Hacker News Reader

Comment by nirushiv | Hacker News Reader

On the surface, this is an easy case for Apple. Their argument is simple: iOS is not a licensed product like Windows. You can’t run it - virtualized or not - without Apple’s permission. I do think Apple will win the follow up appeal.

For even a billion dollar company (let alone a 2 trillion dollar company), their legal team has had some surprisingly bad failings.

I recall another “cupcake” case they lost a few years ago because they walked into the courtroom without sufficient evidence (despite it being clear the other party was a copyright-infringing troll) and lost the ruling. Once a legal team starts taking things for granted, it’s time to find a new one.

View on HN

Imagine if software developers were held to this standard. Time to find another team of developers.

Imagine if consumers held the billion/trillion dollar companies to this standard. Time to find another OS.

Apple's outside counsel do not take anything for granted. Post a link to the "cupcake" case and let's have a look.

iOS is a licensed product. The license only allows iOS to be run on a single "Apple-branded" computer. Here is an earlier version:

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/ios6.pdf

The license is interesting because all not the bits that make up iOS are written by Apple nor exclusively licensed to Apple; iOS is not 100% proprietary. What rights does Apple actually have that it can license. Some parts of iOS come from BSD projects, some come from other open source third party projects, some parts come from Apple, the later some of which have been open-sourced. The mere fact of a license does not mean Apple will successfully be able to enforce all its terms. Avoiding legal challenges to them is one way to keep licensees guessing as to their enforceability. Wanna bet whether this case settles before trial.

https://opensource.apple.com

> Imagine if software developers were held to this standard. Time to find another team of developers.

> Imagine if consumers held the billion/trillion dollar companies to this standard. Time to find another OS.

What is there to imagine? If you are not satisfied with the relationship, you quit. Why would you torture yourself and not do that?

Absence of choice. Necessity.

Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the patent troll. Is there a place I can search these cases up?

IIRC, Apple’s evidence amounted to repeatedly shouting “they’re obviously a patent troll” (which they were)

> iOS is not a licensed product like Windows

Do developers not need to pay $100 a year to write code for it? (for software that will run longer than a couple weeks on a device). To run IOS no, it develop for it, yes?

That’s an interesting way to ask that question. GP claimed that iOS is not a licensed product while your question is about developing for iOS.

While the answer to your question is:

> Membership includes access to beta OS releases, advanced app capabilities, and tools needed to develop, test, and distribute apps and Safari Extensions. You must be 18 years or older to join.

essentially: yes. You need to pay to develop, the core thing is: is does not give an iOS “license”.

These are orthogonal.

yeah its interesting, and that is why I asked it that way to see if people smarter than myself could argue it (either side of the discussion). I find it weird that if I were to buy and apple device, and I wanted to write my own program to use only for myself on it I would have to pay an annual fee to Apple to get permission to run it. I think it does sort of boil down to a semantics argument about what is a license for a device you own or not own? Or if you want to want to sell and distribute something you need to pay an annual fee plus 30% of every sale (or 15% if you do their multi-year subscription magic, Or are large enough like Netflix).

Apple is very hostile towards their customers and developers/business partners.

But what about fair use? That's the argument Corellium used.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com