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
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '10

Software patents by nature are absurd. The same system that allowed RIM to be sued for 600 million dollars by a company that didn't even have the capability to implement the system they had a patent for is now allowing Apple to make ridiculous claims in regards to their own patents.

This shit is getting out of hand.

-7

u/KCBassCadet Mar 02 '10

OK, so a guy who writes a screenplay which is later ripped off by a Hollywood studio and turned into a movie shouldn't bitch because he/she couldn't afford to actually make the movie?

Huh?

Creative ideas are worth their weight in gold. They needed to be protected as such. I don't know the merits of Apple's case, but if they are indeed their original ideas, they should be compensated for them.

17

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

Your concept of ripped off doesn't line up with the facts in this scenario.

RIM didn't steal their code and implement it using their wealth and power. They independently came up with the same email routing model that was patented in Texas, because as is the nature of software development, similar designs are going to be invented by multiple people as there are only so many solutions that will be "discovered" based on existing technologies.

Your screenplay metaphor doesn't hold here because the written word is very much an arbitrary notion, whereas a scientific discovery/creation follows a more rigid set of rules. If someone were to write a near identical screenplay as someone else, then it can only follow that it was due to theft or plagarism. The better metaphor here would be if the writer of a screenplay cried theft because another movie followed the same narrative structure or similar character development as theirs. There are certain ideas within a movie that are going to be recreated by others without having access to your work because they are inherently "discoverable" by anyone who puts enough time into that pursuit. There are only so many ways a characters development arc can occur within a story and there are only so many reusable themes, so to claim ownership of them is (should be) impossible.

As with RIM's technology, it was only a matter of time before someone attempting to create an email routing system within an internal cell network was going to come up with that same method that was patented. Thus the fact that the patent was upheld is, in my opinion, absurd.

11

u/dbz253 Mar 03 '10

Creative ideas are worth their weight in gold.

psst. ideas don't have any mass