4 ms·

Apple found guilty of willful patent infringement

33 points by vaksel 18y ago

axod 18y ago
How about any judge who passes judgement on things like this, has to learn to program just a little bit. Just so they can understand how trivial some things are, compared with others. It does sound like the original patent was bogus. How can you patent something so obvious and trivial as this? If you can sum up the idea in pretty much a single sentence as you can here, should raise a few flags.
- djahng 18y ago
  I agree with you in that the judge and jury probably didn't understand the first thing about patent at all. Unfortunately that's not what the lawsuit was about. It was that Apple was aware of the patent and infringed upon it anyways. I think the patent process needs some major reform. After all, Apple is trying to (or did by now?) patent the pinch. And then there's the person who patented the use of a laser pointer to play with a cat...
  - lutorm 18y ago
    OMG, that is actually a patent. I thought you were joking.
- vaksel 18y ago
  I think they just rely on expert testimony from both sides to help convince them
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
alain94040 18y ago
That's a tough one to decide. I read the patent quickly. I know quite a bit about PCI, cache coherency and prediction. I'd say whoever wrote the patent covered a good idea. Good enough to be patentable? Hum... It's clever. Not completely obvious. But not earth shattering either... If Apple couldn't find any prior art, meaning the patent authors were truly the first ones to come with this, then I'd have to side with them and say that yes, it's patentable. I'm just surprised because there were millions of academic and research papers on such topics. No one described this before or even mentioned it in passing?
- tdavis 18y ago
  I'm not sure there is such a thing as not "good enough to be patentable". There is a patent for de-boning a turkey, for god sakes. Oh, and a related patent for a "method of removing meat from a bone". We ran into our own patent issue when we managed to duplicate the functionality of a partner's (pending) patent in a week. The wording is so vague that every site remotely like ours would be in violation, were it ever actually accepted, which I doubt it will be. In short, I have lost all respect for patenting in general and believe it should be abolished entirely.
  - axod 18y ago
    Agreed. I'm sure everyone on hacker news who has done anything has violated some patent in existence somewhere. The quicker we can abolish the whole system, the better. I don't think it's helpful for anyone. The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial.
    - jrockway 18y ago
      The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial. Yeah, but they willfully used a good idea to make money. We should penalize companies that apply good ideas to bring products to market. Don't want any of that...
      - axod 18y ago
        Just goes to show that ideas aren't worthless, assuming you have the money to file a patent and sue someone who executed on the idea.
    - jballanc 18y ago
      The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial. To put it into perspective, this is only about 0.06% of Apple's cash reserve.
      - axod 18y ago
zacharypinter 18y ago
I'm a little torn on this. On the one hand, I think the patents are abused and it's ridiculous that a company or individual has to look up everything they think of in isolation in order to avoid getting sued. On the other hand, Apple is known for being a bully with patents, and it's rather satisfying to see them feel the pain a little bit.
stcredzero 18y ago
You can think of the Industrial Revolution as the birth of a new kind of society and culture -- one that collectively understands and effectively leverages machines. I suspect that we are in the midst of another deep change. We are seeing the emergence of a society that understands and effectively leverages Networks and Computation. Also, just as the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by deep changes in economics. I think that understanding this will be key. What is the 21st century equivalent of mass production and economies of scale? I also suspect that all of this is deeply tied to our understanding of Intellectual Property.
russell 18y ago
This was from East Texas where there is no such thing as a bad patent and there is no jury award too big. Note that the two companies are within a few miles of each other and the case could have been tried in SF Federal Court, but then the SF court might have taken a reasoned approach to the case. I hope Apple appeals.

33 points by vaksel 18y ago

axod 18y ago

How about any judge who passes judgement on things like this, has to learn to program just a little bit. Just so they can understand how trivial some things are, compared with others. It does sound like the original patent was bogus. How can you patent something so obvious and trivial as this? If you can sum up the idea in pretty much a single sentence as you can here, should raise a few flags.

djahng 18y ago
I agree with you in that the judge and jury probably didn't understand the first thing about patent at all. Unfortunately that's not what the lawsuit was about. It was that Apple was aware of the patent and infringed upon it anyways. I think the patent process needs some major reform. After all, Apple is trying to (or did by now?) patent the pinch. And then there's the person who patented the use of a laser pointer to play with a cat...
- lutorm 18y ago
  OMG, that is actually a patent. I thought you were joking.
vaksel 18y ago
I think they just rely on expert testimony from both sides to help convince them
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

alain94040 18y ago

That's a tough one to decide. I read the patent quickly. I know quite a bit about PCI, cache coherency and prediction. I'd say whoever wrote the patent covered a good idea. Good enough to be patentable? Hum... It's clever. Not completely obvious. But not earth shattering either... If Apple couldn't find any prior art, meaning the patent authors were truly the first ones to come with this, then I'd have to side with them and say that yes, it's patentable. I'm just surprised because there were millions of academic and research papers on such topics. No one described this before or even mentioned it in passing?

tdavis 18y ago
I'm not sure there is such a thing as not "good enough to be patentable". There is a patent for de-boning a turkey, for god sakes. Oh, and a related patent for a "method of removing meat from a bone". We ran into our own patent issue when we managed to duplicate the functionality of a partner's (pending) patent in a week. The wording is so vague that every site remotely like ours would be in violation, were it ever actually accepted, which I doubt it will be. In short, I have lost all respect for patenting in general and believe it should be abolished entirely.
- axod 18y ago
  Agreed. I'm sure everyone on hacker news who has done anything has violated some patent in existence somewhere. The quicker we can abolish the whole system, the better. I don't think it's helpful for anyone. The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial. Yeah, but they willfully used a good idea to make money. We should penalize companies that apply good ideas to bring products to market. Don't want any of that...
    - axod 18y ago
      Just goes to show that ideas aren't worthless, assuming you have the money to file a patent and sue someone who executed on the idea.
  - jballanc 18y ago
    The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial. To put it into perspective, this is only about 0.06% of Apple's cash reserve.
    - axod 18y ago

zacharypinter 18y ago

I'm a little torn on this. On the one hand, I think the patents are abused and it's ridiculous that a company or individual has to look up everything they think of in isolation in order to avoid getting sued. On the other hand, Apple is known for being a bully with patents, and it's rather satisfying to see them feel the pain a little bit.

stcredzero 18y ago

You can think of the Industrial Revolution as the birth of a new kind of society and culture -- one that collectively understands and effectively leverages machines. I suspect that we are in the midst of another deep change. We are seeing the emergence of a society that understands and effectively leverages Networks and Computation. Also, just as the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by deep changes in economics. I think that understanding this will be key. What is the 21st century equivalent of mass production and economies of scale? I also suspect that all of this is deeply tied to our understanding of Intellectual Property.

russell 18y ago

This was from East Texas where there is no such thing as a bad patent and there is no jury award too big. Note that the two companies are within a few miles of each other and the case could have been tried in SF Federal Court, but then the SF court might have taken a reasoned approach to the case. I hope Apple appeals.