Software patch to avoid Galaxy Nexus ban coming soon | Hacker News Reader

Software patch to avoid Galaxy Nexus ban coming soon

asia.cnet.com

36 pointseplanit15 comments

I'm of two minds about this - on the one hand, I'm disheartened at the continuing saga of a patent system that allows such ludicrous ideas as "swipe to lock" to be patented. If there was ever "system or process" that didn't need patenting to have it's "methods" revealed to the public to promote the "Progress of Science and useful arts" - "Swipe to Lock" would be it.

On the other hand, actually, no, I'm just of one mind on this one.

The craziest thing about this injunction is it isn't even about 'swipe to unlock' which is pretty ridiculous, but it is about unified search (the search bar on Android phones searches the device /and/ the web - Apple has a patent on that, Google does not.)

Personally, I don't know why Apple's just going after small potatoes.

Given their patents, they clearly own Google Instant and Google's standard multi-source (Web/Images/News/...) search plus a bunch of other things (thoughts about how many Apple patents Chrome must infringe?).

Why waste time on Android phones? Win an aggressive enough lawsuit and they'd own Google. Even if Apple just got an injunction, that would be enough to cripple Google (to the point where Google would agree to extortionate licensing terms, I'd bet).

Could be they want to set a precedence for the patent with a smaller target, and then aim at the big stuff that is more commonly known by the non-tech crowd.

Because the patent doesn't seem to apply to servers i.e. it specifically refers to client devices attributes.

The original use case for the Apple patent was the Sherlock search feature back in OS 8.5 (1998) which utilised a plugin system. IIRC it was a unique feature as not even search engines e.g. Altavista were doing multi source search at that time.

I can't imagine it would be hard to find prior art for it though.

I remember Sherlock being widely derided as a ripoff of the shareware app "Watson". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson

I remember that time. The newer version of Sherlock was but they still had the core plugin based search approach in place before that.

they're going after what they think they can win. Getting a patent granted is one thing, defending it in court is another. if a patent gets invalidated by a judge it is forever worthless, but if it has yet to be tested in court it can be used to bully smaller players who can't afford to defend themselves. bringing a patent case against google's core business will cause google to fight back with all their might, and it might end up the wrong way for apple. They have to save that case until they create a situation where they are sure they can win.

The patent they are getting caught up with is for the Universal Search. I read that the patch will dumb down the voice + google search bar to only perform google searches and not search through apps, contacts, etc... Supposedly the suit does/will not affect Google Now, though.

Just another example of how terrible it is that patents are stifling progress. Also hilarious since Google's core is basically universal search.

I agree with the last paragraph in the article -- it's pretty crazy to see Google anointing this software update as special and rushing it out so much faster than normal Android updates.

I mean, I get it, this is a headline-grabbing issue and they need to act to keep a flagship phone on the market, and it's Google writing this patch rather than the phone manufacturer. But if it's okay to fast-track and skip some of the process for this patch, why not others?

There are two possible reasons for this. This most probably is a small patch. just disabling a feature and not removing it completely from the phone; as such, it would not affect drivers and such like other Android updates. The second reason is that it may be just an app update for Search if they have that well separated from the OS, which would mean that it would not change any of the bloatware carries and hardware makers put in.

My hope is that the patch doesn't just replace the feature with an arbitrary and unpleasant equivalent.

Rather I'd prefer if they took their time and presented a solution that beats 'swipe to unlock'. Making it a real lemons to lemonade scenario.

Unfortunately if they repeat the past the financial pressure of getting to market tends to prefer the first option over the second.

Good artists copy, great artists steal ... or sue.

In this case Apple both copied, stole, and sued. There is plenty of prior art on multi-database search. That it is on a phone is not an innovation.

Except that this patent has nothing to do with multi-database searching.

Did you even read the patent ?

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