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Personally, I don't know why Apple's just going after small potatoes. Given their patents, they clearly own Google Instant and Google's standard multi-source (

by fpgeek 14y ago

Personally, I don't know why Apple's just going after small potatoes. Given their patents, they clearly own Google Instant and Google's standard multi-source (Web/Images/News/...) search plus a bunch of other things (thoughts about how many Apple patents Chrome must infringe?). Why waste time on Android phones? Win an aggressive enough lawsuit and they'd own Google. Even if Apple just got an injunction, that would be enough to cripple Google (to the point where Google would agree to extortionate licensing terms, I'd bet).

T-Winsnes 14y ago
Could be they want to set a precedence for the patent with a smaller target, and then aim at the big stuff that is more commonly known by the non-tech crowd.
taligent 14y ago
Because the patent doesn't seem to apply to servers i.e. it specifically refers to client devices attributes. The original use case for the Apple patent was the Sherlock search feature back in OS 8.5 (1998) which utilised a plugin system. IIRC it was a unique feature as not even search engines e.g. Altavista were doing multi source search at that time. I can't imagine it would be hard to find prior art for it though.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  I remember Sherlock being widely derided as a ripoff of the shareware app "Watson". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson
  - taligent 14y ago
    I remember that time. The newer version of Sherlock was but they still had the core plugin based search approach in place before that.
notatoad 14y ago
they're going after what they think they can win. Getting a patent granted is one thing, defending it in court is another. if a patent gets invalidated by a judge it is forever worthless, but if it has yet to be tested in court it can be used to bully smaller players who can't afford to defend themselves. bringing a patent case against google's core business will cause google to fight back with all their might, and it might end up the wrong way for apple. They have to save that case until they create a situation where they are sure they can win.

by fpgeek 14y ago

T-Winsnes 14y ago

Could be they want to set a precedence for the patent with a smaller target, and then aim at the big stuff that is more commonly known by the non-tech crowd.

taligent 14y ago

Because the patent doesn't seem to apply to servers i.e. it specifically refers to client devices attributes. The original use case for the Apple patent was the Sherlock search feature back in OS 8.5 (1998) which utilised a plugin system. IIRC it was a unique feature as not even search engines e.g. Altavista were doing multi source search at that time. I can't imagine it would be hard to find prior art for it though.

kalleboo 14y ago
I remember Sherlock being widely derided as a ripoff of the shareware app "Watson". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson
- taligent 14y ago
  I remember that time. The newer version of Sherlock was but they still had the core plugin based search approach in place before that.

notatoad 14y ago

they're going after what they think they can win. Getting a patent granted is one thing, defending it in court is another. if a patent gets invalidated by a judge it is forever worthless, but if it has yet to be tested in court it can be used to bully smaller players who can't afford to defend themselves. bringing a patent case against google's core business will cause google to fight back with all their might, and it might end up the wrong way for apple. They have to save that case until they create a situation where they are sure they can win.