Google On The Nortel Loss, Patents As Government-Granted Monopolies
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The problem, as the article implies, is that those monopolies are transferable and hoarded.
For instance, I understand that CAFC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has been handing down decisions based on an interpretation of a crucial test in patent law that a concurring opinion to a majority SCOTUS ruling has said is not supported. Apparently, the system as it stands is not so much unjust as incoherent.
As they say, "We've established what kind of woman you are, now we are just negotiating price."
[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/what...]
Improving the rules of the game should make it easier for the meritocracy, if that is what you value then you should pay extra attention to those who look like they should be winning but aren't rather than the opposite.
"So the hunt continues for some nuclear warheads to build towards mutual assured destruction, and eventually détente,"
It is hard to see Google's motives as meaningfully different from those who won the auction. In an arms race both sides can claim it is for defense - and I will point out that nuclear warheads may deter a powerful opponent, but they will invariably intimidate the weak.
In any case, Microsoft and RIM (two of Apple's partners on the Nortel patent purchase) know that the day that their execution is no longer enough has already arrived.
You can't even tell it's the same OS.
So when you copy you are sued. (If the copying/taking inspiration was reasonable or not is a different issue.) Samsung was sued to copy "look and feel".
[http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-l...]
Where's the line between copying and being inspired by a better way to do things? I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line.
That's true. And I'm sure we all remember the lawsuits that followed. Like I said, it being reasonable or not is a different issue.
Of couse, if you ignore advances made towards "a better way to do things" to avoid being labelled as copying there will be no progress. At the same time you want to make sure there is incentive for them who put in the effort to come up with the "better way to do things" otherwise the competition will simply sit around and copy while those who bear the burden to innovate aren't rewarded. So where to draw the line? That's a difficult question.
Somewhere between here; http://cl.ly/8lZ5 and here; http://cl.ly/8lIC
"I don't know, but I think we have to be careful where we put that line." The line in the sand is there already and crystal clear. This dispute is nothing new. To be clear, Apple aren't arguing that the phones cannot have radiused corners or have silver bevels, they are saying that the look of the Galaxy S phone is too close to the look and feel of the iPhone to be anything other than plagiarism and therefore an infringement of copyright. When you compare the two phones I've linked here, one can clearly see that HTC have done their own thing. They have their own design language that differs significantly from their competitors. It would generous to claim that Samsung where only inspired by Apple's IP; the look of the icons, the grid layout, the shape of the icons, the look and feel of the hardware, the placement of the d-pad. It's all too similar.
Do a little exercise -- try patenting something worthy that people may want to "copy" and then go to IBM telling them "fuck you IBM, I patented this so you can't use it". You'll give them a good laugh ;-)
And if IBM ever thought about copying the iPhone, even if it made the most faithful replica ever including naming it something like "xPhone", there's practically nothing Apple could do without effectively getting bitch-slapped.
Also, the term "copy" itself is misleading: it makes people think that new developments should be original, when clearly nothing is original or evolutionary. Everybody copies from everybody.
The patents system is terribly broken and rewording the current mess as something moral and just is really ignoring reality.
The question there was never whether Apple would be paying, but how much. Given the pittance (a few euros per phone) Nokia apparently ended up getting with the best mobile patent portfolio in the world, it hardly seems like a win for Nokia or a loss for Apple. More likely it was Nokia being desperate to get the cash now to make their Q2 results look a little bit better.
"Before the iPhone was announced, android was an OS for a blackberry type device. It was better than RIM's OS, I believe, but it was the RIM formfactor and UI style. After the iPhone was announced, suddenly android became a touch-screen phone OS, copying the iPhone.
It is important to remember that a touch screen UI was never done before in this way. There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement. It isn't like the iPhoen was just another phone... the iPhone was a new kind of phone. It created a new category. Just as the iPad created a new category (despite there being table PCs in the past, going way back, there was no tablet device market prior to the iPad.)
Apple invented the touchscreen UI, and much of the technologies for the modern smartphone. Apple started working on the iPhone and iOS system for the iPad project sometime around 2002-2003. Google started working on the touch version of android in 2007- after the iPhone was announced. If google had decided to compete, and launched a massive R&D effort, and invented a bunch of stuff, then they'd have patents of their own to defend with. They didn't, they just copied the iPhone.
There is no question android is designed to be an iPhone like OS running on touch screens with multi-touch. Apple invented this category of product, Apple has patented it with legitimate, innovative, non-obvious inventions."
Unfortunately for them, they are late to the party and unwilling to invest enough in mobile intellectual property. They clearly are not only playing and supporting the game but also complaining about the rules.
I believe (some of) the patents HTC got dinged with were granted before Google or HTC were founded (1996 iirc).
Investing more or less, paying attention more or less to mobile or any other kind of patent wouldn't have helped them to not be in violation. Might have helped them to not get challenged, but they would just as surely be in violation. A time machine was required.
I realize this is an over-generalization, but it seems to me that any mobile software company (not just OS, but of any kind) must have a license agreement for basically all the patents from Microsoft, Apple, Motorola, and Nokia at a minimum or they can be assured to be in violation of a patent. It is all but guaranteed. Everyone, including those mentioned, certainly violate each others patents.
Yes, Apple claims one of their patents covers recognizing certain kinds of text (e.g. URLs, phone numbers, etc.) and making them clickable actions.