This Apple-HTC Patent Thing | Hacker News Reader

This Apple-HTC Patent Thing

daringfireball.net

120 pointslid71 comments

Gruber, almost alone in a sea of reporting, manages to mention Apple's action here may be related to Nokia's patent suit against Apple.

So rewind a bit, to put this in context:

- Apple accuses HTC of iPhone tech theft (2 March 2010)

- Kodak prompts ITC to consider iPhone ban (18 February 2010)

- Motorola seeks ban on US BlackBerries (26 January 2010)

- Nokia sues Apple, says iPhone infringes ten patents (22 October 2009)

One test for patents' validity is whether the company is enforcing them. With Kodak, Sony, Nokia, Motorola, RIM, and others suing one another as a business-as-usual step in licensing negotiations, the value of Apple's defensive patent portfolio at the licensing negotiation table depends in part on Apple's perceived willingness to stand behind the validity of their portfolio and enforce their patents.

I'd suppose this is a signal to the marketplace not that competitors should create their own original technology, but that if they want to copy, they should license or trade.

Could you point to a reference of patent validity tests which includes enforcement? The three tests, "utility, novelty, and non-obviousness", seem to be the standard ones.

Perhaps you are confusing patent law with trademark law, which does require enforcement?

Sorry, I should have clarified that. I almost mentioned trademark law to compare and contrast. No, you don't lose the patent by not enforcing it. But you can lose the value of the patent both at the negotiating table and in the courts if there's a belief you won't enforce it or a belief you suspect it's unenforceable (e.g., if you seem to worry by using it aggressively, you could have it challenged, and lose it).

First, as alluded to in the article, note the word "need":

> "Perhaps it’s a by-product of the suit Apple is engaged in against (and initiated by) Nokia. Apple’s counter-suit against Nokia involves some of the same patents at play here, and perhaps Apple’s lawyers have concluded that they need to enforce them against someone like HTC in order to use them in their counter-suit against Nokia."

Second, to quote a non-neutral party, note the phrase "lax attitude":

> "But neglecting stick licensing has two problems. First, it results in a loss of potential royalty and damages revenues from infringed patents. Second, it undermines carrot licensing of both infringed and noninfringed patents. If an industry perceives a lax attitude on the part of a university in enforcing its patents, it will think it can infringe with impunity. Under these circumstances, taking a license would be tantamount to making a charitable gift, which few in this economic climate are inclined to do." -- Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corporation in http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patent...

But you can lose the value of the patent .. at the negotiating table

True, it comes down to people and what they think you will do, not what you can do.

The definition of "Patent Validity" remains very ambiguous -- with varying opinions/conclusions from different courts and the USPTO itself. An helpful resource for Plaintiffs or Defendants in patent infringement battles: Article One Partners (www.articleonepartners.com) -- an online service that connects clients to a cloudsourced community of expert researchers worldwide-- who are rewarded when they discover quality prior art to support patent validity/invalidity.

Very insightful, it shines a different light on the spirit with which these filings were made. One thing that's hard to see in a different light though, is how angry Steve Jobs sounds in his quote.

I have to admit; I find myself agreeing vehemently with Gruber, PG and everyone else Gruber cited. Patents are typically defense weaponry. Your attack weapons are moving fast, innovating and implementing something.

Software patents are broken, and Apple's decision to whip out it's massive portfolio and start smacking people with it stinks of the "We want no phone inspired by the iPhone's design to exist", which (in my mind) isn't what patents are for in the first place - not to mention doing this is just, well, wrong.

The iPhone's concept revolutionized the handheld industry - and sure, if someone blatantly ripped it off, Apple does have a right to go after that company - but the HTC phones are simply "inspired by" - they're not clones, and while they have a lot of "features" which smack of the iphone, they're not replicas.

I'm an avid Mac user, own an iPhone - and I'll probably buy an iPad (still), but I for one want to see this suit fail horribly, or for Apple to withdraw it.

"I'm an avid Mac user, own an iPhone - and I'll probably buy an iPad (still), but I for one want to see this suit fail horribly, or for Apple to withdraw it."

Again, this is the reason why Apple will not change its ways. I wish people who speak out against Apple would back up their words with action.

It's painful, but I intend to -- I was planning on getting a new macbook pro soon (not to mention a bigger ipod), but while I love their hardware I think I've bought my last piece for some time now.

I'm in the same situation. I was waiting for the next generation macbook pro, but now I don't want to buy it.

Unfortunately, buying a windows laptop and supporting Microsoft doesn't appeal to me either. Now I have to decide if I am unhappy enough with Apple to justify the effort that a linux laptop would entail.

You may want to reconsider Ubuntu (the new LTS release will come out end of april). My apple owning colleagues were suprised how easy it is nowadays. Granted, i customized it a lot to match exactly with my workflow, but i guess i'm around 30% faster then i could be on a mac or windows, in terms of organizing tasks, tracking information/time, getting different tasks done.

Also, if you haven't tried linux for some time: gnomes' apps integrate quite well nowadays (contacts, mail, calendar on the desktop and if you use it, with google mail/contacts/calendar). In conjunction with an android phone it makes up for a pretty good and efficient working environment.

Given that this is a site for 'hackers', I would think that a lot of the effort involved in using Linux is something that will eventually be repaid in terms of a better understanding of how your computer and its operating system work, and increased freedom. Also, as others have said, Ubuntu is rapidly improving.

What effort would that entail?

Most manufacturers have an option buried somewhere deep in their websites to allow you to order computers at least without an OS preinstalled. Some offer Linux pre-installed; if you don't like the distro that comes on it, no bother, just install your favorite.

You might consider supporting system76. They sell computers with Ubuntu pre-loaded.

I'm in the same place. I was waiting for updated Macbook Pros with a Corei7 and now I'm going to take a pass. I don't like the way Apple is going and the biggest vote I have is my wallet. I'll probably end up with Ubuntu on a laptop from Lenovo or HP.

I'm a hackintosh user with an android phone and loving both (had a Mac and an iPhone). I actually feel glee every time I crack the hackintosh (Dell 10v if you're curious-- flawless so far). I'm a fan of Apple's products but I increasingly find the company... distasteful.

Oh, and as a bonus-- I can make phone calls on my cell phone again!

The problem is that there are so few hardware manufacturers that have such attention to detail as Apple does. So if you want a really high quality laptop to run windows, macs are probably still the only way to go. I've owned dozens of Sony, HP, Dell laptops and none of their build qualities match Apple's.

The Apple competitors suck. That's why we still buy Apple even when we hate them.

How about fighting patent system, not Apple? Why this suit particularly? Why not the one of Nokia vs. Apple? Or is that one OK?

I do not like software patents at all but I think this way of "fighting" them is just silly—even if it hurts Apple how does it help to abolish this nonsense?

I have no problem with Nokia vs Apple. They invented much of how mobile phone networks work (hardware) and have standard royalties with FRAND terms for the IP. Apple is the only major manufacturer to not pay. They aren't exorbitant fees and Nokia isn't trying to sink the iPhone by refusing a license. If Nokia hadn't gone after Apple they would realistically face other manufactures who decided that if Apple didn't have to pay they wouldn't either.

If you read Nokia's suit the "damages" they want are simply the past due royalties they should have paid in the first place and ongoing royalties for future sales. No injunctions or multipliers. Very reasonable as far as patent suits go.

> "No injunctions..."

That's flat wrong.

Nokia suit wasn't simply for past due royalties, and Nokia also asked for an injunction across a range of products, not just GSM. In their suit, every count says "unless enjoined by the Court" Apple will continue to infringe, and in Prayer for Relief, seeks a "permanent injunction" against "Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iMac, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air." (I'm disappointed they forgot the Apple TV.)

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Nokia_Apple_III...

Nothing "standard" about the royalties in question in Nokia v. Apple:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/nokia-vs-apple-the-in-dep...

When Nokia says Apple can't use GSM, or Kodak says Apple can't use picture previews, you just want them to withdraw those too? When they don't withdraw, will you just set your Mac and iPhone on a shelf till their patents expire, or would you rather have Apple jack up the price to cover licensing, or would you rather have Apple defend the products you've paid for?

I don't see this as Apple's "first strike since Apple v. Microsoft". The handheld market went nuts and Apple's been dragged into an existing fray. Cross licensing among competitors has become a kind of CC hedging. Notice that the cross licensing spats involve companies with devices not software, explaining HTC and not Google.

This handheld food fight has been going on a while. Apple got a few mashed potato splats to the face. It finally stood up and popped a tomato at HTC, and the rest of the kids realize it's standing there, now just a little ticked off, tossing a plump juicy red Roma in its throwing hand, with a whole pile more on the table.

Nokia never said Apple couldn't use GSM, they said they are the only large maker of GSM devices that don't pay a royalty for it. They were suing to make Apple pay up like everyone else.

Asking for an injunction is saying Apple can't use Nokia's claimed technologies:

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Nokia_Apple_III...

Arguably, Apple's not a maker of GSM devices. "Apple bought the chips and components that use the patented technology from a licensed supplier. Nokia doesn't get to double-dip and be paid twice if Apple's suppliers have a license to use Nokia's patents and Cupertino's just buying phone components without dictating design."

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/nokia-vs-apple-the-in-dep...

Anyway, "suing to make Apple pay up like everyone else" seems again about wanting to hedge against Apple's disproportionate profitability per unit.

---

More context on Nokia's claims that Apple is using the technology in seven patents--related to user interface, digital cameras, antennas, and power management, and to create "key features" in its products--here:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/12/nokia-hurls-new-sa...

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/nokia-adds-additio...

More on why Nokia started the fight, here:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/22/why-nokia-is-suing-...

Counter argument (it's actually not sour grapes, it's just very complicated) here:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/nokia-vs-apple-the-in-dep...

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

You know this whole business of patents, and IP as a whole, is fundamentally flawed in that there is no objective way to decide what is influence and what is blatant copying/theft. The Justice route simply doesn't work. And because patents are public documents, you are basically inviting competitors to modify your inventions.

I can think of two better ways to protect your IP. One is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself. Up to now nobody can crack their search black box. And two, keep innovating. If you do those 2 things in conjunction, I doubt you'd have to worry about people "stealing" your IP.

I believe that it’s good business, in the long run, for a company’s acts of aggression to take place in the market, not in the courts. My concern regarding this litigation against HTC is that it looks like an act of competitive aggression, not defense.

I completely agree. The sad part is it maybe too late for them to reverse course.

Interestingly, I think this is a big part of why patents were invented in the first place. The idea was to give companies incentive for publishing their methods in detail because doing so benefited the industry as a whole. You show the world how you are doing what you do and you get to control that process for a while but in the end it becomes part of the common practice.

And the problem with applying this to software - as alluded to in the article - is that software is advancing at (disputedly but ostensibly) exponential paces.

If software patent timeout was geared towards progress instead of hindrance, it would follow the inverse of the path that copyright has taken: shortening the enforcable term instead of lengthening it.

That rationale was invented after the fact, as I understand it. The actual reason was royal revenue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law#England

One is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself.

Any suggestions on how to do that with a product as opposed to a service?

Don't file patents, which often make it much easier for competitors to see how you solved a given problem. If they reverse engineer your product, that means they are late to market. You will always have a competitive advantage if your rivals are trying to build today what you built yesterday.

Google also sell search as a product - Enterprises can buy "google black boxes" that index their corporate network and make it easier to find stuff (supposedly... I haven't seen one at work yet, but the bar is pretty low, considering how shitty most enterprise search engines are).

These are basically rack-mounted boxes (the one I worked with was bright yellow and looked pretty awesome) that quite literally are, under contract, not allowed to be tampered with besides providing power and plugging in cables.

They do work, though I wonder whether it is worth the cost. I can't recall exactly, but I think it cost in the region of $10,000/yr. There's also a baby version for significantly cheaper that indexes less docs.

I'm sure their search technology is significantly different as well. A large part of Google's success is being able to crawl well (their index is incredibly fresh), sort through spam and SEO gaming and then raw speed over many billions of documents. It's a lot easier to efficiently crawl and search an intranet.

Or how to do it with a UI.

Patents where created to replace trade secrets.

If an idea is so fucking-obvious in hindsight that you don't need the patent's description to re-implement it, than that shouldn't be patentable.

Yeah, Apple did a great job designing the UI ... but sooner or later somebody else would've done it anyway.

10 years ago I owned an HP iPaq ... with a big screen, a stylus, wifi, sound input/output and no physical keyboard. Sooner or later somebody would've thought to add GSM capabilities to it and replace that stylus with fingers.

Apple did it first, and they have a great sense for aesthetics ... but this whole suing stuff is ridiculous. I was kind of feeling sorry for them when Nokia sued (and I'm pretty sure Nokia has patents more enforceable than Apple does).

Apple did it first, and they have a great sense for aesthetics ...

Nope, Several other manufacturers did this somewhere in 2003. QTEK/HTC had a few of them early on, HP introduced the iPaq H6300 (I could get one in europe early 2004)... Apple came with the first iPhone in 2007 (that's three years later).

Of course you could argue that they understood the problem better than (most) other manufacturers (I'm pretty sure they do) but Apple being 'first' is definately not true.

Patents where created to replace trade secrets.

Bullshit.

If an idea is so fucking-obvious in hindsight that you don't need the patent's description to re-implement it, than that shouldn't be patentable.

That's painting with an absurdly broad brush and probably covers thousands of things that you might otherwise regard as patent-worthy.

I have an ice cream scoop with two hinged handles like a pair of scissors with two halves of a scoop for 'blades'. When you squeeze the handles together, the scoop scissors together so you can scoop, and when you let them apart, the scoop opens, loosening the ice cream. Works great.

"Duh!", right? http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6474974

Oops, I guess the guy that thought that one up shouldn't have a right to profit from the value he's added to my ice-cream scooping experience, seeing as how it's so obvious in retrospect. I guess we should all have an equal right to make our own copies of that scoop--which we hadn't thought of but surely we would have all thought of eventually seeing as how it's so obvious now. If he had wanted to profit from his invention he should have made it more complicated.

Or, maybe obviousness-after-the-fact is not a good way of judging patentability.

Yeah, Apple did a great job designing the UI ... but sooner or later somebody else would've done it anyway.

Can you relate that to the things patents that Apple has actually claimed to be infringed?

The primary problem with your argument is that (hypothetically) there were not shaved ice scoops (double the size) similar to the ice cream scoop you own previous to the invention you cite.

Inversely, there were inventions (Microsoft Surface, Jeff Han's touchscreen) previous to iPhone that had multi-touch capability and exploited much of the same ideas. They just weren't phones. The obviousness is that creating a smaller form factor and putting some phone capabilities in it were no-brainers for this tech _eventually_ since the technology did exist.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...

The primary problem with your argument is that (hypothetically) there were not shaved ice scoops (double the size) similar to the ice cream scoop you own previous to the invention you cite.

I don't understand what you're saying.

Microsoft Surface, Jeff Han's touchscreen

Both of these use completely different technology that does not scale down to phone sizes--they're notable because they scale up so well and can sense effectively any number of points, and can sense objects, not because multi-touch was new. FingerWorks, for instance, predates both, and a dozen things predate FingerWorks. See: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

There is no one single technology called "multi-touch" and nobody with any sense is claiming that Apple has a patent on the concept as a whole. While they do hold patents on their touch technology (via FingerWorks), those aren't the patents Apple is suing HTC over. The whole angle is a red herring.

"The sad part is it maybe too late for them to reverse course."

I think you're correct. Now the cards are on the table - I have a feeling if they were to withdraw this, it would hurt the countersuit against Nokia - who could then point at Apple's selective/questionable enforcement.

My understanding is that enforcement only affects trademarks, not patents.

Enforcement affects perception of validity and enforceability which can matter both at negotiation and court. To quote a non-neutral party, note the phrase "lax attitude":

> "Neglecting stick licensing [enforcement] has two problems. First, it results in a loss of potential royalty and damages revenues from infringed patents. Second, it undermines carrot licensing of both infringed and noninfringed patents. If an industry perceives a lax attitude on the part of a university in enforcing its patents, it will think it can infringe with impunity. Under these circumstances, taking a license would be tantamount to making a charitable gift, which few in this economic climate are inclined to do." -- Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corporation in http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patent...

Thank you; you're probably right. Some part of me thinks it would still harm the case. I need to go find a lawyer.

If you do those 2 things in conjunction, I doubt you'd have to worry about people "stealing" your IP.

And yet Google is potentially pulling out of China due to having its IP stolen.

I'm pretty sure el_dot wasn't claiming that his strategy protects against sophisticated cyber attacks on the nation-state level.

Regardless, anything on the nation-state level is not worth debating about because other nations are not obligated to respect US patent, trade-secret, copyright, or any other law. It doesn't matter whether a US company patents its stuff or keeps it a secret, companies in China will do what they want.

Has Amazon's enforcing of their one click patent really affected them negatively? Certainly their customers have no idea about the whole ordeal. Have great hackers refused to work there because of it? Would some percentage of hackers refusing to work at a big company like Amazon really make a difference to them? Somehow I doubt it...

I think the same is true of this HTC suit. I'm not sure why everyone is making such a huge deal out of it. The patents probably won't hold up in court, or some of them will and HTC will have to pay Apple N million dollars (like Adobe vs. Macromedia). Everyone will forget about the suit within the year. The only affected people (as one of the Tim Bray quotes suggests) will be the lawyers, who collect their entropy-like tax.

Why would Apple do it if it's truly pointless, you ask? Well, Gruber has a few solid bits of speculation in his penultimate paragraph, any of which might be true, but only Apple knows the real reason.

This is an apples to oranges comparison though because Amazon and Apple do very different things. The thing is that unlike Amazon, Apple is primarily selling a platform. To some real extent, hackers are their competitive edge. (This is somewhat true of Amazon now that they're in cloud services I suppose, but that's still a negligible part of their overall business and has been great PR for them in the hacker community.)

The iPhone before the App Store was either a middling failure or a middling success, depending on your viewpoint, but it certainly wasn't a slam dunk. It was on track to undersell the 10 million projected handsets by the end of the calendar year (about 18 months after launch) even after severe price cuts. See this chart for unit counts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...

The green bar marks where apps came in. The app store is most, if not all, of what made it the slam dunk it is today. It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.

So alienate the people who make the apps, and you lose a lot of the reason for customers to purchase an iPhone. Hence I'd argue that Apple's image among developers is a lot more important to their success than Amazon's.

It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.

Many them weren't AT&T customers. That green bar also coincides with the release of the iPhone in 22 countries (as opposed to only 6 for the original model), expanding by another 48 by the end of the year.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/the-lucky-22-countries-re...

That's true, I wonder if what % of sales were international though?

Uh, the green bars also mark the change in price from $399 to $200. Don't you think that might have been partly responsible?

It also marks release of iPhone 3G and extended availability of iPhone in the world.

That... is quite astounding. Almost 1000% growth from the previous quarter.

Thanks for showing that to me.

It may not have affected Amazon negatively, but it has affected Barnes and Noble customers negatively. They haven't been able to do one-click shopping for over a decade. (I'm assuming B&N are still unable to implement 1-click under the settlement.)

Certainly it's not something that's on a lot of people's minds, but I think it's a mistake to say only the lawyers will be affected.

There are certain levels that people require to not work for a company and though this action may only stray away a few extremists from wanting to work as the amount of ill actions perceived by the public increases the amount of people willing to let those actions slide will steadily decrease.

"Where I disagree with Jonathan is on what’s known as “business-method” patents: one-click ordering, per-employee pricing. I’m having trouble seeing the benefit to society in granting patents on something that could never possibly be done secretly."

That I think should always be the type of reasoning involved. It's not the whole story (some things that couldn't be done in private would still stay uninvited if patents didn't exist) I can't get my head around IP moralising. The bottom line is that patents are intended to be an instrument to encourage innovation to the benefit of society.

I really think there is no sane way out of all this. We tend to act as if there must be some hard definition that will include all novel innovations that wouldn't be worth developing in a patent-less world and exclude those obvious derivative things that would be invented anyway and really need to be freely built upon. There probably isn't such a definition. Even if we do find some complex and inelegant way of mostly accomplishing that it wont last forever.

Making a morality around that seems absurd.

I’m not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are).

I'm not aware of RMS claiming that the patent system should be abolished for all fields. I'd love to be corrected on this point, but it's my understanding that Stallman is against software patents only. You can actually read Stallman's own words on the subject in "Free Software, Free Society", Chapter 16. And yes, you can legally download the entire book for free.

http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/

I’m not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are)

I think the context of that quote refers to software patents. In particular, his two preceding Tim Bray quotes are clearly with regards to software patents.

He's referring to the patent system in general. The context is pretty clear:

I’m not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are). And I think in many fields, the system has and continues to work well.

But for software the system, in practice, is undeniably broken.

At the beginning of the second paragraph he makes a distinction between the system in general and the system as it applies to software. Therefore, in the first paragraph he was referring to the system in general. Maybe that's not what the author meant, but that's what the words say.

"The iPhone introduced a new model. A true great leap forward in the state of the art. Not a small screen that shows you things which you manipulate indirectly using buttons and trackballs occupying half the device’s surface area, but instead a touchscreen that occupies almost the entirety of the surface area, showing things you manipulate directly."

Nokia's N770 was close to this in 2005, and the N800 even closer by 2007. It didn't have phone hardware, but it's not a great stretch for anyone to see that phone hardware would be a useful addition at that point.

I owned one of the first Nokia 770s through their open source developer program, and it was a useful handheld computer but it was no iPhone.

iPhone features that the 770 anticipated well:

- Full-featured web browser.

- On-screen keyboard.

- App development based on a full-featured desktop toolkit adapted to a handheld screen.

Things that make it a strikingly different experience:

- Not a touch interface. The resistive touch screen on the 770 was really only usable with the stylus, and their interface designs reflected this. This didn't really start changing until after the iPhone was released.

- Not actually pocketable. To deliver a full-featured browser, Nokia used a screen with almost twice the area of the iPhone's. They didn't figure out the tricks Apple used to get a near-desktop-class web experience on a truly pocketable screen.

- UI conventions. The original Maemo tablets had a fairly desktop-like interface. Menus, dialogs, a Windows-like task bar. Plenty of hardware buttons. In contrast, the iPhone made a much cleaner break with previous UIs, popularizing things like multitouch gestures and momentum scrolling.

Not only that, but the web browser (Opera) on the 770 didn't really zoom well at all. Nothing like Mobile Safari's double-tap zooming. It is actually quite painful to use now. I occasionally break mine out but it is quickly replaced with my iPhone. It really wasn't much of a mobile platform and quite underpowered.

Tocuhscreen PDA's have been around forever, I'm actually a bit disappointed that the above quote appeared in the article.

My first smartphone was a Sony Ericsson P800 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_P800 ) which was a touch screen device with a web browser and it was released in 2002! The iPhone was not, at all, revolutionary in that regard. It's merely a really good refinement (multitouch and a flush display) of what came before.

Why can't Apple continue to out-innovate Nexus One and Android instead of suing them?

Reading from the overall situation and his quote, Steve Jobs might feel that the current iPhone UI is 'perfect' as a whole. Apart from nitty-gritty details, he does not see a way to drastically improve it. (That's why he chose it for the iPad UI as well.) So he might figure that the only way to stop competitors from getting too close is to sue them.

"Copying ideas is how progress is made. It’s copying implementations that is wrong (and illegal)."

Distinction between ideas and implementations in software? Impossible. In my opinion it is one of the reasons why software patents will always be broken.

Tim Bray cites a pretty good example; compare and contrast one-click shopping with PGP.

One is a broad concept that needs no further explanation in order to be implemented by a seasoned developer — the other is a genius implementation that isn't anywhere near self-explanatory.

Not saying software patents are sometimes good, just saying that there can be a difference between ideas and implementations in software.

John pull together a number of ideas and commentary about software patents and patent law from a variety of industry commentaries.

An interesting read.

With the iPhone Apple's innovation is in the implementation, not the concept/idea. Can design be patented?

For a sample of Gruber-pretentiousness, check out the last sentence (while picturing him wearing a monocle):

I say it’s worrisome not because I think it’s evil, or foolish, or unreasonable, but because it is unwise, shortsighted, and unnecessary.

Oh do say Gruber ol' lad! Your taste is so precisely exquisite.

So how would you communicate those sentiments? By pointing and grunting?

What’s wrong with that sentence?

Gruber chiming in without adding much substance while attempting to stay firmly footed in the center of the debate by avoiding words with "extreme" connotation despite having roughly the same meaning ("foolish" == "unwise", etc.). For me it invoked images of a stuffy monocle wearing Briton.

Really you're putting words in my mouth though, the comment was mostly a facetious. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, I just found it amusing.

I believe he's trying to use "unnecessary" to mean Gruber finds it unnecessary because Apple products are so superior and always will be. This is used to:

  1. Nullify all the arguments in the post because people
     imagined wearing monocles must be wrong.
  2. Point out the fact that it is wrong for anybody to hold
     an opinion on anything.

That wasn't at all my meaning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com