In this case, Florian Mueller is using examples of Android functionality to illustrate individual elements of the body of a single independent claim. You've excerpted his example without context, leading a reader here to believe that Apple is patenting random Perl features.
By my understanding, the patent claims the (obvious, with mountains of prior art) behavior of auto-generating hyperlinks from text using regular expressions, so that (for example) when you receive a text message with a phone number in it, that phone number can be detected with regex and displayed as a hyperlink. When you click it, it can then say "Call, Save To Contacts" etc.
That's just one of the supposed infringements. Your comments here make it sound like this is a legitimate patent, and that HN geeks are simply too stupid to understand the issues. Well, we may not understand the obscure details of every patent claim, written as they are in fearsome legalese, but we understand very well when a company like Apple is trying to make an end-run around the Patent Office. We grok it. Don't pretend we don't, or that our understanding is somehow skewed.
If someone wants to discount an opinion about a patent, they have the patent at the ready for their arsenal. Copy pasting the long-form version of "on a computer" is not a response.
If you don't understand the patent claims, you do not understand what the dispute is. End of story.
Patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
* an input device
* an output device
* an associated memory
* a server
* a UI
* an "action processor", and
* a processing unit coupled to the input device, the output device, and the memory.
Did you build that? No? Then what are you talking about?
And please, please, please: before we open up Pandora's shipping crate full of geeky arguments about how an end table, a sofa cushion, and an abacus could also be construed as this particular claims construct, can we also acknowledge that we don't know exactly which claim in the document was found binding on HTC? The ITC ruling isn't, as far as I can tell, published on the web. The reason patents have broad independent claims followed by strings of specific dependent claims is that the dependent claims are the ones usually found to be enforceable.
† thanks for the correction
So in other words... a computer?
A huge amount of modern software patent language is simply generic, copy-paste babble to say, in long and drawn-out terms, "on a computer". This doesn't make the patent any less stupid.
We don't know which of the claims of this patent bound on HTC.
The initial independent claims of patents are deliberately written to be as broad as possible, to insulate the patent from technological changes. The IP lawyers who draft Apple's patents go way out of their way to make sure that first anchoring independent claim is as general as possible.
A reasonable expectation is that it's not simply the initial independent claim --- which, by design, is the claim mostly likely to be challenged as over-broad --- but a combination of independent and dependent claims that actually bound HTC.
Given that, I'm super not interested in discussing whether a court is likely to find that any computer ever built running Linux violates this patent. I'm strongly inclined to believe that no, your infringing product needs to embody a purpose-built device.
I think your logic about "huge amounts of modern software patent language" pertains to the patent description, not the claims.
Does the answer to the above question affect how you feel about the patent (and/or patents in general)?
A patent protects the invention, not the text of the patent. The more realistic question is whether HTC's implementation was worked out by looking at how the feature works on iOS.
So far as I understand, iOS doesn't have the same sort of Intent architecture, so it seems unlikely that that Google's implementation drew any inspiration from iOS (especially as the same sort of thing has been done in web browsers for years to the point where a browser might be prior art).
Generally, I think software patents are as bad as we tend to say they are.
However, caricaturing their badness with statements like "Apple patented regular expressions on URLs" or whatever sucks power away from the argument that they should be abolished, by allowing the "grown-ups" to point and say that opponents of patents think that e.g. this one says you can't regex URLs.
But regardless of that, having read the 21 claims of the '647 patent (I don't fully understand the other one, but this is the one that covers what this thread is discussing), there's nothing about it being tied to purpose built hardware.
The example implementation described in the patent itself uses a Power Macintosh, the only part that refers to purpose built computers is "For example, program 165 in FIG. 1 can be stored in ROM, disk, or in dedicated hardware. In fact, it may be realized as a separate electronic circuit."
The term "a processing unit coupled to the input device, the output device" is only being used as a generic way of describing a computing device (hence the Macintosh being used in the example and the reference to dedicated hardware is only made as an alternative method of implementation)
If this patent is valid, it's likely covers a wide range of computer application including those found on desktop computers (for example Skype's phone number highlighting plugin).
Also it talks about detecting structures in a grammar. That has been done before. So putting that on a server and accessing it with input and output devices makes it new and original? Surely an old-style unix terminal running awk on a PL/1 could fit in this broad terminology.
Too many times discussions on here have been shortcircuited by claims that the complainant just doesn't understand patents. The discussion fizzles and the absurdist situation with software patents continues.
I've read this patent in detail, as gruelling a task as that is, and it does seem to be as trivial as others are suggesting (as is the case for most trivial patents that get criticized on here). The claims that detail, essentially, a computer are boilerplate in 99% of software patents. They are not particularly relevant and add little specificity.
EDIT: Another submitter has posted a listing of Apple's specific complaints, and it is exactly as others are suggesting -- Regex'ing input and identifying types of text.
Thankfully Apple itself has provided such an interpretation, and their interpretation, worded to best be in their favor, is exactly as trivial as many have suspected.
This is a critically important discussion for this industry.
Getting geeks to dislike patents is easy. We have a lot of geeks who hate patents and are passionate about it. Yet the patent system hasn't been changing as a result. Why not?
Isn't that kind of strange? Aren't we the ones who most benefit from patents?
"Do you really think that the opinion of people on HN has a measurable impact on our patent system?"
Yes I absolutely do. In fact I think the next 24 months will see a lot of debate and eventually significant change to software patents in the US. All I care about are defusing those who attempt to make everyone feel too ignorant to have an opinion about patents (such attempts appear in every discussion about patents. Lots of hand waving about how we all just don't get it, leave it for the big boys, etc)
No. The two groups that benefit most directly from patents are established companies which wish to block competitors, and patent trolls which wish to sue lots of people.
For the kind of startups that HN people are interested in, patents are an exercise of interest mostly because of their potential value to investors and purchasers. But in the meantime they cost money, don't affect sales one bit, and you likely won't get them until years after it is obvious whether you've succeeded or failed as a business.
Until the big boys decide that the cost of patent trolls exceeds the benefit of their patent moats, nothing will change about patent law. In particular I see no sign that the next 24 months is critical. In fact I'm willing to bet you money on that. The next 24 months is mostly going to be spent with a Republican Congress (who see patents as "business friendly" and have bigger political fish to fry) fighting with Obama. After that we'll have a new administration, which is going to focus on top political stuff for their first 100 days.
My personal suspicion is that the economy is going to go south again, credit problems are coming back in a big way, and financial/economic issues are going to keep software patents off of the list of priorities for a long time.
Getting geeks to dislike patents is easy. We have a lot of geeks who hate patents and are passionate about it. Yet the patent system hasn't been changing as a result. Why not?
If you can't get geeks, who should all have at least some distaste for software patents, to agree on a solid argument against them, then how can you expect to convince congress? One could view these geeks-only debates as individual geeks refining their arguments and accumulating additional information, in preparation for attacking the problem at its legislative source.
The situation, in other words, looks like a ticking time bomb for the other phones looking to copy the iphone - android or whatever.
Is there anyone who's analyzed apple potential patent portfolio in the mobile space?
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/these-tables-show-ho...
The patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
"Deep down in the ITC archives I've dug up the so-called infringement claim charts Apple presented to the ITC in its dispute with HTC. Infringement claim charts, or often just called "claim charts", typically show the language of a patent claim on the left side and a description of the infringing activity on the right side. Any given patent claim is only infringed if all of the characterizations on the left side are matched by (accurate) information on the right side."
If that's truly Apple's own claim-matching chart, it looks pretty deserving of geek scorn. No?
If Apple invented that stuff it might have invented the computer, the internet, and the 21st century too.
This sounds exactly like the iPhone feature that allows you to tap a phone number in text and call it. What else could it possibly describe?
The patent was written in 1996. The description above is correct. The question is, was it obvious or not. Was there prior art (some people mentioned some agenda software from 1992, that's worth looking into).
In my book, it's quite simple: either people were doing it before the patent was written, in which case it's obvious and deserves to die, or it was never done before, in which case it doesn't matter how obvious it seems in retrospect.
This isn't necessarily true.
There is also a general concept that if something is obvious to a general practictioner, then it should not be patentable. Does anyone believe that minus the iPhone or that 1996 patent submission that someone else in the computer field wouldn't have "invented" the concept of linking distinct types of text? Now I know that there is plenty of prior art, and this patent will be invalidated, however just discussing the concept that it really was the very first implementation.
Remember the idea of a patent is that you are granted a government monopoly in return for revealing, essentially, your secrets. Who thinks this is a secret? Or the vast majority of patents, for that sake. The current situation is not one where people are actively stealing techniques, but instead it's one where many independent teams of developers inevitably end up at exactly the same end result. That is clear evidence of the farcical, not-as-intended patent system.
Stop and brainstorm for a couple of days about every nuance and variation of wearable or implanted computer. File patents in the hundreds. In a few years you will be a trillionaire.
But very feasible for IBM, Microsoft, Apple, etc. - companies with many laywers and engineers, and lots of money.
"If something is blindingly obvious at the time, it probably won't get a patent. The USPTO and other such agencies are not perfect but they are not total imbeciles."
The USPTO has shown, time and time again, to be willing imebeciles. They have habitually approved virtually all patents, opening them for review only when contested. I have zero expectation that they are doing any serious review of these patents, and they most certainly are not consulting any industry experts to gauge the true novelty of a patent.
As for your statements about the USPTO that is just a rant. It doesn't contribute anything to a real discussion.
Many a perl script has been written pre 1996 to create linked things from plain english text. Automatically turning email addresses in plain text into html links is very common. So have many text adventure games been made which parse english text to present links. Wikis came out pre 1996, and those presented links based on the patterns of english text.
Not to mention text adventure games.
http://www.podgoretsky.com/ftp/docs/Internet/Web%20Publishin...
Why do you comment on a comment you haven't bothered to read properly? Your attitude stinks.
For one, I said 'if' - I simply don't have time to give a patent the full reading it deserves to make an firm assertion, unlike most people in every patent-related post who read the abstract and make BS claims about it.
In addition, I mentioned a previous examples which makes you wonder (1) why this should be an issue now and not a decade ago e.g. with HTC's previous phones (2) how patentable such a thing should be.
I would not be surprised if this kind of thing appeared in the Psion PDAs, either - but it has been a very long time since I used one.
We should spend energy abolishing them rather than debating how they work.
just my 2c
This is a continuing source of confusion for me, how a group of people who generally can't rest until they understand something can be so willfully ignorant about patents.
You insult this community while offering absolutely nothing to counter any complaints about this patent except for, as others have tried, vagaries. Patents are public, so if you've actually got something, let's see it. Otherwise it's just noise.
Simply responding to every patent comment with vagaries and innuendo is not enlightened or helpful. It's unhelpful noise meant to short-circuit discussions about the very, very broken patent system.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2777338
That _IS_ essentially what the patent claims. Ptacek tried to add specificity by pointing out that Apple essentially added the disclaimer "on a computer", which is of marginal usefulness.
His original response was wrong, and was the classic alluding to some deeper (but never stated) meaning to the patent. There is no deeper meaning. That is it.
What the patent claims is a device that has every element of a claim. Not just one element, or some elements. If it doesn't have every element, it's not an infringement.
More handwaving, however. This is why we can't have nice things.
You are wrong. Ptacek is wrong. AND APPLE AGREES. How is this nonsensical side discussion still occurring? The specific example is one that Apple used, so...what is going on here?