Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll) | Hacker News Reader

Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll)

techcrunch.com

301 pointsllambda64 comments

This is really really messed up. Besides the usual patent troll options of:

- (costly) settle

- (costly) fight

There is now a third option of:

- (profitable!) join the bandwagon, not get sued (by this particular company), strengthen your own IP defence position by gaining licenses to the entire portfolio that was threatening you in the first place. There's even profit-share for settlement revenue!(Edit: profit-share might be for "board" seats only, but it sounds like it costs IP contributions to get in anyway.) All for a low low cost of transferring over some patents (that are just licensed right back to you). Of course this just enables more of the other companies to get sued.

This has a potential to get really out of hand, really fast. :(

Yes,

Once you accept the framework of software patents and all its implication, you have embarked on the project of dividing up the "digital commons".

And to do that, you just need an "alliance of the willing" - ie, you first gather together the muscle power needed to control the turf and then divide the spoils. There's no idealism and no distinction between patent troll and "real company" once the company is playing the intellectual property game.

That third option is what forms the basis of Intellectual Ventures' business model [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures

I don't get why they didn't mention a very obvious reason why Apple would sell a patent to a patent troll:

They want the troll to sue someone with whom they have a reciprocal patent portfolio license.

Most big companies are members of lots of these agreements, where any patent owned by one company is licensed to the other, and vice versa.

If Apple is simply a licensee of the patent now, and doesn't own it, then presumably it wouldn't be part of their reciprocal licenses with other companies any more, and the troll would be able to sue?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, here. (The most likely way I could be wrong is that the standard reciprocal agreements cover all patents owned during the term of the license, in perpetuity -- i.e., selling a patent doesn't invalidate the reciprocal license. Even then, they may be planning to sign a new reciprocal patent license with, say, Samsung, who just won the ability to block shipments of iOS devices that support HPSA, but they still want someone else to be able to sue Samsung...?)

AFAIK, Apple's most prominent cross-licensees are Microsoft and Nokia. If you're right, this looks like part of a pre-emptive strike against WP7. That is at least a bit surprising because the previous indications had been that Apple was fine with a iOS / Windows Phone duopoly in mobile.

Note that a few months back Microsoft and Nokia sold a very significant amount of patents (reportedly 2000) to a patent troll company.

Remember that the primary power the average HN reader has to fight abuses like this is simply not to work for the companies that engage in this chicanery. Good hackers are valuable, and companies fight for them. When companies do things most hackers consider evil, it should hurt them.

This is the same individualistic fallacy that comes up over and over again. Yes, individual actions matter for your own personal integrity, but focusing on those as a solution to what is essentially a systemic problem ignores root causes.

Society is a system that's just waiting to be hacked, if you're willing to start seeing it that way.

Society is a system made up of point-masses of personal integrity (or lack thereof). "The system" didn't make Apple decide to fuck over consumers by jumping on board with a patent troll; that decision was made by a group of specific persons who deserve neither my respect or my business.

Don't reward moral cowardice by hacking your own mind into considering it "just the way things are." Make the bastards work a little harder to buy you out, at least.

I think I agree with sunahsuh. When a system is stacked in a certain direction, appeals to personal responsibility can win battles but will lose the war. In the prisoner's dilemma, we can hope for mutual co-operation, but until the rules of the game change it's nearly inevitable that defectors will make out better.

The whole damn valley is a pussy just waiting to get fucked.

Surely it's the rules of the game that are at fault here. You can't blame companies for using the rules of the game to their best advantage.

The answer is to tell everyone how much of a ridiculous unfair idiotic idea most patents are.

You shouldn't be able to patent software - it's trivial. You shouldn't be able to patent things like "Touchscreen used on mobile device" - It's obvious.

Patents should be reserved for things that aren't obvious, take a lot of research, and can be done many ways. For example drugs research. They should be denied and ruled null and void for most things related to software/consumer technology.

Either you stand up for what you believe in, or you don't. The "rules of the game" as you say, were made by the people that are playing it.

So if you believe that some companies have taken the patent game too far and are a nuisance to society, why not take action against it and stand up to your beliefs?

I don't think attacking the companies is productive though. Lobby the government to change the law.

You can always expose and boycott the companies who do deals you morally object to. You can always call others to do the same.

Has that ever worked for a large multinational?

It's not the local grocery shop around the corner with the rotten produce...

It worked against Home Depot, "the world’s largest buyer of construction material" [1]. As a result of consumer pressure [2], they turned over a new "green" leaf, and are now lobbying to keep forests sustainable[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_depot [2] http://salt.claretianpubs.org/shake/1999/09/ss9909.html [3] http://www.mongabay.com/external/wsj-home_depot.htm

You really think a very small number of hackers who know what they're talking about, boycotting companies is going to have an effect?

Most of the people buying smartphones can'e even spell "patent".

Yes. If the really good people won't work for you because you're evil, that makes a huge difference.

Here, if you're old enough to remember, try this one:

"Of course Microsoft didn't care that a lot of the top talent wouldn't work for it for decades."

Doesn't sound very convincing, does it? Microsoft was badly hurt by that, and knew it. It eventually reined them in noticeably, and made them act more subtly or covertly a lot more often.

Apple will take time to see the damage, just as Microsoft did. But it will see it, just as Microsoft did.

Microsoft didn't become an evil monopoly by having the top talent. If anything it was the reverse. Maybe if they'd have some talented hackers working for them, they wouldn't have sucked quite so badly at making software.

Success isn't related to having top talent.

telling all your friends and explaining why apple sucks like that does help.

Yeah, that would be productive, right...

Having spent a whole lot of time researching the effects of patents in the pharmaceutical world, I am really going to question you on that as well.

Do you know who spends roughly the same percent of their revenue on R&D as the pharma companies?

Apple! In fact Apple spends astronomically on R&D. One of the best in the field.

You know who doesn't? Samsung Mobility. Moto Mobility. HTC.

But that's to be expected: we know they're not innovators, they're assemblers.

Cite please? That claim contradicts everything I've read on the subject.

AFAIK Apple don't spend a lot of money compared to the competition even on an absolute scale. And relative to revenue, there's just no competition at all given Apple's massive revenue (~15% for Microsoft/Intel/Google, ~3% for Apple).

Sorry I didn't see this, don't really have orangereds on Hacker News.

Here's a source: http://www.booz.com/global/home/what_we_think/featured_conte...

You're right, while continually be labelled by organizations as the most innovative, they do only spend ~3%

Apple most likely isn't in this camp, and has enough cachét and goodwill to still be a desirable place to work, but those kinds of companies usually can't recognize good hackers, or even know that there's a difference. They will execute on their harmful and odd undertakings with whoever they can find, quality or not.

This is how we end up with things like spyware being distributed under the guise of marketing.

And patent troll/patent hording companies don't need to hire hackers.

How is Apple not in the "doing things hackers consider evil" camp? They've been doing such things for a long, long time. I had hoped it might end with Cook as CEO, but apparently no such luck.

Why would you expect a business (an entity that subsists entirely on money) that has made shitloads of money to suddenly stop doing everything it can to continue to make shitloads of money?

The camp that I don't think Apple is in is the one where they can not recognize good hackers or think they don't need good hackers, which is what my comment is about. Obviously, a lot of people are misinterpreting my comment or are not reading the whole thing.

Interesting how recently I am feeling more guilty using my Apple products (Macbook, iPod) and less guilty using my Android cellphone. Apple's attitudes related to patents is really starting to be a deal breaker to me.

I may be looking for notebooks alternatives next year. It is a bit sad because I love the build quality from Apple's products, but I like to think that I value my morals more than my consumism.

If you value your morals, the other two choices aren't much better. Apple might be making headlines now for their patent shenanigans but next week it could very well be the other two.

I am assuming that by "other two", you are referring to Google and Microsoft. Microsoft has a history of shady tactics, but they've been relatively "good" recently. They could easily fall back into bullying tactics, if they wished to. Although they do have tons of antitrust agreements they have to honor.

Google, on the other hand, has no history whatsoever of using patents offensively. I don't think [1] they've made a single offensive patent case, ever. If the morality of a company is going to affect your choice, Google is by far the better choice.

[1]: I haven't verified this statement. It probably doesn't hold true for some of the companies that they have purchased, e.g. Motorola Mobility.

Microsoft is well aware that they can just break antitrust agreements and the enforcement is unlikely to have any teeth. That was their approach for many years, and I'm sure they remember how effective it was...

And yeah, your footnote definitely doesn't hold true for a number of the companies Google purchased, which I don't (directly) hold against Google.

And you're foolish for not holding that against Google. Google bought Motorola for their patents. They're playing the game which we as consumers are the losers in. If they were as moralistic as the segment of naïve geeks here seem to think they are then they'd be working to destroy the patent system.

It is possible to buy patents for defensive reasons while still working to dismantle the patent system. How is this so hard to understand?

I think I remember one of Google's top IP lawyers has even said that software patents probably shouldn't exist.

Claiming that a company must not protect itself from frivolous litigation in favor of working to dismantle the patent system is like claiming that an AIDS doctor shouldn't be allowed to use protection during sex and should instead focus on curing AIDS. You can do both at the same time.

I don't give Google the benefit of the doubt like so many here. Why is that so hard to understand?

Apparently it is, and this is pointless. I get it, hate Apple, love Google, we're warming back up to Microsoft and uncomfortable with Facebook.

It's not about giving companies the benefit of the doubt it's about judging the actions of companies. Apple and others have been very aggressive in their patent-based legal action. Google has not.

The issue is that you're refusing to make a knowledge based judgement. We know Apple uses their patents offensively. We know that Microsoft, while not being particularly gruesome of late, uses their patents offensively. There is plenty of evidence for both of these claims.

We do not know that Google uses their patents offensively. At least, not that I am aware of. This doesn't necessarily mean that they won't or that they haven't. But it would be wrong to ignore past action as a predictor for future behavior.

Bullshit.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/htc/8749797/HTC-uses-G...

Commence the downvotes.

Well let's see: Google bought Motorola to use it as a patent hammer.

Microsoft has a long history of strategically settling lawsuits with patent and IP trolls (remember SCO's lawsuit against Linux? Funded by Microsoft paying them to license stuff that they could (a) easily have fought or (b) paid far less for; similarly Burst's lawsuit against Apple over QuickTime was funded by a Microsoft settlement).

I dont agree. Google refused to enter the patent war and was heavily bashed for years. They bought Morotola to use the patents to defend their partners. They are not using patents offensively, as far as I know.

Both Apple and Google are massive multinationals driven by shareholders for profit and couldn't give a shit about your interests where they don't align with their own. It's time that a good portion of the community here grows up and stops identifying personally with large corporate products.

It's trendy to knock TechCrunch down but you have to admit that's some good journalism.

Couldn't agree more. I've never been a fan of TC, and am something of an Apple fanboy, but they stepped in it here and I'm glad TC did the homework to call them on it.

Reminds me of a company that I worked for in the past. They tried to sue me for patent infringement long after I had left and started my own company. They of course had no case, but it does cost significant resources for a small startup to fight a multimillion dollar enterprise. All that wasted effort could be better spent developing real products and actually providing value -- on both ends. Not sure why big companies are so afraid of the "little guy" flying under the radar.

If this is aimed at the big products like WP7 and Android, then Apple better think it through carefully.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK famously said:

     any missile attack from Cuba would be
     considered an attack from Soviet Russia and
     bring "a full retaliatory response" from
     the United States against Russia itself.

Transferring your weapons to a third party and then saying you have no control over what a third party does will be viewed dimly indeed.

The fact that Steve Jobs pioneered the '1984' style commercials that Futurama so successfully parodied is a testament to the fact that you can indeed become larger then your cult.

Apple today is one of the champions of collecting personal information, defenders of monopoly on a scale that Microsoft can only dream of, and one of the largest collectors of non-essential patents.

'I'm Loving It'

I agree with some other commenters here that the correct response here is not to blame Apple. Yes, it's fashionable to attack them these days, but it honestly isn't their fault.

The rules of the game fundamentally change when you add software patents to the mix. All it takes in this new world to ban a competitor's products is a vague patent and a sympathetic judge. Apple, in fact, has now been on both sides of this issue – suing Samsung's products out of the EU, and losing an injunction to Motorola in Germany.

You can't blame Apple (or any of the other companies who may emerge) for playing this game. If they can prevent their products from being pulled off the shelves, it's stupid not to.

It's akin to (as many have noted) the problem of nuclear proliferation. Blaming Apple is like blaming the US for not unilaterally disarming. Sure they didn't, but it's understood that they had a good reason, and, out of self interest, should have done exactly what they did.

Blaming Apple for giving patents to patent trolls is like blaming Pakistan for providing key information to help North Korea build nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass...

the implications of this article are potentially disturbing, but i can't even muster the energy to get upset by these things anymore. i just have this feeling that the bad guys one; it's over. (or maybe we're just in the empire strikes back phase of things)

honestly, i think the most surprising thing about this article is that it was written for techcrunch, and it contains actual journalism. how refreshing to read something in the tech press that is not just linkbait aimed at activating whichever legion of fanboys.

good work Jason Kincaid,

This is great, and exactly what we need. Through the patent war, massive losses must be incurred on the richest corporations, until one (or more) of them say "enough", and use their money to lobby the patent system into oblivion.

Actually, this is a barrier to innovation and small, disruptive newcomers. The richest corporations are using patents to lockup the marketplace and secure the status quo.

But this barrier can only fall if the titans make it fall. Probably makes sense to expect that the titans will try to make it only fall for themselves, but I don't think that would work. How that works exactly is what we see now. Hopefully soon it will be cheaper for the titans to allow newcomer competition than to continue this war. But then, maybe not!

Why the downvotes? It's one of the more plausible ways that could end the global patent system, whether you like it or not.

How much progress has been made in reforming patent software laws so this kind of shit stops happening?

Very little to none.

Software patent laws are largely written by people paid by companies who:

a) have a lot of patents

b) invested billions buying up patents

c) would very much like to see those patents as an asset which makes them money

d) would very much like to see those patents as a weapon to stifle competitors

Extra patent laws that are introduced as bills are almost always laws that make the current state of affairs worse.

This country is so corrupt

Zero.

Not sure if I understand it well enough but is this Apple's version of pulling an SCO?

In the patent wars, patent trolls will prove to be valuable allies.

It's no longer an Apple to Apple comparison after all. :-)

How the heck do you BUY a patent and sell licenses to multiple third parties? How does this maintain the spirit of patents where we encourage innovators?

Say I want to build a new phone in the shape of a rectangle, black, with beveled edges? oops I have to purchase licenses from a gigantic enterprise which has the patents on "rectangle", "black" and "beveled edges".

Well, maybe it's too much work to build a new piece of technology, I can't make it work with all the fire hoops to jump through! Guess I'll get into selling apples on the side of the road, that is until somebody patents that.

Selling actual apples is safe (for now) but you better not have "apples" in your company name.

"""How does this maintain the spirit of patents where we encourage innovators?"""

You think anyone in Congress cares about the spirit of the law?

Once a body of patents exists and is owned by big lobbying companies, it's all about protecting them.

Similar to the copyright protection, that just keeps expanding to the whims of Disney et al.

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