Apple takes patent attacks in a new direction | Hacker News Reader

Apple takes patent attacks in a new direction

bgr.com

52 pointszacharye33 comments

Apple's aggressive patent strategy is really turning me off; as it should for other people as well. I hope this is understand not only by the Tech community, but also average consumers.

I don't know their claims, but given the past, this is getting out of hand. Last month, I would have said that I would consider buying an Ipod because it is a great product; but because of the past events, I would not consider buying an Apple product whatsoever.

Man up, Apple. You are going to have competitors in the mobile and tablet industry. Stop trying to cop out with all this patent crap.

You can only hope that Apple is being as obnoxious as possible to spark interest in patent reform.

Unfortunately this is clearly not the case. There actions are clearly harming both competitors (Samsung, etc) and consumers (through less consumer choice in the tablet market).

So your implied argument is that patents hurt consumers because they don't allow one company's patented innovations to be used without restriction by other companies?

Your view is that the limit of one's benefit from an innovation should be the time between when one releases an innovative product and when your competitors release copy-cat products?

Motorola Mobility can get an injunction blocking Apple products in Germany banning the iPad. What good would it do if we could have no tablets at all, because they each violate each others' patents over trivial things?

Seriously, one of the patents is over automatic linking. Okay, it covers something more general, actually, but that's the embodiment that's the most recognizable.

I see what you are saying and I think there are short-term and long-term consequences. Certainly an injunction hurts consumers in the short-term since they have less choice. The patent-advocate would argue that in the long-term this model rewards innovators more and thus more people invest in innovation, helping consumers over the long term.

You are correct that my personal opinion is in favor of no patent protection. However my original point was that Apple's patent actions have had significant short-term impact that hurts consumers. You can certainly make an argument that there is a long-term positive impact, but I do not believe that Apple is in any way harming the patent system itself.

Unless you're spending immense amounts of R&D, that tends not to be as severe a problem as constricting development because of patent thickets or creating aggregately large legal problems (Lodsys, et al).

A patent system that has most of its connection to actual innovation definitely hurts consumers.

Apple's claims against the Android tablets have been shown here to involve something like the claim that Apple invented the tablet, something that's also been debunked here.

That's a pretty interesting point of view, one I never even considered. One can only hope.

So... I feel like Apple has come full circle.

I find myself wishing for a Hooters waitress to come running down the aisle of the next Apple PR event and hurl a sledgehammer through the presentation.

Discus thrower - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anya_Major

At least Apple is a company that sells something and is trying to protect their products. They are playing the game under the current law, which is clearly flawed. Rather than complain everytime Apple/Microsoft, etc go after others, can we try to get problem solved?

The game is so flawed that there's an entire industry built around it, and it's getting worse.

Except for ammunition to the endless legions of kneejerk anti-Apple fandroids, what is the point of this article? It is essentially content-free, the limited claim being that Apple, who are infringed upon in many areas, is suing people who rip off its case designs as well as Samsung who ripped of the design of the iPad wholesale.

The patent system exists, Apple are using it correctly. Companies like Samsung should quit whining and stop copying.

It seems thar Apple does not care about the negative PR lawsuites like this generate for them. Apple owes a lot of their success to being cool and innovative. Lawsuites like this make apple neither.

This sort of behaviour isn't visible to consumers, so it doesn't hurt them in the short term.

But it does piss off developers. If they keep up pissing off developers with patent & app store shenanigans they'll lose their most passionate developers and end up with just those who are in it for the money.

And we know how that ends up. ~10 years ago passionate developers jumped from Windows to OS X, even though at the time there was virtually no money in OS X application development. And the availability of some very nice applications was a large driver of the OS X market share increase from 2% to 15%.

  > And the availability of some very nice applications was a
  > large driver of the OS X market share increase from 2% to 
  > 15%

I doubt it very much. I'd say people came to OS X by discovering other Apple products first (iPod and iPhone).

Also, developers who would be most pissed of by this most likely are Android developers already.

Sure, the iPod got people into the store, but presumably people played with the machine in the store or at a friend's house or read reviews before actually buying the machine.

Sure, lots of developers have left already because of the app store shenanigans. But judging by the tone of comments here in Hacker News, the patent shenanigans have alienated another group.

Sounds like Apple has been taken over by the business people and IP lawyers.

They're already out of new ideas.

Am I the only person that actually thinks that charger cable (assuming its the same size) is a bit suspiciuos? It's like Samsung is either being lazy at this point, or is trying to goad Apple on to attack them.

I have to side with Apple on the shape of the charger issue. Especially since there are plenty of shapes they could have used, some of them standardized, like mini/microUSB...

By the way, the clenching feature was two bumps at the ends of the charger that, I think are used for holding the charger in place.

A question of course is, "should this be patentable". I'm not arguing that right now, and haven't thought about it enough to have a position, but it is awkwardly similar, and when there are already a fair amount of already-existing standards they could have chosen, they went with an Apple-specific one. ... that's all I'm saying.

You are not the only one.

What's more, Apple didn't start this. A few times in the past, I've traced the history of these suits in HN threads. Everyone is suing everyone, but reporters love to highlight Apple because it's a brand that ignites page views.[1,2,3]

Part of the (broken) cross licensing process is testing and setting cross licensing pricing using these suits and settlements. Given the limited market and limited market info for patent values and the unpredictability of enforcement results, this litigation seems to participants as reasonable a method as any for determining the cross licensing value if you're not going to just put everything in a pool (which certainly is supposed to work better, except when Samsung or Nokia sues over the very patents they put into the pool).

Most forget that Apple spent 20 years of R&D on personal mobile devices, then moved into phones in a way that made it obvious the rest of the industry was stagnantly producing what the carriers wanted instead of what humans would really use.

As Apple's "Jesus phone" swallowed demographic segments whole, raking in the lion's share not of units shipped but of profits, the mobile industry went nuts at seeing the lucre they'd left on the table and started suing Apple from every side, both directly and through intermediaries. Of course, Apple, with its 20 years of actually innovative R&D in the space, countered.

When some of the industry start playing the "fast follow" game instead, Apple is forced by trade law to defend against that or they de facto give up their rights to the undefended points.

The charger and cable design show this wasn't a happy design coincidence; this was a calculated move to establish a "me too" product line. Part of that calculation was "What will be our expense from design and patent assertions by Apple when we fast follow these products so closely?"

Before Apple got into mobile, this was how the business was done, but it wasn't in the press because nobody was interested. The only thing different now is that we're talking about it.

(Footnote: the Prada phone design timing has been debunked[4] previously.)

    1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/04/microsoft-motorola-android-patent-lawsuit
    2. http://news.designlanguage.com/post/1252039209
    3. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/whos-suing-whom-in-the-telecoms-trade/
    4. http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-samsung-f700-prada-phone-rumors-debunked-20147320/

Just don't understand why this matters, Apple should take this as a complement and come up with the next cool thing.

Apple's litigation just pushes everyone else to innovate, while killing off their own enthusiasm.

Your product is in the shape of a rectangle, we invented rectangle. Pay us money for our invention or we will sue you in 50 different nations. there needs to be a penalty for the attacking company when frivolous patent suits are shown to be ridiculous.

The problem is that very few claims are genuinely ridiculous.

There can be differences of opinion on what's valid, and things which are untested in law, but for the most part there will be a germ of something at the heart of the claim which will make it potentially reasonable.

Judges tend to throw the genuine dross out very early on.

The one that always springs to mind is the MacDonald's too hot coffee case. On the surface it sounds like complete nonsense but when you look at the detail the claim was perfectly reasonable and deserved to win (which it did).

Clearly Apple isn't dumb and won't sue where there is no chance of "victory" (defined in a business sense, not always meaning "victory in court"). And indeed: they got a injunction (albeit an ephemeral one) in Germany over the design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. So in fact they were right, and so are you. There was enough of a case to make this advantageous to pursue.

That doesn't change the fact that this is terribly hurtful to the consumer, the market, and (I can only hope) Apple's public perception. It's just awful, sorry.

Only because the patent law is broken. Just because the patents are made "according to the law", doesn't mean they are good patents.

I think there are plenty of frivolous cases.

When I looked at the details of thee hot coffee case the claim seemed even more absurd.

The physical damage was worse than I expected but that doesn't make her less responsible.

The fact that:

(a) MacDonalds had been warned about this repeatedly in the past and

(b) that the coffee was being served at temperatures significantly higher than you'd normally get from a kettle at home / work thus rendering the sort of normal expectations you might have moot

didn't seem pertinent to you?

a) Warned about what exactly? That people are going to be reckless and possibly injure themselves? What action is McDonalds supposed to take to prevent idiocy? It's not a children's toy. It's for adult consumption.

b) Why would I expect that it would be similar to what I do at home? It's McDonalds. They serve their coffee very hot. People like to drive to work, and still have it hot when they arrive. Also, I have no expectations of those cups other than that they are flimsy. The temperature issue is not relevant anyway because if she wasn't negligent in her use of the cup the contents would have been kept safely contained. A knife in a restaurant can cause significant damage as well if you decide to be an idiot and try to remove an eye lash from someone's eye with it. Would you say that the knife was too sharp? That it is sharper than the knives you use at home?

Please explain "the details" which made it "even more absurd" to you.

At what temperature would you start to assign responsibility to McDonalds? Can they, in your mind, give out boiling coffee without culpability?

[edit: typo]

The details that made it even more absurd are:

1. She put a fresh, hot cup of coffee between her legs. 2. She put this cup right up near her genitals. 3. She messed around with the lid of the cup while it was in this position.

Coffee is supposed to be hot. In fact, customers typically demand coffee to be extremely hot, and complain when it isn't. Whether it is 80deg, 90deg, or 100deg is of little significance when considering blame for the action. The fact is she made the decision to put hot liquid in a flimsy cup near her genitals and begin messing around with the lid.

To me it's like asking for boiling water (for tea, perhaps) then taking the water and dumping it deliberately onto my lap and then trying to sue McDonalds. Her behaviour was so irresponsible and foolish, it might as well have been deliberate.

Extra sympathy for the extend of the pain and suffering. But sympathy should not redirect blame.

If a person asks for boiling water, then yes, McDonald's may sell such a product without culpability.

But the debate over how hot coffee should be is a different discussion. I'm curious though, what is the proper temperature of coffee? I for one don't drink it so I have no idea.

If Mr Darwin is at work, nobody should have the right to sue.

Their coffee might be very hot or not so very hot, but the real problem is that thinking which allows the customer to lay blame on McDonald's without ever considering any responsibility for himself.

That thinking blatantly ignores the fact that everyone is—to a fair extent and by default—responsible for their own mishaps unless they truly had no reasonable way to guess or test for the surprise outcome.

If you're buying a hot drink in the first place, it's just common sense to merely touch the cup first to figure out if it's too hot before lifting it and burning your fingers. Similarly, when washing your hands you will generally first test the temperature of the running water before you splurge into your watery rejoicings instead of suing the café for reckless overuse of their water boiler. Further, most people learn very early on to try out if a stove plate is hot first before focusing on pressing their hands against it.

Now, admittedly, there are some things that you couldn't possibly avoid yourself. For example, unless otherwise signposted, publicly available staircases should hold together while you're stomping up and down on them. Door handles shouldn't deliver you a surprise shock directly from electric mains. A new car probably shouldn't explode on you when you turn on the ignition. But these come in rare numbers and equally extreme conditions.

Known accident-prone activities, such as driving, are explicitly protected via mandatory insurance in general. But in life in general, anyone can be expected to avoid many unexpected accidents with mere common sense, and still most of the rest of the incidents are well, just accidents. Accidents do happen and the driving nature of accidents is well, accidental, i.e. "nobody's fault" in general.

"when washing your hands you will generally first test the temperature of the running water before you splurge into your watery rejoicings instead of suing the café for reckless overuse of their water boiler"

No. In washing my hands at a café, I just turn on the water and put my fingers in. If it comes out at 210F instead of 130F, burning me badly, that is very much reckless overuse of the boiler by café.

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