using questionable patents to prevent straightforward interoperability requirements (i.e. make a web app to act like a native app) is, to me and I suspect lots of others, a fundamentally evil act. It's all well and good to Love you some Apple. But when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public, don't expect people to stand behind them just because they make pretty phones.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    """Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? """ Yeah, but tough luck. Why didn't those complaining Opera/Mozilla devs come up with the same interaction methods before Apple/fingerworks to give them to the public domain? """when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public""" Well, selling computers instead of giving them with zero profit margin is against the interest of the public too. Where do you draw the line? Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors? If you invoke the defense of the questionable patent, since "pinch-to-zoom" is "too obvious", then why didn't anyone else come up with it before and patented it? It can't be both obvious AND non patented before. What it can be, though, and I think it is, is "obvious in retrospect". Which is not the same as obvious at all. That said, I'm all for a short period (5-10 years?) where a patent can be valid. But I don't buy the "questionable" or "obvious" argument. If it's obvious, patent it and grant it to the world, or at least establish some major prior-art.
    - ajross 15y ago
      "It can't be both obvious AND non patented before." This is so wrong it makes my brain hurt to read it. Even beyond plainly bad logic (you patent every "obvious" idea you have?!) it's contradicted by a continuous stream of "bad patent with prior art" stories on this site and a hundred others. Hell, I see some links to that sort of thing in this very thread. "Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors?" Because that's is the whole point of patent law, according to the US constitution at least. And in any case that's not what's happening here. Apple isn't trying to make sure we get pinch-zoom from them, they're trying to make sure that web applications cannot get pinch-zoom at all.
- praptak 15y ago
  > Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. "Pioneered" is a strong word for a technology whose development they had nothing to do with, then just bought it out so that no one else can innovate upon it: http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom.html http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom...
- tosseraccount 15y ago
  "Apple views touch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." That's the problem. The marketing that "Apple invented the PC, Apple invented the GUI, Apple invented music players, apple invented pads" is one thing. But to actually continually threaten competitors with law suits is just being a bully.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Just imagine what would've happened to the Web if everyone ever making a technology for the Web would've thought like Apple.
hackermom 15y ago
Watch out, Haavard is at it again!
GHFigs 15y ago
Alternate title:"Apple disclosing patents ahead of deadline in accordance with W3C patent policy, again." The sense of malice seems to be inferred from Apple not disclosing these sooner, but I question what the point is of having a deadline if disclosures a month prior to it are going to be considered disruptive. If this was going undermine the process, shouldn't the deadline have been sooner?
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  The case where a W3C member has essential claims that aren't available under W3C royalty-free licensing requirements is treated as an "exception" to W3C policy [1], not an expected part of the normal process. It requires formation of a special committee and is truly disruptive. Apple seems to be one of the only members willing to do it regularly. [1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Exception http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Exc... What would have been less disruptive is if Apple had any other communication at all with the W3C Web Events working since it was formed more than a year ago. Actually participating in a working group that is working an APIs they are shipping is the normal way for a W3C member to help shape a standard. If they had participated in the group, then the patents would have come up during the disclosure period for the First Public Working Draft back in May 2011. Instead, they recently even asked for other, unrelated standards (like the Game Pad API) to be moved to a different working group so they can continue to avoid participation in the Web Events WG [2]. [2]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webevents/2011OctDec/0131.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webevents/2011Oct... Or, better, Apple could have brought touch events to the W3C themselves after they first shipped them in Safari back in 2007. (Even better is to propose new standards before shipping them in a production browser, so that other parties can provide feedback before the standard is locked in by content compatibility - but I understand that proprietary browser vendors won't always do this because of secrecy around product launches.) And of course, not patenting their extensions to the web platform would also be great. :(
  - roc 15y ago
    I'd be down for considering corporations that retain software patents [1] to be malicious. But I'm not sure I can get behind intimating that groups are being maliciously or aloofly disruptive simply because they aren't participating in Open Source working groups to the degree that we might like. Again, if the timing is disruptive, the group should have set an earlier deadline for disclosure. If Apple's honoring the rules, then their timing is only as disruptive as the rules allowed in the first place. So it seems more reasonable to critique and revise the rules than to cast aspersions about dedication and motives. [1] i.e. do not simply file for and retain ownership for defensive purposes, but freely license them to prevent any offensive use on their part.
ryoshu 15y ago
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou... When did Apple file for its pinch-zoom patent? Jeff Han figured out a good way to commoditize multi-touch hardware, but the pinch-zoom multi-touch interface existed well before Apple made it mainstream.
- huxley 15y ago
  It's possible that some of the patents came from Fingerworks which Apple bought in 2005. Fingerworks had been doing touch based work since about 1998.
mbr 15y ago
I was under the impression that FSF had a collection of patents that have been donated to them. If so, can it really be true that Apple's not violating any of them? Proprietary companies use their patents to blackmail one another into cross-licensing all the time. Although it's offensive, it's how business operates. Why can't FSF do the same for the greater good of fostering the establishment of standards that will benefit the Free Software community and the public at large?
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  Apple is the largest company in the world, or close to it. Even huge companies with big legal teams and patent holdings like Samsung that get into patent battles with Apple risk ending up with court injunctions against selling their products. If the FSF decided to fight a (horribly lopsided) patent war against Apple, the losing scenario could include injunctions and damages against open source developers and users.
jstepien 15y ago
I'm wondering what would be an effect of moving a standardisation organisation to a software-patent-free country. In such case software patent issues wouldn't be any obstacle for the organisation in their standardisation processes. On the other hand, created standards would be useless in countries where technologies covered in the standard had already been patented. As a result, isn't it so that software patents in some countries inhibit the development of standards on a global scale? That's troubling.
- CaveTech 15y ago
  Even if the standards process could be carried out in another country, as you said, countries where patents exist would not be able to implement the resulting standard. The end result would be an api that is anything but standard. It's important that the groups work slowly to clear all legal issues so that standards can truly be used on a global scale.
- aristidb 15y ago
  I think just creating the standard is not the problem. If W3C had a policy "We don't care about patents", nobody could sue THEM. However, if anybody wanted to actually use those standards, he/she would get sued.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  In this case the standard would be largely implemented by 4 or 5 organizations, all but one of which are based in the US (Mozilla, Opera, Apple, Google, Microsoft, if you count Google and Apple separately). I can't speak for the validity of the patents involved in Norway or whether Apple could pursue Opera for distributing a browser infringing on their patents in the US. But for the others, the patent situation is very relevant. So it wouldn't matter if the standard just decided to standardize something that Apple claims patents on, if Microsoft and Mozilla then couldn't implement the standard due to those patents....
DarkShikari 15y ago
I don't understand why the W3C even allows this. When companies submit any documentation whatsoever as part of, say, an the ITU H.264 standardization process, they are required to sign off on a form that states whether they have patent claims on that documentation. If they do, they declare that they are willing to license it under the terms required for that specification -- no surprises. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of later surprise patents, but it does mean that it's unlikely any can come from anyone involved, because to even be involved in the process, you have to declare legally that this won't happen. Why does the W3C not do this? If a W3C standard requires that all patents involved be licensed in a particular royalty-free manner, shouldn't even proposing an idea to the W3C require a declaration that one has no patents on said idea, or that will license ones' patent in such a manner?
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  The W3C has similar requirements. Apple worked around them by never proposing touch events as a standard in the W3C [1]. The standardization effort was led by other W3C members without Apple's participation. [1]: Also, although Safari lead David Hyatt hinted way back in January 2007 that he would eventually bring touch events to the WHAT-WG , it never actually happened: http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-January/009213.html http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-Jan... P.S. Greetings from a fellow Mudder! Thanks for ffmpeg! :)
lincolnwebs 15y ago
While I don't condone it, it's easy to understand Apple's reasoning. The longer they can delay the standardization of touch events, the easier it is for them to maintain dominance in the tablet and phone markets with their UX design & proprietary apps marketplace ("those web apps are harder to use because they don't behave with touch right!"). Of course they don't want a standard yet. They're the ones doing it best and reaping the rewards.
namank 15y ago
This is interesting. To me, it seem, that Apple knows its a lost battle before it even begins. So the only purpose here is to delay the open standard for as long as possible. Why do I think this? Because they filed it at the last minute...not once, not twice, but three time!

415 points by Wilya 15y ago

The author's framing of Apple's patent applications isn't congruent with the way Apple views touch. The W3C, and standards advocates, view touch events in the same way they do mouse clicks. They're interactions that should be standardized and incorporated in to an event model for use in web applications. Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. Their already granted pinch to zoom patents reflect this view. So, to a standards body, Apple's actions are perceived as undermining standards. To Apple, they're perceived as an act to protect a R&D investment.

mbrubeck 15y ago
And yet Apple extended the web platform with these APIs, shipped them in a production browser, documented them (without labeling them as experimental or proprietary), published web content that used them, and encouraged other web developers to do the same [1]. Other WebKit vendors followed suit and implemented Apple's APIs, including Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia. Then other browser vendors like Opera followed. Mozilla had our own independently-developed multitouch API [2] but earlier this year we implemented WebKit-style touch events in Gecko and helped lead the standardization process at the W3C. They were already a de-facto standard; we had to implement them if we wanted mobile Firefox to work with popular sites like Google Maps. If Apple had no intention of ever allowing other browsers to implement touch events, then they could at least have shipped them with a vendor prefix, as Mozilla did with our "MozTouchMove" events (and other experimental or pre-standard APIs). Instead they polluted the global namespace, created a de-facto standard, and never gave a word of feedback to the standards effort that emerged around their work. Only at the very end of the process, after supporting the API in their production browser for four years, did they suddenly act to block the acceptance of a de-jure standard based on the de-facto standard they created. Touch events are not just for novel multi-touch scenarios; in browsers like Safari they are necessary even for single-touch drag and drop handling that has been possible in desktop browsers for over a decade. If the W3C and Apple can't work out a royalty-free licensing arrangement for Apple's essential claims, then this seems very likely to fragment the mobile web even further by creating yet more "works only in Safari" pages. While we don't know the outcome yet, the path Apple has taken so far does not reflect the responsibility or stewardship toward the web that I'd like to see from a major browser vendor. The mobile web is already in terrible shape when it comes to pages working across browsers. Do you think Google would ever push an update to Gmail that makes it not work in Firefox? Well they did exactly that to mobile Gmail this year, and didn't fix it until a month later [3]. It's like the 1990s browser war all over again. Keeping the web platform based on open standards is essential to keep it open to new browsers and technologies. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Apple... [2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla_experimental%29 https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla... [3]: http://bugzil.la/678150 http://bugzil.la/678150 (I work for Mozilla and I am co-editor of the W3C Touch Events spec, but these opinions are my own.) EDIT: I think your comment is an accurate reflection of Apple's priorities -- I'm arguing against Apple's actions, not against your comment.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.
    - buster 15y ago
      Which probably (and hopefully) won't happen with Firefox.
    - glassx 15y ago
      I don't know... Charging royalties would be a PR disaster that would cost much more than the licensing in the long term, and if the incentive for charging isn't financial, then it means don't really want other browsers to have Safari-compatible touch events... that, or they're just trying to delay their adoption as much as they can.
untog 15y ago
The author doesn't seem that concerned with the patent applications themselves, rather Apple repeatedly throwing them at the standardisation process. Every time that it's happened so far they've done it at the last minute and halted the standardisation process, only to find that the patents weren't even relevant anyway. Given the insane amount of time that the standardisation bodies take anyway, Apple's approach is extremely unhelpful.
- huxley 15y ago
  Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but read up about what Rambus did to the JEDEC standards body for an example of really nasty behaviour.
  - ajross 15y ago
    So... it's OK for Apple to do this because Rambus was worse? (edit: I don't disagree that Rambus was worse -- they were, and threatened to effectively kill the competetive and vibrant DRAM market with their antics. But Rambus lost, and died. Apple is still around, and behaving badly.)
    - iy56 15y ago
      Huxley said >Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better So why would you read it as a claim that "it's OK for Apple to do this"? He's just pointing out an interesting bit of history.
      - untog 15y ago
        It's a linguistic thing, I think. Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but The 'but' implies "Not disagreeing, but not totally agreeing either". It might have been better to not mention Apple at all: "It's interesting to note that Rambus persued this tactic in an even worse way..."
ajross 15y ago
"Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? Using questionable patents to prevent straightforward interoperability requirements (i.e. make a web app to act like a native app) is, to me and I suspect lots of others, a fundamentally evil act. It's all well and good to Love you some Apple. But when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public, don't expect people to stand behind them just because they make pretty phones.
- dextorious 15y ago
  """Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? """ Yeah, but tough luck. Why didn't those complaining Opera/Mozilla devs come up with the same interaction methods before Apple/fingerworks to give them to the public domain? """when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public""" Well, selling computers instead of giving them with zero profit margin is against the interest of the public too. Where do you draw the line? Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors? If you invoke the defense of the questionable patent, since "pinch-to-zoom" is "too obvious", then why didn't anyone else come up with it before and patented it? It can't be both obvious AND non patented before. What it can be, though, and I think it is, is "obvious in retrospect". Which is not the same as obvious at all. That said, I'm all for a short period (5-10 years?) where a patent can be valid. But I don't buy the "questionable" or "obvious" argument. If it's obvious, patent it and grant it to the world, or at least establish some major prior-art.
  - ajross 15y ago
    "It can't be both obvious AND non patented before." This is so wrong it makes my brain hurt to read it. Even beyond plainly bad logic (you patent every "obvious" idea you have?!) it's contradicted by a continuous stream of "bad patent with prior art" stories on this site and a hundred others. Hell, I see some links to that sort of thing in this very thread. "Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors?" Because that's is the whole point of patent law, according to the US constitution at least. And in any case that's not what's happening here. Apple isn't trying to make sure we get pinch-zoom from them, they're trying to make sure that web applications cannot get pinch-zoom at all.
praptak 15y ago
> Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. "Pioneered" is a strong word for a technology whose development they had nothing to do with, then just bought it out so that no one else can innovate upon it: http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom.html http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom...
tosseraccount 15y ago
"Apple views touch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." That's the problem. The marketing that "Apple invented the PC, Apple invented the GUI, Apple invented music players, apple invented pads" is one thing. But to actually continually threaten competitors with law suits is just being a bully.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Just imagine what would've happened to the Web if everyone ever making a technology for the Web would've thought like Apple.

hackermom 15y ago

Watch out, Haavard is at it again!

GHFigs 15y ago

Alternate title:"Apple disclosing patents ahead of deadline in accordance with W3C patent policy, again." The sense of malice seems to be inferred from Apple not disclosing these sooner, but I question what the point is of having a deadline if disclosures a month prior to it are going to be considered disruptive. If this was going undermine the process, shouldn't the deadline have been sooner?

mbrubeck 15y ago
The case where a W3C member has essential claims that aren't available under W3C royalty-free licensing requirements is treated as an "exception" to W3C policy [1], not an expected part of the normal process. It requires formation of a special committee and is truly disruptive. Apple seems to be one of the only members willing to do it regularly. [1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Exception http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Exc... What would have been less disruptive is if Apple had any other communication at all with the W3C Web Events working since it was formed more than a year ago. Actually participating in a working group that is working an APIs they are shipping is the normal way for a W3C member to help shape a standard. If they had participated in the group, then the patents would have come up during the disclosure period for the First Public Working Draft back in May 2011. Instead, they recently even asked for other, unrelated standards (like the Game Pad API) to be moved to a different working group so they can continue to avoid participation in the Web Events WG [2]. [2]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webevents/2011OctDec/0131.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webevents/2011Oct... Or, better, Apple could have brought touch events to the W3C themselves after they first shipped them in Safari back in 2007. (Even better is to propose new standards before shipping them in a production browser, so that other parties can provide feedback before the standard is locked in by content compatibility - but I understand that proprietary browser vendors won't always do this because of secrecy around product launches.) And of course, not patenting their extensions to the web platform would also be great. :(
- roc 15y ago
  I'd be down for considering corporations that retain software patents [1] to be malicious. But I'm not sure I can get behind intimating that groups are being maliciously or aloofly disruptive simply because they aren't participating in Open Source working groups to the degree that we might like. Again, if the timing is disruptive, the group should have set an earlier deadline for disclosure. If Apple's honoring the rules, then their timing is only as disruptive as the rules allowed in the first place. So it seems more reasonable to critique and revise the rules than to cast aspersions about dedication and motives. [1] i.e. do not simply file for and retain ownership for defensive purposes, but freely license them to prevent any offensive use on their part.

ryoshu 15y ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou... When did Apple file for its pinch-zoom patent? Jeff Han figured out a good way to commoditize multi-touch hardware, but the pinch-zoom multi-touch interface existed well before Apple made it mainstream.

huxley 15y ago
It's possible that some of the patents came from Fingerworks which Apple bought in 2005. Fingerworks had been doing touch based work since about 1998.

mbr 15y ago

I was under the impression that FSF had a collection of patents that have been donated to them. If so, can it really be true that Apple's not violating any of them? Proprietary companies use their patents to blackmail one another into cross-licensing all the time. Although it's offensive, it's how business operates. Why can't FSF do the same for the greater good of fostering the establishment of standards that will benefit the Free Software community and the public at large?

mbrubeck 15y ago
Apple is the largest company in the world, or close to it. Even huge companies with big legal teams and patent holdings like Samsung that get into patent battles with Apple risk ending up with court injunctions against selling their products. If the FSF decided to fight a (horribly lopsided) patent war against Apple, the losing scenario could include injunctions and damages against open source developers and users.

jstepien 15y ago

I'm wondering what would be an effect of moving a standardisation organisation to a software-patent-free country. In such case software patent issues wouldn't be any obstacle for the organisation in their standardisation processes. On the other hand, created standards would be useless in countries where technologies covered in the standard had already been patented. As a result, isn't it so that software patents in some countries inhibit the development of standards on a global scale? That's troubling.

CaveTech 15y ago
Even if the standards process could be carried out in another country, as you said, countries where patents exist would not be able to implement the resulting standard. The end result would be an api that is anything but standard. It's important that the groups work slowly to clear all legal issues so that standards can truly be used on a global scale.
aristidb 15y ago
I think just creating the standard is not the problem. If W3C had a policy "We don't care about patents", nobody could sue THEM. However, if anybody wanted to actually use those standards, he/she would get sued.
bzbarsky 15y ago
In this case the standard would be largely implemented by 4 or 5 organizations, all but one of which are based in the US (Mozilla, Opera, Apple, Google, Microsoft, if you count Google and Apple separately). I can't speak for the validity of the patents involved in Norway or whether Apple could pursue Opera for distributing a browser infringing on their patents in the US. But for the others, the patent situation is very relevant. So it wouldn't matter if the standard just decided to standardize something that Apple claims patents on, if Microsoft and Mozilla then couldn't implement the standard due to those patents....

DarkShikari 15y ago

I don't understand why the W3C even allows this. When companies submit any documentation whatsoever as part of, say, an the ITU H.264 standardization process, they are required to sign off on a form that states whether they have patent claims on that documentation. If they do, they declare that they are willing to license it under the terms required for that specification -- no surprises. This doesn't eliminate the possibility of later surprise patents, but it does mean that it's unlikely any can come from anyone involved, because to even be involved in the process, you have to declare legally that this won't happen. Why does the W3C not do this? If a W3C standard requires that all patents involved be licensed in a particular royalty-free manner, shouldn't even proposing an idea to the W3C require a declaration that one has no patents on said idea, or that will license ones' patent in such a manner?

mbrubeck 15y ago
The W3C has similar requirements. Apple worked around them by never proposing touch events as a standard in the W3C [1]. The standardization effort was led by other W3C members without Apple's participation. [1]: Also, although Safari lead David Hyatt hinted way back in January 2007 that he would eventually bring touch events to the WHAT-WG , it never actually happened: http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-January/009213.html http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-Jan... P.S. Greetings from a fellow Mudder! Thanks for ffmpeg! :)

lincolnwebs 15y ago

While I don't condone it, it's easy to understand Apple's reasoning. The longer they can delay the standardization of touch events, the easier it is for them to maintain dominance in the tablet and phone markets with their UX design & proprietary apps marketplace ("those web apps are harder to use because they don't behave with touch right!"). Of course they don't want a standard yet. They're the ones doing it best and reaping the rewards.

namank 15y ago

This is interesting. To me, it seem, that Apple knows its a lost battle before it even begins. So the only purpose here is to delay the open standard for as long as possible. Why do I think this? Because they filed it at the last minute...not once, not twice, but three time!