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I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. It is truly absurd that Apple has the audacity to claim some 'we invented

I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. It is truly absurd that Apple has the audacity to claim some 'we invented it' right to any type of Cellphone tech or Tablet hardware. ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side and the fact that iTunes laid the pavement for the 'app' concept. Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, and once the 'Steve Jobs effect' wears off, they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets. And then, it might be time to look elsewhere for your 401k investment.

cbg0 14y ago
> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products Actually, I doubt it will, as very few people care about the rivalry between large corporations. Apple even started suing mom & pop cafes that had the apple logo or just the word "Apple" in their name, and even that didn't hurt their image much.
- user49598 14y ago
  If that's true, I don't think a lot of people know about it.
  - rmk2 14y ago
    For your reading pleasure: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verklagt-bonner-cafe-wehe-sie-veraeppeln-apples-apfel-1.1173840 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verkla... [süddeutsche.de -> in german] http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html [thelocal.de] http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe-to-stop-using-this-logo-20111021/ http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe... [geek.com] Everything except the first link are the product of looking for English reports on the same issue, so I do not vouche for their quality.
    - MaysonL 14y ago
      The trademark arguably [arguably, not obviously] infringes on Apple's trademark, and one of the peculiarities of trademark law is that if you do not vigorously defend a trademark, it's scope and strength diminish.
- SODaniel 14y ago
  Short term yes. Though I think we all remember Microsoft walking down the same path and basically paving the way for Apple to become 'the underdog' in the 90s and it sure hasn't helped their public image.
  - dannyr 14y ago
    This is true in Silicon Valley's startup world. A lot of people here dislike Microsoft. It's hard to find a startup built on the .Net stack. Microsoft has the BizSpark program that gives away software licenses for free to startups but that didn't make a difference. I'm starting to see the same sentiment against Apple though not yet to a point that they will be abandoning development on the iOS platform.
  - ajross 14y ago
    Right. Ultimately Microsoft's perceived opposition to the evolving open internet hurt it's perception among developers very badly. Where in the early 90's "everyone" wanted to work for MS and develop windows, by the end of the decade everyone wanted to be working with web apps and JS and Linux. Fast forward to today, and they're just another software company with no particular technical leadership ability. Right now, the Apple bandwagon is still really full, so it may be hard to tell: but I'm seeing more smart hackers jumping off than on these days. In 10 years, how likely is it that Apple will be just another dinosaur milking a legacy OS?
- eridius 14y ago
  What does trademark protection (which they are legally required to do) have to do with patents?
mtgx 14y ago
What I found odd is that even though an iPhone or a Galaxy phone is using so much more important technologies in them, they get to banned for stuff like slide to unlock or pulling results from multiple databases. Even if you argue that it was an "innovative idea", in the end it's still just an idea, and the execution of it is not that hard to warrant a full ban of the whole product from the market for "copying their technology".
- wmf 14y ago
  I agree that products shouldn't be banned based on small infringements, but it sounds like Apple doesn't want to license things like slide-to-unlock for any amount of money.
  - mratzloff 14y ago
    Which is, of course, their perogative.
    - wmf 14y ago
      The question is what to do with a product that's already on store shelves that has been found to be unknowingly infringing one of these "unlicensable" patents. Is it fair to ban it (potentially imposing massive losses) or should the court award some "reasonable" amount of damages?
Terretta 14y ago
> I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. Many of us are not thinking that. Many of us are thinking Apple didn't claim to have invented 3G radio, but purchased Qualcomm chips, and as the UK courts found, in licensing the technology to Qualcomm and its customers, Samsung had already "exhausted" its patent rights. It's on the record that Samsung changed its tune on these patents in April 2011, looking for something to use to counter Apple's concerns about the wholesale appropriation of iPad trade dress (device, packaging presentation, box cover art) by Samsung's me-too tablet. As Samsung's own quote notes, "Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone." Apple was happy to pay for those, just as they paid for radio chips. Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. At least, this is what some people think. > they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets Apple is not a hardware company. As someone recently put it on HN, "ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side". And I'm also not sure that's true, considering the success of Macbook Air containing the same UI/UX as the rest of the Macbook line. The truth is they are a platform company, as noted in other threads here.
- cube13 14y ago
  >Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. More importantly, how could Samsung claim Apple infringed on their patents when Apple purchased the chips from Qualcomm, who are licensed to produce and sell the chips?
technoslut 14y ago
This post is a rant of a fanboy which is why I downvoted it. It's one thing to prove your point but you didn't even do that. The BGR report is garbage as is most of their posts that doesn't involve Gellar's connections at RIM. No one is claiming the idea of button-free phone; not even Apple. What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. I don't claim for it to be right or wrong. What defined the iPhone was not the hardware but software and that is what Apple is going after. Samsung is suing over FRAND patents which is something else entirely. Apple's not suing over Samsung over what they asked them to build. This patent nonsense that exists on HN has really got to stop. It has affected very few except the claims by Lodsys. Do you really care about the brinksmanship that is conducted by two giants?
- neya 14y ago
  >What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. Oh..Really? Then why are they suing the rest of the OEM's whose UI/UX is not even remotely similar? Before you make a point, its good to educate yourself with the topic, atleast to an average extent. Just my 2 cents. And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =)
  - technoslut 14y ago
    You're not mad that Apple is suing. You're mad that Apple is winning some arguments. What they've been winning is off of UI/UX. It's one thing to argue if software patents should even exist but you were not even arguing that. It's hard to tell what you're against other than Apple. You believe that Samsung is right for no apparent reason. All I can tell you is that I don't care and I'm tired of these stories on HN being ranked so highly since it's about ideology and not how it affects the lives of anyone. >And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =) I thought it was appropriate. What is your point?
    - incision 14y ago
      Why are you so angry?
wmf 14y ago
ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side... And isn't TouchWiz eerily similar to iOS's UI/UX?
- chmod775 14y ago
  You're right. When Apple introduced the notification system I was like... I have seen that somewhere. TouchWiz itself is similar to most other OSes. I has a "desktop" with icons and a "start menu" with more software to put on the desktop.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    But does someone have a patent or design patent that covers the Apple implementation of notification? If not it doesn't matter. If so Apple should have to work around it. There is a separate question about what should or should not be granted and whether the law should be changed regarding patentability and duration. Now I think the law should be changed and less should be patentable but that isn't the law or the situation now.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      Google has applied for such a patent. It has not (yet) been granted, but there's no particular reason to expect it won't be, given the track record of the USPTO. Especially since many of the infringements Apple claims began in the period between application and grant, it will be interesting to see the shoe on the other foot.
      - josephlord 14y ago
        It will be interesting. Agree about USPTO track record but I do wonder if there is more prior art in this area, I seem to remember Symbian having some form of notifications which may at least limit the scope of the Google patent. I'm not familiar with the details of how patent protection is handled before grant. I would guess that licensing fees are not due for the period before grant but that as soon as it is issued you should work around it or pay licensing fees. Assuming it is granted and no cross license is in place by then I assume Apple would try to work around it pretty quickly. I don't see Google offering it for a fair price as they are more interested in market share and leverage than cash too.
blhack 14y ago
Apple didn't even come close to laying the pavement for the "app" concept. I was installing apps on my palm m100 back junior high school. They were paid, there was an app store, it just wasn't connected to the device because the device didn't have a network stack.
el_cuadrado 14y ago
> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, I don't really care about lawsuits, I care about the product. I will buy Apple if they offer the best product on the market. Lawsuits won't change that.
- incision 14y ago
  You're not the average consumer. Apple owes everything to effectively cultivating the notion that they are cool and unique, the product of choice for young rebels and everyone who thinks different. Cool enables their huge margins, grants instant forgiveness for any slip-ups and allows them to essentially dictate what constitutes the "best product". That's why they're fighting so hard. Samsung is a threat to their cool.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Sigh. No, they "owe everything" to effectively building the only cell phone that didn't blow goats.
    - incision 14y ago
      ...9 years after the iMac and 6 years after the iPod. Apple doesn't exist to release the iPhone without first being resurrected by those two products.
msbarnett 14y ago
So you think Samsung ought to be able to sue you for patent infringement for buying a cell-phone? Because fan-boy "rah rah fuck-Apple"isms aside, that's literally the legal outcome that Samsung is pushing for here. They licensed their patents to Qualcomm, who used them to build chips which were sold to Apple. Now, Samsung is arguing that the exhaustion doctrine should no longer exist and that Apple, by buying those chips, re-infringed on Samsung's patents (and, consequently that you re-infringe those patents when you buy a phone, or someone else's patents when you buy a TV, or a car, or a shoe, or anything). What Samsung is arguing for here would make the already fucked up patent system thousands upon thousands of times worse.
Gibbon 14y ago
Do I really need to point out that Samsung are awarded nearly an order of magnitude more patents each year than Apple? (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm) In order the most patents were awarded to IBM, Samsung, Canon, Panasonic, Toshiba and Microsoft. So Samsung is no. 2, while Apple is all the way down in 38th place. If anything, I'm willing to bet that Samsung and the other Asian manufacturers are the overzealous ones trying to use patents to muscle their way into the higher end of the technology market. More patents are now awarded to foreign countries than the USA. Mostly Japan, Korea, Germany and Taiwan. If you think Apple is on the wrong end of the argument, well I guess you don't want a domestic technology market?
- v0cab 14y ago
  What's more, the South Korean government (owned by Samsung) has been blocking and putting up barriers to foreign phones for years, including delaying the introduction of the original iPhone to South Korea, to give Samsung and co. a chance to develop competitors. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html if you want more info on South Korean protectionism in regards to phones. You may also wish to read: 'Republic of Samsung' Confronts a Backlash http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung2... This may also interest you: Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-samsung-20100510 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-sa... Odd that I'm not reading so much anger about all that Samsung has done on HackerNews and Reddit.

cbg0 14y ago

> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products Actually, I doubt it will, as very few people care about the rivalry between large corporations. Apple even started suing mom & pop cafes that had the apple logo or just the word "Apple" in their name, and even that didn't hurt their image much.

user49598 14y ago
If that's true, I don't think a lot of people know about it.
- rmk2 14y ago
  For your reading pleasure: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verklagt-bonner-cafe-wehe-sie-veraeppeln-apples-apfel-1.1173840 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/computerkonzern-verkla... [süddeutsche.de -> in german] http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111026-38449.html [thelocal.de] http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe-to-stop-using-this-logo-20111021/ http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-wants-a-german-cafe... [geek.com] Everything except the first link are the product of looking for English reports on the same issue, so I do not vouche for their quality.
  - MaysonL 14y ago
    The trademark arguably [arguably, not obviously] infringes on Apple's trademark, and one of the peculiarities of trademark law is that if you do not vigorously defend a trademark, it's scope and strength diminish.
SODaniel 14y ago
Short term yes. Though I think we all remember Microsoft walking down the same path and basically paving the way for Apple to become 'the underdog' in the 90s and it sure hasn't helped their public image.
- dannyr 14y ago
  This is true in Silicon Valley's startup world. A lot of people here dislike Microsoft. It's hard to find a startup built on the .Net stack. Microsoft has the BizSpark program that gives away software licenses for free to startups but that didn't make a difference. I'm starting to see the same sentiment against Apple though not yet to a point that they will be abandoning development on the iOS platform.
- ajross 14y ago
  Right. Ultimately Microsoft's perceived opposition to the evolving open internet hurt it's perception among developers very badly. Where in the early 90's "everyone" wanted to work for MS and develop windows, by the end of the decade everyone wanted to be working with web apps and JS and Linux. Fast forward to today, and they're just another software company with no particular technical leadership ability. Right now, the Apple bandwagon is still really full, so it may be hard to tell: but I'm seeing more smart hackers jumping off than on these days. In 10 years, how likely is it that Apple will be just another dinosaur milking a legacy OS?
eridius 14y ago
What does trademark protection (which they are legally required to do) have to do with patents?

mtgx 14y ago

What I found odd is that even though an iPhone or a Galaxy phone is using so much more important technologies in them, they get to banned for stuff like slide to unlock or pulling results from multiple databases. Even if you argue that it was an "innovative idea", in the end it's still just an idea, and the execution of it is not that hard to warrant a full ban of the whole product from the market for "copying their technology".

wmf 14y ago
I agree that products shouldn't be banned based on small infringements, but it sounds like Apple doesn't want to license things like slide-to-unlock for any amount of money.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  Which is, of course, their perogative.
  - wmf 14y ago
    The question is what to do with a product that's already on store shelves that has been found to be unknowingly infringing one of these "unlicensable" patents. Is it fair to ban it (potentially imposing massive losses) or should the court award some "reasonable" amount of damages?

Terretta 14y ago

> I have to say that I am happy to see a major company saying what everyone is thinking. Many of us are not thinking that. Many of us are thinking Apple didn't claim to have invented 3G radio, but purchased Qualcomm chips, and as the UK courts found, in licensing the technology to Qualcomm and its customers, Samsung had already "exhausted" its patent rights. It's on the record that Samsung changed its tune on these patents in April 2011, looking for something to use to counter Apple's concerns about the wholesale appropriation of iPad trade dress (device, packaging presentation, box cover art) by Samsung's me-too tablet. As Samsung's own quote notes, "Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone." Apple was happy to pay for those, just as they paid for radio chips. Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. At least, this is what some people think. > they are nothing but another company selling cellphones and tablets Apple is not a hardware company. As someone recently put it on HN, "ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side". And I'm also not sure that's true, considering the success of Macbook Air containing the same UI/UX as the rest of the Macbook line. The truth is they are a platform company, as noted in other threads here.

cube13 14y ago
>Samsung now claims they want an astonishing percentage of Apple's revenue from phones for these patent rights that courts have found they'd already exhausted, even though Apple sells versions of the devices w/o 3G radios, indicating the majority of value of the device has nothing to do with Samsung's 3G even if the patent rights were not exhausted. Even aside from how much of the device value is thanks to Samsung's chip (Samsung says all of it, while even you say the UI/UX must be part of it), Samsung's percentage demand is not FRAND. More importantly, how could Samsung claim Apple infringed on their patents when Apple purchased the chips from Qualcomm, who are licensed to produce and sell the chips?

technoslut 14y ago

This post is a rant of a fanboy which is why I downvoted it. It's one thing to prove your point but you didn't even do that. The BGR report is garbage as is most of their posts that doesn't involve Gellar's connections at RIM. No one is claiming the idea of button-free phone; not even Apple. What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. I don't claim for it to be right or wrong. What defined the iPhone was not the hardware but software and that is what Apple is going after. Samsung is suing over FRAND patents which is something else entirely. Apple's not suing over Samsung over what they asked them to build. This patent nonsense that exists on HN has really got to stop. It has affected very few except the claims by Lodsys. Do you really care about the brinksmanship that is conducted by two giants?

neya 14y ago
>What you mention as the UI/UX experience is what Apple is mostly suing for. Oh..Really? Then why are they suing the rest of the OEM's whose UI/UX is not even remotely similar? Before you make a point, its good to educate yourself with the topic, atleast to an average extent. Just my 2 cents. And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =)
- technoslut 14y ago
  You're not mad that Apple is suing. You're mad that Apple is winning some arguments. What they've been winning is off of UI/UX. It's one thing to argue if software patents should even exist but you were not even arguing that. It's hard to tell what you're against other than Apple. You believe that Samsung is right for no apparent reason. All I can tell you is that I don't care and I'm tired of these stories on HN being ranked so highly since it's about ideology and not how it affects the lives of anyone. >And btw, your name certainly looks interesting =) I thought it was appropriate. What is your point?
  - incision 14y ago
    Why are you so angry?

wmf 14y ago

ALL Apples success is derived from the UI/UX side... And isn't TouchWiz eerily similar to iOS's UI/UX?

chmod775 14y ago
You're right. When Apple introduced the notification system I was like... I have seen that somewhere. TouchWiz itself is similar to most other OSes. I has a "desktop" with icons and a "start menu" with more software to put on the desktop.
- josephlord 14y ago
  But does someone have a patent or design patent that covers the Apple implementation of notification? If not it doesn't matter. If so Apple should have to work around it. There is a separate question about what should or should not be granted and whether the law should be changed regarding patentability and duration. Now I think the law should be changed and less should be patentable but that isn't the law or the situation now.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Google has applied for such a patent. It has not (yet) been granted, but there's no particular reason to expect it won't be, given the track record of the USPTO. Especially since many of the infringements Apple claims began in the period between application and grant, it will be interesting to see the shoe on the other foot.
    - josephlord 14y ago
      It will be interesting. Agree about USPTO track record but I do wonder if there is more prior art in this area, I seem to remember Symbian having some form of notifications which may at least limit the scope of the Google patent. I'm not familiar with the details of how patent protection is handled before grant. I would guess that licensing fees are not due for the period before grant but that as soon as it is issued you should work around it or pay licensing fees. Assuming it is granted and no cross license is in place by then I assume Apple would try to work around it pretty quickly. I don't see Google offering it for a fair price as they are more interested in market share and leverage than cash too.

blhack 14y ago

Apple didn't even come close to laying the pavement for the "app" concept. I was installing apps on my palm m100 back junior high school. They were paid, there was an app store, it just wasn't connected to the device because the device didn't have a network stack.

el_cuadrado 14y ago

> Trying to bully the competition with purchased patents and lawyers will only turn people off their products, I don't really care about lawsuits, I care about the product. I will buy Apple if they offer the best product on the market. Lawsuits won't change that.

incision 14y ago
You're not the average consumer. Apple owes everything to effectively cultivating the notion that they are cool and unique, the product of choice for young rebels and everyone who thinks different. Cool enables their huge margins, grants instant forgiveness for any slip-ups and allows them to essentially dictate what constitutes the "best product". That's why they're fighting so hard. Samsung is a threat to their cool.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Sigh. No, they "owe everything" to effectively building the only cell phone that didn't blow goats.
  - incision 14y ago
    ...9 years after the iMac and 6 years after the iPod. Apple doesn't exist to release the iPhone without first being resurrected by those two products.

msbarnett 14y ago

So you think Samsung ought to be able to sue you for patent infringement for buying a cell-phone? Because fan-boy "rah rah fuck-Apple"isms aside, that's literally the legal outcome that Samsung is pushing for here. They licensed their patents to Qualcomm, who used them to build chips which were sold to Apple. Now, Samsung is arguing that the exhaustion doctrine should no longer exist and that Apple, by buying those chips, re-infringed on Samsung's patents (and, consequently that you re-infringe those patents when you buy a phone, or someone else's patents when you buy a TV, or a car, or a shoe, or anything). What Samsung is arguing for here would make the already fucked up patent system thousands upon thousands of times worse.

Gibbon 14y ago

Do I really need to point out that Samsung are awarded nearly an order of magnitude more patents each year than Apple? (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_11.htm) In order the most patents were awarded to IBM, Samsung, Canon, Panasonic, Toshiba and Microsoft. So Samsung is no. 2, while Apple is all the way down in 38th place. If anything, I'm willing to bet that Samsung and the other Asian manufacturers are the overzealous ones trying to use patents to muscle their way into the higher end of the technology market. More patents are now awarded to foreign countries than the USA. Mostly Japan, Korea, Germany and Taiwan. If you think Apple is on the wrong end of the argument, well I guess you don't want a domestic technology market?

v0cab 14y ago
What's more, the South Korean government (owned by Samsung) has been blocking and putting up barriers to foreign phones for years, including delaying the introduction of the original iPhone to South Korea, to give Samsung and co. a chance to develop competitors. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125367616595333125.html if you want more info on South Korean protectionism in regards to phones. You may also wish to read: 'Republic of Samsung' Confronts a Backlash http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung2... This may also interest you: Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-samsung-20100510 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/10/world/la-fg-korea-sa... Odd that I'm not reading so much anger about all that Samsung has done on HackerNews and Reddit.