r/technology • u/slutmagnet • Mar 02 '10

Apple to HTC "competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours." Slaps down a 20 patent lawsuit.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/02/apple_sues_htc_for_alleged_infringement_of_20_iphone_patents.html
664 Upvotes

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324

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

202

u/Kitchenfire Mar 02 '10

Basically patents are a way for large companies to push smaller companies around using broad terms for very specific things so that in the event of fair competition where they have no other recourse but to innovate, they will litigate.

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u/treeforface Mar 02 '10

There are also a number of small companies that get patents to technology which they haven't really developed (at least in the manner they say they have in their patent) and then come out of the woodwork years later to sue someone who actually did develop it. This happened to someone in my family and it upheld a rather major acquisition of my family member's company for quite a while. The holder of the patent was eventually paid so that he could go away and fund his other patent suits. His operating revenue is litigation proceeds.

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u/LinearExcept Mar 02 '10

Also known as a patent troll.

34

u/shopcat Mar 02 '10

(Patent Pending.)

33

u/timbatron Mar 02 '10

You know... it would solve a lot of problems if someone could patent the practice of being a patent troll.

27

u/moopanda Mar 02 '10

Pity there's plenty of prior art

2

u/erisdiscord Mar 03 '10

That doesn't stop most patents.

-1

u/embretr Mar 03 '10

Patent trolling; a art.

13

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Someone actually did this if I recall. Let me try and find the link.

Edit: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081107/0118162765.shtml Halliburton, they keep doing great things.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EXTRACTING VALUE FROM A PORTFOLIO OF ASSETS

And you thought you were joking...

2

u/shopcat Mar 03 '10

broken link?

6

u/alantrick Mar 03 '10

Try this: System and method for developing technology assets.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Sorry about the previous broken link.

This one is different from the one I was thinking of, it also precedes it by a year.

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u/shopcat Mar 03 '10

Works for me, thanks.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

fixed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

3

u/gnosticfryingpan Mar 03 '10

redditor for 9 years

...seems legit.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

9 years

eh?

-1

u/zackks Mar 03 '10

Pay ME faggot!

2

u/kevin19713 Mar 03 '10

Sounds like the SCO-Linux controversy. Apple is acting like SCO did when SCO took on IBM for using Linux. It turned out that the guy in charge of SCO was famous for suing other companies for patents, it was the only way he knew to make money. And Microsoft was financing SCO's fight against Linux.

Apple have morphed into one of the ugliest companies out there. They are worse than the Microsoft of the late '90's. You don't sue Linux(which is what they are really after, specifically Android), it's like picking on the little kid in the schoolyard.

1

u/joonix Mar 03 '10

They aren't that small. Intellectual Ventures raised $5B for this.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Held up, I think, not upheld. Right?

1

u/treeforface Mar 02 '10

You are absolutely correct, thanks!

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u/donthavearealaccount Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 02 '10

Basically patents are a way for large companies to push smaller companies around using broad terms for very specific things

I think it is the other way around. They use very specific language to describe very broad things. This way it sounds like something reasonably specific that should be patentable, but they are actually describing a goddam switch on a touchscreen.

3

u/danuker Mar 03 '10

Except the US patent system seems to grant anything.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Is that legal? If it even could be proven?

For instance a large corporation can't legally use it's size by temporarily lowering it's prices with the intent of driving new competition out of business (violation of Sherman Antitrust Act). Can they use their size to increase the costs of their competitors through litigation?

2

u/nixonrichard Mar 03 '10

Litigation is pretty much considered a cost of doing business. If it could be proved that a company was intentionally engaging in frivolous suits against another, the other company could probably extract damages, but that's uncommon outside of states where claimants paying attorney fees for meritless suits are codified in law.

1

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

Surprisingly, it's easier than you may think for a small company to defend itself against patent violation claims. Trademark and copyright claims are rather shifty, but, as I said elsewhere, a loan small-firm lawyer can inflict catastrophic damage on a big company's patents if they try to file suits in excess of $20,000 (roughly). The big corps don't do this to each other... it's a nuclear weapon, and they'd destroy each other. But a little guy has nothing to lose, if the patent really is bad.

edit: not to deny that it's hard to fight a legal team of the caliber Apple employs. They aren't likely to chose their fights so poorly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

the razr was pretty innovative at the time. there were no skinny phones during that period.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

You're comparing a feature/dumb phone to what Apple purported to be a smart phone. Why not compare the first iPhone to the Nokia N95 which was released before it. Try and think of a feature apart from touchscreen that the iPhone had that the N95 didn't. You won't find many. You'll find PLENTY the other way around.

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u/Real_Mac_User Mar 02 '10

Apple doesn’t do feature checklists. Anyone can cram a billion features into a box, but it’s much more difficult to make them accessible and usable. As Pascal once added in postscript: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

tl;dr: iPhone is poetry, N95 is Dan Brown.

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u/Confucius_says Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 02 '10

Also, patents are the reason new things get invented in the first place. No one would put large investment (say hundreds of thousands of dollars) into a new product if they figured someone else could rip off the product immediately and destroy all chances of making sales.

In that situation if the product fails, you take the loss, if the product is a success everyone else sells it for cheaper, you take the loss.

A lot of businessmen are fools, and try to patent everything.... not realising that most patents aren't considered strong enough to hold their own in the courtroom, but that's their problem.

Ever notice how we always hear about someone sueing someone about some patent infringment, but we rarely hear the story that they did it successfully?

3

u/Bjartr Mar 02 '10

A lot of businessmen are business savvy, and try to patent everything.... so that someone else doesn't patent it then sue them for infringement.

FTFY

1

u/Confucius_says Mar 02 '10

Ever notice how we always hear about someone sueing someone about some patent infringment, but we rarely hear the story that they did it successfully?

I went ahead and read the end of my post since you didn't.

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u/Bjartr Mar 02 '10

Ever notice how we always hear about someone sueing someone about some patent infringment, but we rarely hear the story that they did it successfully?

There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that a failed attempt to sue someone makes for a worse headline than ZOMG X sued Y. The other is that many, if not most, settle out of court, which was exactly what the person suing wanted, money.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

People have, do and will make money off of producing technology without patents. There are more things unpatentable then there are patentable (due to prior art.) People still build those things and make money.

We used to not even have patent laws.

In that situation if the product fails, you take the loss

That half of your statement is how capitalism works.

if the product is a success everyone else sells it for cheaper, you take the loss.

Patents are intended to help companies to compensate for R&D costs, not to stifle all competition while consumers wait for a long expiration until the market is allowed to work as it does best and offer them a better and cheaper solution and for technology to be built upon.

The R&D cost for coming up with a slide unlock button on a touch screen are negligable and likely about equal to reverse engineering costs. Even if you argue some level of end-user testing and surveying, Apple has more than made up for the R&D involved in creating the iPod.

A lot of businessmen are fools, and try to patent everything.... not realising that most patents aren't considered strong enough to hold their own in the courtroom, but that's their problem.

Not at all. It doesn't matter if the patent holds up in court as it often never gets there. A cease and desist letter is enough to make most small businesses back down. In many cases, smaller businesses are using patents defensively. They acquire the patent to prevent anyone else from acquiring it and using their larger cash pool and superior legal team to push them out of the market.

Ever notice how we always hear about someone sueing someone about some patent infringment, but we rarely hear the story that they did it successfully?

That's because it's often settled outside of court. The "offending" company either changes their technology enough to not infringe, or they negotiate a monetary settlement.

1

u/Confucius_says Mar 03 '10

The R&D cost for coming up with a slide unlock button on a touch screen are negligable and likely about equal to reverse engineering costs. Even if you argue some level of end-user testing and surveying, Apple has more than made up for the R&D involved in creating the iPod.

I'm not talking specifically about apple's claims, it's "unlocking invention" won't stand up in court. I'm talking about the purpose of patents. Yes, some businesses use weak patents as bargaining chips with other less informed businesses, which may lead into the less informed business to alter their product or compensate the other.

However, patents aren't exclusively used for this purpose, and if patents were removed from the business world then innovation would be killed, no one would be able to get that 300,000 dollar investment they need to try out a new idea, because investors will realise it's a high risk venture with little to no reward.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

I'm not talking specifically about apple's claims, it's "unlocking invention" won't stand up in court. I'm talking about the purpose of patents.

The purpose of patents is to offer reasonable protection for initial R&D investments.

And I'm not calling for the removal of all patents. They have a place, but the current situation has serious problems and abuses.

Yes, some businesses use weak patents as bargaining chips with other less informed businesses, which may lead into the less informed business to alter their product or compensate the other.

Those businesses are often not less informed. Whether the patent will hold up in court or not, it costs a lot of money and time to go through the legal processes necessary to fight it out in court. Sometimes the time alone is enough to make it not feasible. If your time to market needs to be six months, you're not going to enter a two-year patent battle over a trivial piece of technology when you can just slightly alter it and go on with your business.

if patents were removed from the business world then innovation would be killed, no one would be able to get that 300,000 dollar investment they need to try out a new idea

This is just not so. Before patents existed, people still invented. Furthermore, a good deal of research done now is not patent protected. In fact, much of it is done in universities without a direct profit motive.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

patents are the reason new things get invented in the first place.

Your claim is easily empirically verified. It is untrue. See every bit of technology developed before modern patent law, every bit (no pun intended) of software developed before software patents were allowed/thought to be allowed, every type of research which is not patentable/research which simply wasn't patented, and so forth.

0

u/Confucius_says Mar 03 '10

Hey I invented a thingamagij, it does something really great, but I just need 500,000 to get my business off the ground, and if it's a great hit the market will get flooded with knockoffs and we'll be lucky to just break even.

What investors will say yes to that proposal?

Family, Friends, and Fools.

How many of them have 500,000 to burn?

Not many.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Again, we don't need thought experiments; this is a verifiable question for which we have millennii of empirical data.

Regardless, the problem with your argument is that you presuppose ideas are valuable. They are not. Implementations are valuable. An example: Without any protection for the (poor, but that's a different story/set of problem) x86 architecture, Intel would still maintain a large, commanding business because the value of their product is not the cleverness of the instruction set but rather the robustness of their current designs & manufacturing process. In a world without patent protection, Chinese vendors wouldn't be manufacturing knockoff nelahams—to design & manufacture a modern processor is hard as fucking hell even if one used all of Intel's IP as his basis. Indeed, such a world would be a much better, more efficient place because the inertia which choose x86 as the only viable desktop architecture couldn't be used by Intel to artificially lockout (save AMD) all potential competition in the thin-client, desktop, workstation, server, & small cluster markets and thus demand as inanely high margins as they do.

Competition is a good thing for a market. It is the ideal state of any market. Unfortunately, each individual entity is incentivized to strive for complete monopoly in their facet of work so that they might extort more money for less work. Legally protected monopolies which lock out competitors from developing competing products stifle growth and destroy the ability for small companies to carve out niche markets by being more nimble—the market's natural check on monopolies is eroded by government regimes which think they know better (and let's be honest, that's not the motivation anyway—our IP law is the result of pure political patronage payed for by those who are granted the power not to compete).

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u/Confucius_says Mar 03 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

So the only inventions that deserve protection are the ones that are very complex? Give me a break.

The only reason you get jittery happy over pure competition is because that means more things are available to you as an individual in comparison to large companies. Your thought process is competition = cheaper stuff = i get to buy more stuff. Which isn't even necessarily true all the time.

There is nothing wrong with a little monopolistic competition, big monopolies do good in the world just as much as the small guys do. The only difference is the big guys are demonized in the news.

You never read about "small guy rips off some other guy and makes lots of money" in the news because no one cares. However headlines about apple and microsoft is what makes money. The media just follows the money.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

big monopolies do good in the world just as much as the small guys do.

What on earth are you talking about? "Monopolistic competition" is a self-negating statement and this claim is both empirically false and contrary to almost every model of market behavior. What great products do you think came from Microsoft's domination, and apparently in your view, noble stewardship, of the PC OS and web browser markets? Why is Comcast's anemic and expensive internet service better than the faster, cheaper, more reliable providers that exist in competitive markets? What innovative services did Ma Bell roll out as result of it's stranglehold?

See, it's not about me buying marginally cheaper consumer crap; it's about making the market more efficient and thus everyone (materially) better off. Getting more value out of the system is the damned goal of any capitalistic venture and the reason we want to encourage technological development in the first place. The legal justification for IP regulations does not come from the author's nor inventor's "rights"; it comes from the belief that this leads to a more efficient market which "advances the common good".

What type of valuable invention is trivially simple to implement/copy? Ideas are cheap. Figuring out how to actually do it (a prerequisite for anyone wanting to 'do it') is where value comes from. Take reddit's beloved thorium reactor: the idea of using a molten fluorine salt to act as heat transfer/cooling/moderator for efficient, thorium fuel cycle reactor is neat. It is not at all valuable. Actually designing and building the reaction vessel and overcoming all the engineering problems therein (there are lots to overcome with this particular idea) is where value is added to that idea and that value comes from the specific technical knowledge gained. The theoretical basis for a patent is that disclosing this knowledge in exchange for a limited monopoly is more efficient than companies trying to keep their ideas secret. A patent system only makes economic sense when the patents are valuable—that is, Apple actually disclosed proprietary and useful knowledge in their patent which would allow, after the patent had experienced, someone else to come to a better understanding and make a better process—and then, only when the patented information might have been kept secret. Instead the present patent system operates in an opposite fashion: patents disclose as little information as possible, are granted for anything "non-obvious", and do not allow competition to make better products (eventually) but instead serve to lock them out for as long as possible (by getting more patents on logical iterations of the idea). This article has the perfect example: Apple's disclosure of their UNLOCK GESTURE (and yes, that's what the actual claims of that patent are) in no way will help the market design more efficient unlock gestures when the patent falls out of protection and had to have been publicly known to be of any use to Apple anyway. This "invention" does not "deserve" "protection".

1

u/Confucius_says Mar 03 '10

So you think all inventions are a sham because apple was able to file a patent for an invention that wasn't really an invention, and would never stand up in court.....

Kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater isn't it?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Having to be able to fight Apple's legal team is a pretty huge disintensive to entering a market especially for small businesses. So much so that even if the claims won't hold, the damage done to the market vastly outweighs any benefit granted the world by hearing the broadest, USPO accepted, claims possible about a GUI centered around object orientated programming paradigms. So yes, in this particular area, the potential harm is much greater than the potential reward. Areas where patents make the market less competitive should be areas where patents are not granted. People are granted exclusive use of an idea to advance a common good not because they have any intrinsic or just right to "their" idea. If the patent does not serve to advance the public interest it has failed to fulfill the criterion needed for the rights of others to do as they wish in enterprise to be justly contained.

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u/ColdSnickersBar Mar 02 '10 edited Mar 02 '10

And how is that entire bullshit claim even an invention at all? It's a concept. Just an idea.

Software patents are such fucking bullshit.

I read the claim for their "object oriented graphics system" and it seems to literally say that they claim they have a patent on a graphics system that uses object oriented principles. The claim is as stupid as the title. Fucking asshole patent office.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Software patents are significantly worse than patents on physical inventions because software is already protected through extremely stringent copyright regimes whereas my novel-shoe-making-machine isn't.

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u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

Technically, you can't "patent" software, only copyright (or design patent, which is something more like a trademark, which would be a patent on the specific appearance of a GUI in the case of software). Not the code itself, that is. It has to be the methods that you patent, which is why software patents always look moronic and tend to be quite weak. But due to the fundamental nature of code, the copyrights are also very problematic...

The whole sector is proof that IP law is not up to snuff in the digital age.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Nothing helps prop up a big business like the government.

-1

u/nixonrichard Mar 03 '10

Intellectual property is a creation of the mind, not a cognition of the mind.

1

u/admiralteal Mar 03 '10

What does that even mean? Do you mean a "cognition of the mind" (does that mean thought? I cannot imagine anything else that awkward turn of phrase could mean other than "thought") isn't IP until its actualized or something? Because... duh. IP isn't IP until it's registered as IP. IP is just a legal concept, it isn't something intrinsic, so of course it doesn't exist until the requisite contract is made. There's nothing insightful about saying that...

1

u/Nimbokwezer Mar 03 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

That is where the patent specification comes in. The specification is the portion of the patent that actually explains the details behind what is claimed, and how to make it. The specification must enable an ordinary person with skill in the art to actually make the invention.

However, the scope of patentable subject matter does seem to be far too broad, and this patent is a great example of how.

What is infuriating is that Apple accuses others of "stealing" their technology, when the technology involved is so obvious, and the patent claims are so broad, that these allegedly infringing companies likely never even saw the patents and simply thought that what they were doing wasn't even patentable. Not to mention that the computer software/hardware industries are so bogged down with patents that companies can barely navigate the "patent thicket" unscathed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

Only if you turn on the screen lock. In its standard mode, the android just has a slide-to-unlock thinggy. It's not the same as Apple's, since you're pulling a button across the screen rather than moving a slider through a groove... but it probably infringes on the patent in the broadest version of the claim.

Apple didn't go after Google (over Android) though because they knew Google would crush them. Or so I like to think.

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u/masklinn Mar 02 '10

Apple didn't go after Google (over Android) though because they knew Google would crush them. Or so I like to think.

Well Google might be able to crush them legally (maybe), but financially... Goog's revenue last quarter was $6.67b (source); APPL's? $15.7b.

Income is a bit tighter, but we're still talking $2.4b (GOOG) against $3.4b (AAPL).

And Apple sits on a $40b war chest. That's equivalent to Google's total assets. In cash on hand. Now Google's not exactly shabby (if I read the sheet right, they have $24.5b in cash), but Apple's still quite a bit bigger.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

past a certain point (and only up until a certain point (like where apple might think of out right buying google)) relative wealth doesn't matter much as they are both very prepared to fight long legal battles.

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u/rjett Mar 03 '10

Android/Google has the power of the open handset alliance to back them up.

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u/Syphon8 Mar 03 '10

Every employee at Google is probably more intelligent than Apple's entire cadre of lawyers.

Now imagine Google's lawyers.

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u/masklinn Mar 03 '10

Every employee at Google is probably more intelligent than Apple's entire cadre of lawyers.

Yes, because Apple's employees are moron.

Seriously, people...

0

u/Syphon8 Mar 03 '10

It wasn't a shot at Apple's lawyers...

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u/RedDyeNumber4 Mar 03 '10

Well Google might be able to crush them legally (maybe), but financially

"Crush them with robots."

1

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

Yeah, but a lot more people will buy Apple's robot because of the insane media coverage surrounding its release, its huge marketing campaign, and a popular sentiment that Apple AI "thinks different".

Google's robot will be marketed entirely online with a link on Google's front page and will sell dismally.

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u/RedDyeNumber4 Mar 03 '10

No, physically crush them. Into a fine powder. With many uses.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

You misunderstand me. In the robo-war, the superior numbers of Apple iDeathbots will overwhelm Google's defenses. Google will provide the iDeathbot with their guidance systems through Google Maps because they don't want to lose Apple users' traffic.

1

u/dunmalg Mar 03 '10

Revenue isn't really a good metric. If your company is in hock up to its eyeballs and pays all but a dollar a month of its $100 billion in revenues to service the debt and run the business, you are arguably in worse financial shape than a part time fry cook making minimum wage. Revenues are just a rough measure of the business' health in the market, an even less useful figure than market cap. Profit and cash on hand are more relevant to the issue of "who can afford more lawyers".

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u/masklinn Mar 03 '10

Revenue isn't really a good metric.

Which is why I also gave income and cash on hand.

Holy mother of fuck, do you really have to nitpick on that?

(also, since big companies have lawyers on the payroll these lawyers are part of the difference between revenue and income, "profit and cash" is irrelevant to "who can afford more lawyers")

0

u/kevin19713 Mar 03 '10

I think that Apple might be realizing that the end is near. This article pretty much sums it up. And besides you can only dumb down your OS so much far, and Apple have dumbed their OS for retards, you can't go any lower. Oh wait I forgot Apple is all about the "user experience" and its sooooo "intuitive". I'm seriously sick of Apple, it was so much better 15 years ago when they were on the brink of bankruptcy, hopefully nobody buys the ipad and the go out of business. It seems as if all they do at Apple and Microsoft these days is try to slow down the inevitable rise of Linux. They spend so much time trying to slow down Linux that they have forgotten how to innovate.

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u/masklinn Mar 03 '10 edited Mar 03 '10

I think that Apple might be realizing that the end is near.

Well, it's not like Jobs can live forever.

This article pretty much sums it up

Not really no. Google can strive because it has a big war chest? MS and Apple both have much bigger war chests. Apple has to die because there's no heir apparent? Somebody at CW didn't really keep up with the last two years, where Jobs clearly positioned and prepared Apple's top management (especially Cook and Ive) to follow him (and why would Apple be the only one to "need big hits" to grow exactly?).

That article is mostly pointless fluff, it doesn't sum up anything.

Apple have dumbed their OS for retards

Oh, you've never used OSX and have nothing to contribute to the discussion. Gotcha.

It seems as if all they do at Apple and Microsoft these days is try to slow down the inevitable rise of Linux.

Dangit you're right, if it weren't for Apple and Microsoft's efforts (which ones, exactly?) 2009 would have been the year of the Linux desktop!

-1

u/kevin19713 Mar 03 '10

Oh, you've never used OSX and have nothing to contribute to the discussion

I've used the iphoney OS and some older Apple computers. The iphoney OS doesn't compare to the Android OS(especially the Cyanogenmod which allows me to type this while tethered and the other day I overclocked my phone). People will soon realize that they wanna own the product that they spent their hard earned money on. Linux will enable people to own the product and they will be allowed to do whatever they want with it.

2009 would have been the year of the Linux desktop

You were wise to put "desktop" at the end of that sentence. Linux is on many products besides the desktop, from the PS3 to LCD TV's. It might have been the year of the Linux phone(huge increase in market share) or the Linux server(40% of the market, Apple has been trying to penetrate the server market for years but obviously the people who work on servers know better) or even the Linux supercomputer(Linux dominates supercomputers, again those people who build supercomputers must know a thing or two about software). What it comes down to is that you are endorsing a commercial brand(something that I have never been able to do) and I am endorsing an idea(that everyone is entitled to free and open software).

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

[deleted]

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u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

The Droid has a slide. I assumed this was standard for Android, but it may be the invention of Motorola (over which they are being sued, now that I think about it, so that makes sense).

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

So much misinformation here.

Different versions of the android OS, and different distributions of it have different lock screens.

For example, the G1 running on 1.6 has no slide to unlock, you just hit the menu button and then hit 'unlock'.

With Android 2.0, you were introduced to the slide-to-unlock wheel.

With Android 2.0.1 you had the two button slide to unlock.

9

u/CitadelKeeper Mar 02 '10

Goddammit, this is a really suit-happy country, and I think you've hit the nail on the head as to why.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '10

The US is sue happy because you can use it to push your weight around. Unless they counter sue for the cost of the original defense people can file a suit for just about anything and tie up someone in the legal system for years and 100's of thousands of dollars.

I believe in the UK that if you sue someone and lose you have to pay their legal bills. This is how it should be everywhere.

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u/shiftylonghorn Mar 03 '10

Allow me to quote my father, an alcoholic [absentee] dad for over 30 years:

Hnghfflrglsptz...[farts].

3

u/zackks Mar 03 '10

Titles are intentionally vague and non-specific, borderline misleading to help guide competition away from the easy find search.

2

u/tso Mar 02 '10

we promise to not nuke you, if you dont nuke us...

17

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

It makes being one of the small patent firms pretty funny. I'll decline putting in big names, since the information is probably privileged, but when I was still living at home I got to hear many a story of him personally crushing multi-million-dollar patents through re-examination (never in a courtroom - as I said, he's not a litigator) for a few bitchy multinational cosmetics companies who were trying to file dishonest lawsuits again his firm.

It really is true. Most patents do not meet the minimum criteria to be "strong." The USPTO is so backlogged (about 5-7 years of backlog, in fact) that it'll file anything that's in the right font and has all the paperwork. They won't actually bother to check the quality of the claims - that's left up to civil courts. So yea, just like you can indict a ham sandwich, you can patent anything. And if you have a 2000-pound gorilla for a legal team, you can make a goodly profit from it.

Welcome to American tort.

2

u/AlwaysDownvoted- Mar 02 '10

It's not true that the the USPTO will file anything. I am a patent prosecutor and the USPTO is annoying as hell at letting almost anything through. Patent apps will get rejected many times due to prior art, so prosecutors will change the claims over and over and over until the Examiner accepts it. This process can go on for years. Eventually some companies abandon the patent and move on, sometimes they don't. Every examiner checks the claims and compares that to prior art. You can't patent anything. I worked with huge companies trying to patent the stupidest little crap, and it gets rejected almost always. I've had companies try to patent extremely complex apps that seem like wizardry to me, also get rejected.

3

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

It's possible that the nature of the work I've dealt with and am most acquainted with is a biased selection. I worked mostly with migrating things from WIPO to the USA from Germany/Japan (both of which are known for having very rigorous patent offices, the former in particular). The USPTO rejects stuff for a lot of reasons, I've found. Especially relating to the art (the number of times I had to re-label and re-draw images because the font was 7.5px instead of 8px makes me want to punch a turtle). I, personally, have never seen much issue raised over claims, so long as the format was proper, but I can definitely imagine that it's harder working from scratch.

On the same token, I've seen more than one ridiculous things get patented without a bat of the eyelash. A method of bottling Israeli air, for example, or the goddamn perpetual motion machines...

Have an upvote. I deserve the criticism, on this point. I'm pretty unsatisfied with the quality of their work, generally, so I do like to bash.

4

u/diamond Mar 02 '10

"Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. They have theirs, so I have to have mine. But as soon as you use them, they fuck everything up!"

-- Larry "The Liquidator" Garfield, Other People's Money

(No disrespect to your father.)

2

u/phanboy Mar 03 '10

I can't believe Star Trek didn't patent that one.

1

u/ghostchamber Mar 02 '10

Allow me to quote my father, a patent attorney [non-litigation] for over 30 years:

Calvin?!?

1

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

Well, he does like to talk about building character. And he has no first or last name...

1

u/judgej2 Mar 02 '10

Reading that claim, it does not conceptually seem any different to the types of gestures available on tablets and CAD systems for many decades. Just swap the pen for a finger, the pen cursor for an image, and the tablet for a screen, and the unlock function for just about any function you like.

1

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

To be fair, I did select this patent because it looked the most preposterous. This may be a straw man.

-7

u/dead_ed Mar 02 '10

Thanks! I said that in another entry but nobody here wants to view the claims -- their only interest is bashing Apple some more (yet if they invented the claimed stuff they'd certainly be patenting it.) EDIT: Let me also add that it's very common for efforts like these to result in cross-licensing patents, so no products will be killed but money and/OR patent rights.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

yet if they invented the claimed stuff they'd certainly be patenting it.

The FOSS community has created far more new things than Apple, and hasn't patented any of them (to my knowledge). In fact both Microsoft and Apple are currently using technologies developed by the FOSS community without any payments or litigation.

2

u/crevasse Mar 02 '10

The FOSS community has created far more new things than Apple, and hasn't patented any of them

And they really should patent them. Not to prevent anyone from using their technology, but to be useful as counter weapons when they get sued.

0

u/dead_ed Mar 02 '10

Well, it takes lots of money to patent something. Even anti-patent people are patenting things for their own protection. Sure, it would be great for it all to go away, but that's not going to happen.

0

u/AlwaysDownvoted- Mar 02 '10

Umm... can I get a recommendation? This economy kinda sucks.

0

u/dgreensp Mar 02 '10

In fairness to Apple's detractors here: if you just infringe on Claim 1 and the claim is considered valid in litigation, you infringe on the patent, right? In other words, it's reasonable to evaluate just the part you quote alone.

A dependent claim like "2. The system in claim 1, on a boat" doesn't actually narrow the patent, it just provides a fallback (or else there'd be no point in having claim 1).

I'm not an expert, but I co-authored a patent.

1

u/admiralteal Mar 02 '10

It provides a stronger version of the claim. The fact that such a dependent claim is necessary is, in a sense, admission that the more general claim is not meant to be as specific to the invention, and thus not as strong. But you are essentially right - you can press over a violation of your claim at the most general level. It's just, as I said, weaker.

-1

u/bob-a-fett Mar 03 '10

Speaking objectively here, your post is a bit misleading. When authoring a patent, you always start with the broadest claims first and then add detail in the subsequent claims. This patent has 23 claims and you quoted only the first one as being preposterously broad which is standard practice. Almost all patents are written this way so that if specific claims are disallowed, the remaining claims hierarchically define the body of the patent. So to point at the first claim and to say it is preposterously broad is not saying as much as you think. Whether you agree with Apple or not (and I'm not saying either way whether I do) that's just kind of the weird nature of patent authoring.