Honestly, all this tells me is no matter what big tech wins.
Have a great idea and patent it? Well who cares, they'll steal your tech and courts seemingly will let them. All comes down to who has the money for better lawyers.
Have a great idea and patent it? Well who cares, they'll steal your tech and courts seemingly will let them. All comes down to who has the money for better lawyers.
the existence of a patent that another company copied is by definition stealing. until further litigation occurs and changes this decision, it is a fact Apple stole this technology
why they can't ever show a little humility and pay up in royalties is just ridiculous. remember, they didn't even want to pay artists for the music they gave away when launching Apple Music until a Very Big Deal named Taylor Swift told them to GTFO.
It literally and figuratively is not.
Second, many patents are stupid. One click checkout was stupid and companies that implemented one click purchasing weren’t infringing anything. And certainly weren’t stealing.
Was this patent stupid? I don’t know, maybe. But assuming stealing is not a very good idea as I expect there are many more BS patents than valid.
Nevertheless, the patent was granted, and naked assertions and poor summarizations are not convincing enough to conclude that it should not have been. The contents of that patent, for anyone who is interested in examining it, make this seem like a pretty cut and dry case of patent infringement.
...assuming the patent is valid, which apple disputes.
Are you talking about an actual judge or the patent examiner?
Are you implying the patent examiner doesn't apply actual judgement or make actual judgments?
And is there any convincing evidence the patent is invalid?
They might make "judgements" in the colloquial sense, but from a legal point of view they don't make the final call. It's not any different than a cop giving you a ticket for speeding. You're not guilty until convicted by a judge/jury.
They may not make the final call, but they make judgements, and thus are people who judge such things. Importantly, they do so more than you, so their judgement outweighs yours alone.
And, it's actually the opposite of your analogy, because the patent, having been judged by a person who judges such things, is indeed valid unless convincingly proven otherwise.
Which leads us back on topic: is there any convincing evidence the patent is invalid? I'd like to move beyond your purely semantic meta-argument and back towards substance.
>And, it's actually the opposite of your analogy, because the patent, having been judged by a person who judges such things, is indeed valid unless convincingly proven otherwise.
The same could be said for a cop and/or prosecutor. Do you think someone being prosecuted for a crime is guilty "unless convincingly proven otherwise"?
Of course not, which is precisely why your analogy fails. You seem to be confusing presumption of innocence in a crime, a thing which exists, with some sort of presumption of patent invalidity, a thing which doesn't exist. Thus, contrary to your latest claim, the same can't, in fact, be said of one and the other.
In the US, in the case of prosecution for a crime, someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Whereas the patent, having been judged valid and subsequently granted, continues to be valid until proven otherwise.
Which leads us back on topic: is there any convincing evidence the patent, currently judged valid, is actually invalid?
I asked you this already, and you responded with nothing, so if you respond again with nothing, it will look like you're just trying to argue, rather than discuss.
I take issue with the conflating infringing on a patent and "stealing" IP. The two are not the same.
My reading of Masimo's patent is far less charitable than yours. To me it reads like one of those "but on a computer" type patents. It's not really all that novel but overworked USPTO reviewers grant them anyways.
Supposed sordid dealings by Apple are yet to be demonstrated by anything but unsubstantiated claims by Masimo. Not that Apple is above any wrongdoing but Masimo's executives are incentivized to act like overly aggrieved victims to extract sympathy from third parties.
Is there any evidence you feel would convince people that the patent examiner was wrong in awarding the patent which, at the moment, is valid?
Any evidence you feel convincingly disputes the record we have of Apple's interactions with Masimo? Empty denials would be pretty unconvincing, and I'm not sure we even have that.
Apart from those words, is there anything else you think is of concern compared to the progress made by humanity by making the tech available to millions of people?
Either Apple are guilty or being stingy, or Massimo are guilty of being greedy. Either could be responsible for the conflict.
I am not interested in that. It's just some thoughts in your mind.
The end result was that tech became more accessible and which is all I care about.
- In order to be granted a patent, inventors must publish detailed descriptions of their inventions, including step-by-step instructions on how to re-create them. The inventions become public knowledge.
- In exchange for publishing the details of their inventions, society grants a temporary exclusive right to market the technology.
Without this system, the only way to safeguard a technological advantage would be to keep it secret. Inventors would be incentivized to maintain maximum secrecy for all new inventions. That would be bad for society, and inconvenient for inventors.
The patent system is an acknowledgement of this reality. Even though it seems a bit ridiculous, we allow people to claim temporary "ownership" of their new ideas, in order to incentivize the publishing of research, which eventually enters the public domain.
Clearly, there's some room for argument on the details of this specific case, but assuming the patent is legitimate, and that Apple infringed on it, then it would be bad for the long-term progress of science for us to let them get away with it.
And in today's world where reversing a product is pretty much a guarantee if the product is something anyone wants, the secret won't be kept for too long. (shhh, everyone's secret sauce is pretty much thousand island) Once the secret is out, anyone that wants to will copy it and now there's no protection.
Without patents, who knows how many ideas would be stuck in the heads of individual people, reluctant not only to try to bring them to market, but to even discuss them with anybody. Why would anybody want to become an inventor, if there were so little upside?
The other issue is there are patents on ideas that aren't novel. There was some tightening of the rules such as the Alice software ruling but still lots of holes.
Case in point personally, our competitor patented the "idea" of putting a flexible PCB in a type of product. That's how bullshit it was and that was granted in 2020. Luckily we have prior art of a flexible PCB in a product of ours from 17years ago if they decide to ever start shit.