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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result.

Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out of a hole in that respect for several years. Now in my mind they are both the enemy.

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I'm unhappy with Apple and Microsoft too, but the real enemy is a broken patent system that creates the perverse incentives that motivate companies to launch lawsuits like this one, to the detriment of society.

Regardless of who wins, we have already lost, because we have a patent system that discourages innovation and competition in software!

Maybe the prospect of patent Armageddon will finally force lawmakers to address the issue head on. I'm hopeful. As Winston Churchill supposedly said, "you can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else."

PS. I highly recommend Gary Reback's 2002 article, "Patently Absurd," which accurately depicts how patents are used by large corporations: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044_print.html

Edits: grammar and style; also, added PS and qualified quote with "supposedly," because it's unclear if Churchill ever actually said those words (thanks icebraining and drabiega for pointing that out).

Actually, he probably didn't: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives...

I like the saying anyway, though, however said it.

The patent system isn't a person or group. It's a weapon of mass rent-seeking built in part by these same companies so that they can reap huge profits without having to actually compete with their rivals. Responsibility for this situation is squarely on the shoulders of these companies and others who have lobbied the patent system into what it is today.

Also, and this is a minor quibble, despite it's frequent attribution to him, there is no evidence that Sir Winston actually ever said that.

Don't blame the patent system. While it is true that patent system should be reformed/eliminated, those companies chose to take advantage of it.

Just because you can steal something when nobody is looking doesn't mean it's justified to be stolen.

Companies are required to maximize their profits, and patents are a legal framework for creating profit.

I absolutely blame the patent system, and it's absurd of you to suggest otherwise.

How about blaming both. These positions don't seem exclusive.

> Companies are required to maximize their profits,

This meme needs to die.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/09/h...

"There are no statutes that put the shareholder at the top of the corporate priority list."

"Nor does the law require, as many believe, that executives and directors owe a special fiduciary duty to shareholders."

It needs to die.

Edit: And there are many, many other places you can find support for this.

There may not be statutes but there absolutely is case law. In fact, I'm sure there are indirect statutes. There's just no way that the purpose of a for profit company is not to maximize profits to the owners of that company. There may be reasonable debate about where best to deploy capital but those decisions should be justified.

A company can have more than one purpose and sometimes maximising profits gets in the way of the other purposes of the business, so just because a business is for profit, does not neccessarily mean that it will seek to maximise that profit or that the owners want it to as they may be just as interested in the other purposes that the business can be put to.

Money alone makes a poor measure of business as business is there to do stuff and money is just one of the processes involved.

What is the timeframe for maximizing profits? If I can liquidate the entire company and maximize profits for that quarter am I required to do so? If I can avoid instigating expensive legal battles and the associated bad PR to maximize profits in the next 10 years wouldn't I be just as required to do that?

I think I addressed this point in another thread once: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6505161

The company's duty is to maximize the value of its shareholder's holdings in the company (i.e., stock). This can be done by maximizing profitability (see, e.g., Caterpillar, most publicly traded companies), but it can also be done through growth (i.e., Amazon, most startups) at the expense of maximized profitability.

It's easier to maximize profitability than it is to maximize growth. This is why more companies pursue the first path.

"Maximum profitability" still needs a timeframe to judge against. Maximum in the next quarter? Next year? Next decade? Maximizing in short term may harm or prohibit maximizing profits in long term, which would be just as bad (or worse) for shareholders.

Profit in the reporting context refers to the annual measure of net income, so maximum profitability generally refers to the profit generated in a single tax year.

Most corporations try to be profitable over a long term, and there is no requirement to be "maximally profitable" in a single year or over any time period. For every corporation there are judgements over the value of investing in product pipeline, sales, marketing etc. or the value of increasing short-term profits at the expense of long-term, the value of taking a risky action that may pay-off or may bring customer anger and lost sales etc.

The vast majority of single actions that a corporation takes are not mandated under some simplistic view of "maximising shareholder value".

Actually I think that article points out my take on the matter. For most corporations, its duty is to maximize shareholder value; the problem is that too many people have forgotten what that actually means.

Shareholders can and have replaced the Board of Directors of public companies, based on their lack of faith in the company's ability to maximize profits. The Board of Directors is in charge of hiring and firing for the senior executives. The Board of Directors and Senior Executives know this, and aren't stupid.

All that has to happen is that shareholders (which are often other corporations) need to act RESPONSIBLY, and you're right, this meme will die. I expect the sun to go red giant, first, though.

If you are seriously suggesting that Tim Cook would have been ousted had Apple not gone down this road, I think you and the rest of the world are just going to have to agree to disagree.

You misunderstand. Tim Cook wouldn't have gotten the job in the first place if the board had thought he would shy away from such a decision.

Unless pg is right, and this will actually hurt aap's share price. And pg is not always wrong.

I predict it isn't going to do anything to hurt share price.

Yeah, it would be crazy to think that a corporation like Apple would ever replace their CEO.

I'm reminded of the phrase, Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.

> Don't blame the patent system. While it is true that patent system should be reformed/eliminated ...

But thats the point. You can blame the companies all you want, another will always be there to step up and take advantage of it. I do blame the companies, but what does it matter? Are we likely going to see an Apple Boycott? I doubt it, and changing one companies business practices will have little impact on the industry as a whole.

But the patent system - that's a single target we can all align against, whose elimination would solve these issues immediately.

Every system has its exploits, will you blame those systems for their failures? Individuals are always to blame because individuals are the actors in the broken system. The blame must always lie with those doing wrong, or else we're just absolving ourselves of the hurt we cause each other.

It doesn't have to be one or the other, it can be both. A system that does it's best to prevent abuse, and individuals who do not seek out ways to abuse it, combined make a best case scenario.

I'm a pragmatist at heart is all. I look for the action that leads to the outcome I want, and I don't believe outcry against companies will ever have any impact on the patent system, outside of resultant legislative action.

> Every system has its exploits, will you blame those systems for their failures?

The system is responsible for maintaining the most beneficial incentives possible. In some cases, it is difficult or even impossible to remove those exploits, and in those cases I look to blame individuals to the maximum extent possible. But in this particular example, there is little to no apparent benefit to having (the current) patent system in place, and only perverse incentives. While it doesn't absolve the companies of their behavior, I don't see how it can be viewed as anything other than an inevitable outcome (given the system design). In that light, I may avoid Apple products for instance, but am generally uninterested in any complaint or action that isn't targeted at the root cause which for all intents and purposes can be fixed!

Sure I'm completely on board to fix the patent system but it does not follow that I should continue to support a company that I believe behaves unethically. Apple boycott, yeah I doubt it will happen but that's not the point. It's about informing my personal choices and helping to speak out to inform others. Boycott's unlikely to change anything but real change tends to come from lots of people speaking out and informing lots of other people.

> They chose to take advantage of it.

What would they do, just let Google acquire even more mobile-related patents? You think Google would never sue them? Let's not be naive, the only reason Google is a good citizen with patents today is because a retaliation would make a dent on them, and they know it.

The parent is right, the problem is the patent system, which gives a disproportional power to the holder and creates these power dynamics, "eat or be eaten". There's no space for ethics or fairness there.

That's not quite true. The newer generation of tech companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) have taken to using patents very very defensively, at least so far.

Google has gone as far doing an "open patent non-assertion pledge" which is far beyond just not using patents: http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/

Twitter has an Innovator Patent agreement: https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators-patent-...

That's because the newer tech companies haven't had enough time to build a catalog of patents to rival older Microsoft, Apple, and so forth.

Do you really think Google won't do the same to younger tech companies a decade from now?

The problem here is rather that Google chose not to participate in the company buying the patents.

What do you do after that. Leave the companies that didn't pay alone ?

There used to be a time where companies would have been doing just that. But in mobile market, there is no competition anymore, there is a very rough war. 2 market leader (Nokia, Blackberry) have basically been pushed out of the market in less than 5 years. That's like incredible speed ( I work in financial software company, it takes decades of continuous bad strategy to doom a company ). Their error of judgement was all considered minor and the correction they have done should have been more than enough to limit the losses. In addition of that, only 2 players on the market manage to make money, a lot of money.

In that climate, anything that can give you even a few months edge can be the difference between competing and becoming irrelevant.

The smartphone market is brutal - too brutal for regular competition strategies.

This is the logical equivalent of, "don't hate the player, hate the game." And it holds about as much water. If any company in the world has the warchest to bow out of petty patent politics, it's Apple.

Yes! I am perfectly happy to hate the player and the game.

Apple and Microsoft were part of a consortium. Do we know that Apple was a ringleader here? Maybe they just are along for the ride to make sure that they weren't in the crosshairs? </devils-advocate>

We do know they are the ringleader as they own 58% of Rockstar.

This whole story brings on such a lugubrious feeling. I mean, I guess we can chalk it up to human nature, but, patent system aside:

How did we ever arrive at the place where we believe that everyone else must lose in order for someone to win? How did we get to a point where we believe that we have to take from someone else's plate when there's more than enough to go around? How did we lose the vision that bringing the highest performance, service, features and functionality is "The Right Way" to deliver and compete, instead of destroying ourselves? How did we become so misguided that, even with a broken patent system, we are not intelligent enough and civil enough to simply do "The Right Thing?"

None of this activity is in the spirit of the Hacker Ethos, regardless of the broken system. At what point did we lose our bearing?

I'm reminded of Joshua's observation from WarGames:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Sigh...

we are not intelligent enough and civil enough to simply do "The Right Thing?"

With the majority of people, who are generally decent, the honor system is workable. Problems arise with a minority of people who are willing to exploit loopholes and engage in freeloading (e.g., patent trolls). This creates the tragedy of the commons [1]. With the existence of freeloaders, it is necessary to carefully craft public policy to discourage freeloading and rent seeking. Right now the US (and perhaps international) patent system does just the opposite.

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

This isn't just a human problem, it is one that exists throughout nature. Cheaters, free riders, parasites; just a few names for the same idea: beings that benefit at the cost of others. The problem is that natural selection favours these cheaters.

The best we can hope for is to mitigate the effects of cheating. Attempts to completely stamp out cheating (such as the patent system) are doomed to failure.

It's certainly true that the patent system is broken. But the fact you can get away with doing something due to broken laws doesn't make it ok to do it.

The operative word in cs705's comment is incentive. The patent system is broken in such a way that not only does it makes possible to get away with this behavior, it encourages and rewards it. That's very different than merely "making it possible".

And the operative word in pg's reply is "ok". That Apple, MS, et. al. are acting in their objective self interest (and to the detriment of all of ours!) is an important point. But it doesn't speak to the moral issue which is that such behavior needs to be condemned and not excused.

well, that's a tricky calculation. It's possible that Apple and MS have miscalculated the backlash on this, and they will be net losers. As for morality, although I disagree with it, there is a moral case for intellectual property rights. That this absurdity is an outcome of it suggests that there's something wrong with the foundational moral assumptions, but given that people are calling this a "nuclear" case - it's reasonable that many people did not forsee this coming.

4.5 billion dollars. If lawyers are even taking 1% of that - good gosh. So many other things in this world 45 million could be better spent on.

If the system incentivizes this behavior, can a publicly traded corporation even choose to ignore it? Would shareholders be able to claim breach of fiduciary duties if they did?

Note: I am certainly not arguing that this is a good thing for anyone by any means at all.

> Would shareholders be able to claim breach of fiduciary duties if they did?

By claim, I suppose you mean sue over? In that case the answer is no. There's this notion that companies legally have to be run so as to maximize shareholder value, and there's some case law in Delaware to support that notion. But what overlooked is the context of those decisions. Invariably the litigation has to do with change of control or measures designed to encourage/discourage same. Outside of those contexts, the business judgment rule reigns supreme. So long as there's no self dealing and the company doesn't lie in its public statements, it is almost impossible for a shareholder to win a derivative breach of fiduciary duty case.

> can a publicly traded corporation even choose to ignore it? Would shareholders be able to claim breach of fiduciary duties if they did?

Patents are a weapon, and if one huge corporation has no "weapons" to defend itself with, then others with "weapons" will attack it. That's why they all have to participate.

In this case, they all - Google included - rushed towards a particularly juicy weapons cache, and whoever got their hands on it was going to use it on the others.

This is fucking ridiculous and disgusting, of course. But it's not the fault of these corporations - they're forced to play, because if one doesn't, then others will just force a massive competitive disadvantage on it. The real problem is the US patent system, the US courts, and the culture of feverish bullshit litigation at every turn that pervades the US.

A cold war is not as bad as an open war. The cold war is caused by the existence of the weapons. The open war is caused by launching the first warhead.

> If the system incentivizes this behavior, can a publicly traded corporation even choose to ignore it? Would shareholders be able to claim breach of fiduciary duties if they did?

Corporate officers have wide latitude in determining what actions are in the best interest of the corporation.

In a case like this, the incentive to initiate Nuclear Armageddon for profit has to be balanced against the cost of making developers hate you and desecrating your reputation and standing in the community. It is by no means clear that starting a war in which all sides are susceptible to take heavy losses will be in the interest of shareholders.

Robbing homes is possible and rewarding.

Saying that doing something wrong is rewarding is not sufficient.

Robbing homes has the disincentive of being illegal. What disincentive does this behaviour have?

Retaliation against the real parties in interest by the victims, destruction of the business reputation of anyone associated with this behavior and the reluctance of anyone else to implicitly condone it by doing business with them, causing outrage in Congress or the courts thereby spurring them to respond by making changes to the law that destroy the market value of a multi-billion dollar patent investment, ...

Exactly.

The first step in this is speaking up and saying, "Hey, this is really obviously wrong".

Part of the reason that the law doesn't have to get every incentive and disincentive right is because there are other mechanisms available.

I'd like to say that I was going to avoid doing business with these parties, but I already wasn't doing business with these parties, at least not to the best of my knoweldge.

This is a possible disincentive, but it doesn't currently exist. Calling public outrage against patent abuse a disincentive is the same as calling changes to the current patent system a disincentive: they don't currently exist.

I'm not sure what you mean by "don't currently exist" -- there is a general consensus that some form of patent reform bill is going to pass in the not too distant future:

https://www.eff.org/issues/current-legislative-proposals-pat...

By launching the mother of all trolls to the disgust of the industry at large, they're adding fuel to the fire and making it more likely that stronger anti-troll legislation will pass. Certainly you can expect Google to dump several million dollars more into lobbying for it now. But if that legislation passes and decimates the weaponization capacity of the patent arsenal they just paid billions of dollars for, they've just wasted billions of dollars.

Similarly, the general consensus here seems to be that what they're doing is totally unacceptable. Here where we have the people who choose which platforms to develop for, whose choices collectively make or break those platforms. Yesterday if you had a choice between hiring an extra developer to develop a Windows Phone version of your app or using the money to improve or advertise the Android version, you were more likely than you are today to do the thing that benefits Microsoft. Similarly, if you're Samsung or Asustek or Huawei and Microsoft has just loosed the troll upon you, well, good luck trying to negotiate favorable terms for any of them to ship Microsoft technology in any of their products.

And on top of all of that, how can they not expect Google to respond? If you start a war you can expect the other side to return fire. Maybe not in kind (by setting loose their own patent trolling entity), or maybe they will, but one way or another it's not like Google is incapable of striking back. What happens when they throw a billion dollars into WINE and Samba? Or add support for Kerberos, LDAP and Group Policy to the Google API so that companies don't need Windows domain controllers anymore? Doing things like that probably wouldn't move the needle on Google's bottom line, but it would stab Microsoft in the face. Which is what happens when you make enemies.

> By launching the mother of all trolls to the disgust of the industry at large, they're adding fuel to the fire and making it more likely that stronger anti-troll legislation will pass.

As I understand it, this company was formed during the purchase of the Nortel patents, which happened a couple of years ago. Not just right now. The company which was formed from investment of Apple, Microsoft, etc, is not under their direct control anymore. They basically paid a bunch of money to grant themselves immunity from these patents while creating a hazard / barrier to others.

They intentionally put the patents in the hands of a troll. Moreover, since the trolls generally don't have the capital to buy the patents up front, the transfer deals generally involve the selling party getting a large cut of the shakedown money the troll collects from its victims, so it's quite likely that they haven't recovered what they paid for the patents.

The fact that the timing of this happening at the same time as patent reform is on the table wasn't predictable some years ago is just part of the point -- you can't always predict blowback. The risk is part of the cost.

> Saying that doing something wrong is rewarding is not sufficient.

Good thing "rewarding" was not used as a sufficient threshold for either cs705's comment or mine then.

If nothing else, wouldn't you be open to shareholder lawsuits if you didn't engage in an action which was obviously legal and obviously profitable?

Weird reasoning. So anything legal and profitable must be done? Even for shareholders I think this can't be true. And anyway it is easy to show that going evil is harmful in the long term, e.g. with developers.

I don't like this any more than the next guy, but it's not like apple and microsoft aren't also getting sued. At some point offense can be the best defense.

Edit: also, apple and microsoft also actually make things. This puts them in a different class than patent trolls like lodsys(sp?)

Isn't Lodsys a child of Intellectual Ventures, which Microsoft and Apple are/were investors in?

You're right. It's not just the broken patent system. It's also the present business culture (for lack of a better term), which makes getting away with it seem OK to a lot of otherwise decent people in corporate America.

If patent system was OK, with their power and money they could always find another weapon if what they really want is to attack a competitor. That said, I don't want to mean that the system is OK, obviously, this weapon surely looks too powerful.

Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.

Apple does not have to participate in this. They chose to cause they anti-competative to the bone.

While I agree that the US Patent System is broken for allowing this, Microsoft and Apple have to wear the moral blame for following this course of action.

This may be true, but let's not get fooled into thinking that because "they" are the enemy, Google must be our friend.

Google is playing a very dubious game here, and it has nothing to do with being on "our" side of the patent issue. They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents.

All through this, they've been silent about their motives, and have even tried to mislead the public by claiming they were never invited to join.

There are no "good guys" in this conflict, no sides any of us should be on.

> "very dubious game"

Quite a statement especially on the background of the other companies involved. Any substantial arguments for that? Until recently, Google had not filed even a single patent lawsuit [1] and so far still has not done so against Apple, MS, and the like, afaik. Meanwhile, the 'rockstars' have been going rampant [2].

[1] http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/02/google-files-first-patent...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_wars

Just because it's not in Google's name: http://www.fosspatents.com/search/label/Motorola

Edit: Ah, I see you edited when you spotted Google had in fact filed suit.

Not sure what edit you are referring to, my original post already stated that until recently they haven't filed a lawsuit.

I think separating good guys and bad guys is pretty simple, if one is against (at least software) patents:

Using patents aggressively makes you a bad guy.

Google has not done this, Microsoft and Apple have.

They haven't done it because they don't have many patents. It's easy to act noble about how you'll use your patents when you don't have any. Other commenters have noted that Google is currently suing Apple and others over standards essential patents (no just because the lawsuit started before their acquisition closed doesn't mean anything, they could settle or withdraw their case). Google had the opportunity to join a consortium with Microsoft to bid on the Novell patents, they declined. They could have joined this consortium as well but they decided to bid for it alone. Not only would it have shared the costs among the group, but it would have also prevented each other from suing over them. Google clearly wanted to control these patents themselves so that they could extract licensing deals from others, something that isn't so easy to do when you just have a license for a patent.

>"Google clearly wanted to control these patents themselves so that they could extract licensing deals from others..."

Has Google ever extracted licensing deals from others?

They've certainly tried to against Microsoft but they failed. Microsoft and Apple were required by the government to license their standards related patents under reasonable terms to anyone before this Nortel patent portfolio buy was cleared. As far as I know none of them are trying to sue over SEPs. I don't even think this lawsuit contains patents related to standards, but it's kind of a moot point because no company actually has a controlling interest in Rockstar. It's all John Veschi and other former Nortel employees who run their company.

http://allthingsd.com/20130905/microsoft-trounces-google-in-...

I find your username amusing given the context of this thread. IBM could stand to make some money by licencing out some of their patents as they have done in the past:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/yahoo-was-licensing-paten...

http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-buys-patents-ibm-defend-itsel...

Incidentally if anyone is told their work is to be patented and will only be used in defense - bear the above behaviour in mind, over time, companies will not just use patents in defense.

Ha, it seems I'm a bit late to make that prediction - it's already happened.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/google-purchases-1-...

Because Google bought Motorola after Motorola-Apple fight started, the aggressor is a bit more complicated, but still pretty clear cut to me:

Whichever side that is not willing to end the patent fight (without payments to either side) is the aggressor.

And it seems to me Apple is the one not willing to quit.

Well considering Apple was willing to actually pay a small amount rather than no payment at all, I don't see how you can see them as the aggressor. Motorola clearly stated that they wanted more for it.

It seems like Google had more control over whether that lawsuit was filed than I thought. From FOSS Patents:

>A few months after that Zeitgeist talk, in January 2012, Google authorized a Motorola Mobility lawsuit against Apple over six patents in the Southern District of Florida. The merger agreement was publicly available and absolutely unequivocal about the fact that Motorola needed Google's consent prior to bringing new IP assertions while the merger was under antitrust review.

EDIT: Since it's not letting me reply to your comment, gonna post it here.

If you're talking about Motorola vs. Apple in general now, clearly Apple wasn't the aggressor. Motorola was the first to sue over patents prompting Apple to counter-sue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility_v._Apple_Inc.

You forget that Apple has their own patent suits against Motorola that they are not dropping. Ending the fight would mean that both drop their patent suits. Seems to me that GoogleMotorola wants this and Apple doesn't.

What's your evidence for that claim?

I think it's pretty clear when you read things like

http://googleblog.blogspot.fi/2011/08/when-patents-attack-an...

I don't think it's pretty obvious when you cite the blog for a company involved. Google's been fairly cavalier in infringing some patents (Regardless of whether their good patents, Google knew they were infringing). It should also be noted that the biggest Android player apart from Google, Samsung, has taken to suing aggressively.

I understand you to be arguing that it is not clear that Google would, if given the choice, drop all patent litigation (sued and suing), and Apple would not?

These patents are also FRAND patents from what I can tell, so I wonder how long it will take for the governments to intervene.

Replying to your edit:

Yes, in the Motorola-Apple suit, Motorola was the aggressor and the bad guy. But when Google bought them, Apple had already counter-sued them. That's why I defined the aggressor between Google and Apple as one that is not willing to quit.

This is according to some moral code or what? The world doesn't abide a set of moral rules. Rules are made by people who can't win without them. You can't tell everybody to stick it and start entering several industries at once. In the real world you have to be cooperative, as well as persistent, because you are not the only 800-pound gorilla.

> Rules are made by people who can't win without them.

What's that? The official motto of all bullys and anarchists?

When I come to think of it, I might indeed sound like pro-anarchi but I don't share any political or religious views, rather try to accept things for what they are. Rules are nothing but conditioning. Attempting to give moral and ethics questions an ultimate answer bounds that group of people to go radical and crash with reality.

Nothing extreme could ever work. It's an equilibrium with lots of different sides that change their weight with time. Another manifestation of this is the mafia. It is present in every society in History. It's a human flaw. Rather than ignore it and pretend it's not there, maybe we should talk about it.

Understanding other people's position and making compromises is key if sustainability is your primary goal.

Anarchists? I'm sorry, but how about learning what that word actually means?

Well, if you want to label good guys and bad guys, you need some rules to judge them with. In this case the moral code for me is that software patents are bad and whoever abuses them is in the wrong.

No,rules are made by people who can enforce them.

But isn't the point being made that this is better not looked at as a good versus bad, it's better looked at as one sort of bad against another sort of bad.

The fact that one of them is slightly better than the other in one regard doesn't change the fact that neither of them are really that worthy of your support.

You're right that Google haven't been patent aggressors up until now but if recent behaviour teaches us anything it's that Google have been very willing to change what they've stood for historically. If you believe that they'd never change that position if they felt it suited them then you have more faith in them than I do.

> But isn't the point being made that this is better not looked at as a good versus bad, it's better looked at as one sort of bad against another sort of bad.

The direct consequence of this would be a call to get rid of the evil on both sides and abolish the (software) patent system altogether.

I'd like to emphasize a quote from the end of the article:

> Patents have become the arena in which tech companies have chosen to do battle.

There is no longer competition about the best user experience or the best technical solution to an engineering problem but competition about who can file the best vague, yet court approved patent and secure the most destructive intellectual properties. I don't understand why we are still only talking about reforming the patent system.

> There is no longer competition about the best user experience or the best technical solution to an engineering problem but competition about who can file the best vague, yet court approved patent and secure the most destructive intellectual properties. I don't understand why we are still only talking about reforming the patent system.

Seriously?

iOS7 and Android Kit Kat both move user experience forward both in terms of the UI and the functionality offered. The latest iPhones, Android phones and Lumias are clearly better than what went before. I suspect if you asked average engineers at Apple, Google or Microsoft how much of their time and energy is taken up addressing problems caused by patents the number would be pretty small and if you look at how much those companies spend on patents, lawyers and settlements it's dwarfed by what they spend on product development.

To put the giant $4.5bn spent on the patents in question in context (and remember that's was shared between several companies), it's about what Samsung spend on marketing in a year or half of Apple's 5C/5S iPhone sales for the first weekend they were on sale.

Yes patents are impacting the industry but that's not to say that competition about things users care about has stopped, it's just slowing things up a bit.

>> Yes patents are impacting the industry but that's not to say that competition about things users care about has stopped, it's just slowing things up a bit.

I think "slowing things up a bit" is a great understatement. Hackers who could build the Next Big Thing have no chance at success if it takes a billion-dollar patent arsenal to avoid getting sued out of existence.

Who wins this fight is a side issue. The real issue, I think, is that only such giants can compete. If so, we're missing out on a lot of innovation.

A lot of products can be dreamt of that do not benefit the Apple or Microsoft or Google ecosystems. But can they be built without infringing "a navigation tool for graphical user interface?"

And yet most people are somehow managing to avoid getting sued out of existence while still building amazing products in small companies and start ups.

You have a point and I was a bit polemic. Nonetheless those conflicts do reach the consumer in a significant manner, for example last year, when I updated my smartphone firmware for stability reasons, all the rubber band menus vanished and were replaced by glowing edges because of the ongoing dispute. And those patents weren't even applicable in my country. Also remember all the cases where one side was trying to prohibit the sale of some phone or tablet somewhere in the world.

I don't dispute that there is an impact but your example shows the real scale of it. Is rubber banding really such a great loss? Yes it's nice but what's the actual impact on the quality of your experience been?

Frankly most of the patents that have been enforced seem to me at least to have been pretty minor and relatively easy to workaround with little real impact on the user.

To take the counter-argument, do these things really need the protection of patents then? Wouldn't the situation be better for the user if minor innovations of this sort could be borrowed, and companies instead needed to continue innovating in order to differentiate their products?

I could see a short protection period for things like this, but the magnitude of current protections seems extreme.

I agree - my personal preference is for reform of the patent system to provide a higher bar for what can be patented (actively used by the owner in a current product, evidence of significant investment to get there, significantly non-obvious and so on) and a shorter period (three to five years except in exceptional circumstances).

But that's a somewhat different argument - the original point was that consumers were being significantly impacted and I don't think this shows that.

To my mind the biggest impact may be coming from FRAND patents, the terms of which don't have to be particularly fair or reasonable and as such can easily be used to block new entrants. To my mind FRAND patents should have transparent licensing terms which are common to every licensee whether you be a major multinational or a two man start up.

The amount spent on patents and related litigation is massive. There are other large costs as well of course, but the patent fiasco is a large drag on the industry.

Something I'd like to see in addition to the now-pending reform is a law limiting damages to a fraction of revenue related to how the patent figures in the device in question. That ends up looking like a mandatory licensing fee, which I think would be about right for those few tech patents which are actually valid.

"The fact that one of them is slightly better than the other in one regard doesn't change the fact that neither of them are really that worthy of your support"

Retaining them defensively isn't "slightly better". Using them offensively is significantly worse.

"You're right that Google haven't been patent aggressors up until now but if recent behaviour teaches us anything it's that Google have been very willing to change what they've stood for historically. If you believe that they'd never change that position if they felt it suited them then you have more faith in them than I do."

That just sounds like weak speculation to me. Patent fee extortion is the sort of thing you do if you have a gradually declining (Apple) or minimal (MS) market share.

Retaining them defensively isn't "slightly better". Using them offensively is significantly worse.

That is only until you study how you use defensive patents defensively.

Suppose that you join a patent pool like http://www.rpxcorp.com/. Then you're sued by a patent troll with no assets other than a patent. How exactly is RPX going to help you?

They used to state it in their FAQ. Then removed it, but I'm sure they still do it. They negotiate with the troll. And to make it cheap, they give the troll what they want. They give the troll another patent, in return for a binding contract to not sue anyone protected by RPX.

(I became aware of this possibility after 3 patents taken out with my name on it when I was younger got sold to RPX.)

>Google has not done this, Microsoft and Apple have.

Google's Motorola Mobility has sued others based on patents in their portfolio.

This included Google trying to extort absurd sums for FRAND patents.

I don't see how Google gets a free pass because that was its wholly-owned Motorola Mobility when Apple/Microsoft/RIM/etc don't get a free pass because Rockstar is an independent entity.

Google has only asserted patents against people that are trying to attack Android using patents. The previous two comments are absurd. You look at Google's patent litigation record and shit is crystal clear. Patents are being used defensively by them.

Because this litigation began before the acquisition of Motorola Mobility?

Or because the patents in question were H.264 ones, which the defendant themselves already collects royalties on?

When Jobs claimed that Android was a stolen product and that he was willing to go nuclear on it, this is what he meant. And his claims have some merit. It is hard to blame Apple for using legal weapons to go after Google no matter how distasteful the use of such weapons might be.

That is a blatant lie. The Google blog post from the time is available here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-a...

Google is explicit about why they wanted the patents, and why joining the consortium would not further that goal.

> refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all

Source? you're not confusing these with the Novell patents, are you?

Either way, this is the worst case of patent trolling, and may even raise anti-trust issues. Speaking of which, weren't they specifically told not to sue and gang up on other companies when they bought these?

> They've tried to buy the same patents, refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all, and then knowingly violated those patents.

That's a very misleading claim. It's not because they decided to buy a big pool of patents that they necessarily knew that 7 of them would apply to their tech. Moreover it's not clear either that they implemented anything after the fact. Those patents seem to be touching fundamental things like advertisement and search.

Google wanted these patents so that they would not be used aggressively against them. Google has no history of using patents against other companies aggressively. I'm on the side of the company that isn't using software patents to sue other companies, which in this case is Google. This isn't nearly as complicated as you are making it out to be.

False. Google uses parents aggressively through its wholly owned subsidiary, Motorola.

Wrong on all accounts. They use patents defensively against those that are suing to shut down Android.

By that definition, Apple uses patents defensively against those who are using to shut down iOS.

Wrong. Apple initiated patent lawsuits against Android. Android did not initiate the lawsuits. Do you follow this space?

Look at the history of when the lawsuits are filed, and who filed them.

There is no equivalence.

Google/Motorola initiated a patent suit against Apple's use of push email in Germany. What did that have to do with anything Apple was doing?

I feel like you are not reading the news. Apple was suing every Android maker to prevent touchscreen phone competition.

By "refused to participate in a joint effort to safeguard those patents for all", do you mean that Microsoft offered to buy these patents jointly with Google, in such a way that Microsoft would be able to use them to extort Android manufacturers and Google wouldn't be able to use the patents to help defend them?

Because if so that's some pretty heavy spin you're putting on it.

edit: excerpt from Google's official response, linked elsewhere in this thread (note it was in reference to a different bundle of patents).

" If you think about it, it's obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer. Microsoft's objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners. Making sure that we would be unable to assert these patents to defend Android — and having us pay for the privilege — must have seemed like an ingenious strategy to them. We didn't fall for it.

Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened, forcing Microsoft to sell the patents it bought and demanding that the winning group (Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, EMC) give a license to the open-source community, changes the DoJ said were “necessary to protect competition and innovation in the open source software community.” This only reaffirms our point: Our competitors are waging a patent war on Android and working together to keep us from getting patents that would help balance the scales."

    >note it was in reference to a different bundle of patents

Then it is isn't relevant here. Also, the irony of using an involved party's statement when complaining about "spin" is palpable

Completely agree with you, that's why I think this whole mess is wonderful news. I like the nuclear war analogy here, and I hope that both sides will hurt each other so bad in this little game that at the end they'll sit down somewhere and say: "never again". Then they'll start doing what all of us expect the Tech Giants to do: start pouring money on patent laws policies to put trolls out of business. It will have taken a lot of wasted money and harm to each of them to reach that point, but better late than never, eh.

> then knowingly violated those patents

I can't compile hello world in any language without violating dozens of patents.

Which ones?

That's a big part of the problem, actually. If it was clear which patents they were then they could be specifically avoided. The problem is that there are so many overly broad patents that you can't even know which ones you're infringing until the troll jumps out from under the bridge.

But to answer the question in broad terms, the compiler you're using and the operating system you're running it on will probably infringe something or other in its rather comprehensive standard library or system call implementation, which you've incorporated when you type the equivalent of "#include <stdio.h>" in your Hello World program.

I'm sure Google didn't try to buy the patents to do this with them.

Give that they are the ones with a search monopoly, that's clearly true, but it doesn't say anything about their ethics.

Google was invited to join in the group with Apple, Microsoft and the others? Any links or anything I could check out? I tried googling but there's too much about this particular case to find anything useful! I was under the impression that they were never offered to join in.

Thanks!

There are no "good guys" in this conflict, no sides any of us should be on.

You're mistaken. It is we, the public, that are the good guys. Whatever Google's motives are does not matter. What matters is the outcome and how that impacts the public and the future of innovation.

Right now, it is pretty clear to many observers that the system is broken and having a very negative impact on innovation, competition and the public. The legal and R&D costs associated with patents are inevitably passed on to the public.

From the perspective of "trivial software patents are bullshit", violating software patents does not in any way make you a "bad guy".

Furthermore, google is actively lobbying to weaken software patents.

I would say, then, that in this case, they are certainly my ally, or at the very least, the enemy of my enemy.

I agree that this will hurt Apple's reputation, but, in my opinion, this should already have been "priced in". Apple never really repented after the "look-and-feel" lawsuit. Many hackers just didn't notice because they were an underdog climbing out of a deep hole for so long.

Now that the worm has turned and Apple has their do-over we can see that they never changed their spots. They just improved their legal tactics.

"The Rockstar consortium is an organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony."

Not all members are equal parties and it's not hard to feel that the leaders in this group are Microsoft and Apple. They have the means, the motivation, and both have track record.

Blackberry are in no place to do this, Ericsson haven't been of this nature, and whilst Sony could they have enough distraction going on at the moment to focus their attention elsewhere. I also feel those three would gleefully follow Apple and Microsoft.

It looks and feels, from the viewpoint of a lay observer, to be an Apple and Microsoft effort.

Time will tell though, it may take a while but everything comes out in court, the good stuff and the bad.

It's worth noting that although the lawsuits were issued yesterday, the consortium was finalised in June 2011 when all of the group members were strongly involved in non-Android smartphones.

It's not unreasonable to suspect that this action was planned as part of that formation and priced into the bid.

I'm not sure about Sony. I can't remember any non-Android smartphones they had in 2011.

Presumably Sony are hoping to be the last Android manufacturer, because all of the rest have been sued?

Sony (and Nokia) have been patent trolling under the name MobileMedia for a while:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/jury-finds-iphone...

The CEO of the firm they set up to do the trolling is also the CEO of MPEG-LA that collects patent fees for H.264 and a few other royalty bearing standards.

I find it odd that everybody is speculating Apple mostly and Microsoft when the article specifically states Rockstar is acting independently in this regardless of any former promises made by the consortium companies. But yes, time will tell.

Follow the money.

Not just the investment, but where the spoils of war will go afterwards and who the winners will be.

Apple "priced in" their legal retainers into the impressive profitability of their products.

Just like Apple's ridiculous $1 billion patent lawsuit against Samsung hurt their reputation? Oh wait, it didn't hurt them at all and it's already forgotten. You are giving the tech community way too much credit if you think they really care about this, and the average person won't even notice.

I think it might be a bit early to draw that conclusion. Whether by coincidence or not, it did coincide with Samsung's rise as the biggest rival to iPhones. Granted other Android manufacturers around the same time started to compete head to head as well, I think that even if that case isn't at the forefront of people's mind, it was a brick in the wall.

It's important to remember how unassailable Apple felt before that. Any kink in their armor hurts them, and that was a big one.

I know two non-techies who bought Samsung Android phones when they upgraded rather than iPhones because of that trial. Not a huge effect and obviously anecdotal, but these things do have an effect.

However, I think developers are likely to stay with Apple as they have solidly adopted their products over the last 7-8 years, and weirdly many people seem willing to forgive a large company anything, just because they happen to have purchased some of their product range.

Well I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to find people that won't buy anything from Samsung after that trial either...

"weirdly many people seem willing to forgive a large company anything, just because they happen to have purchased some of their product range."

Applies equally to Apple and Samsung... welcome to fanboydom.

I don't think this is how things will turn out.

People will like Google less and less because you can't do anything without them and there is no alternative, and what will happen to Google is exactly what happened to Microsoft: antitrust lawsuits, patents lawsuits, etc.

This is not because Google is "evil" or anything, just because they are #1 and therefore are target for more and more people.

In the end, this is all for the better because this may help alternatives to emerge as it helped alternatives to Microsoft to emerge.

But Android is the alternative to the Apple hegemony. You can't get an iPhone for $50 in Asia, but you can get a $50 Android phone.

No, iphone and windows phone are the alternatives to google's > 80% hegemony at this point. Still, google is a far nicer market owner than apple or microsoft ever were. They don't abuse their dominant position, which is why their competitors are forced to take private legal action instead of running to the government for help.

Google doesn't have >80% of the market. Android has >80% of the market. Google does not control Android. Yes, Google provides a lot of services for Android users, but Android works fine without Google services.

Everybody is so quick to forget about "Android fragmentation," but fragmentation is a clear indicator of Google's lack of control over Android.

So who picks up the slack if Google developers aren't contributing to Android?

You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience.

In reality almost everyone nicely complies with google's compatibility definition, constraining how far they can fork android, just in order to get access to google's closed source apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Google%20Inc...

Only amazon has managed to make a viable usable fork of android that complies with legal requirements, and the amount of work it took them was prohibitive for anyone not on amazon's scale.

Android as OS is open source, but android as experience is very much under google's control. Like i said though, they have been quite benevolent, because they view android as a vehicle to get you to use the google services.

Depends where you live, i'm pretty sure Google's Chinese services are pretty dire compared to the native alternatives.

> You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience.

Not to hundreds of millions of Chinese Android users.

Same in Russia, where Yandex presents a very viable alternative. Their maps, for instance, are better.

well at least you can say android can and has been forked, you can't say the same about iOS or windows..

> In reality almost everyone nicely complies with google's compatibility definition, constraining how far they can fork android, just in order to get access to google's closed source apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Google%20Inc....

The point of the CCD [1] is to ensure that new devices can run a test suite that ensures they work correctly with Android as it currently exists. CCD isn't just about Google Play and Google Play Services, its about the fundamental functioning of the OS.

[1]: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

Isn't it more like "they can't abuse their dominant position" because Samsung etc. can just fork Android in that case and go away. Yes, it will take resources but Amazon has already done it.

I don't think they are more responsible, they have to be this way. When given dominance, they also use it to get you signed up for other products. See Google+, it is not is search, you need it on Youtube and what not!

Amazon was in a unique position to do it. MS or Apple could do it too but they have their own backyard to tend.

Samsung is a hardware giant. They suck at software and can barely handle a thin customization layer on top of Android and anyway they seem more interested in flooding the market with hardware rather than consolidating.

The other Android players are not making any money, building the backend infrastructure to compete with Google is a billion dollar type project.

It also takes time to determine what is abuse and what is not. Especially in behind doors deals. The case of Google threatening licensee to lose their license if they ship unrelated product Google does not like would definitively be abuse plain and simple. But as most things people discuss on the net, that's just based on rumors, who knows the real dynamic at play.

Apple and Microsoft and joining to sue Google with FRAND patents, that they bought from other companies, and people will like Google less because of it?

Is that how the patent system is supposed to work, or are Apple and Microsoft abusing it to the extreme?

These aren't frand patents. And even if they are found to be, they are still entitled to a /reasonable/ license fee.

I'm now ashamed I ever worked at Microsoft and I'm assuming a lot of devs there will feel the same way :(

Is working at Google and Apple any different?

Um... yes?

Shorter HN:

Googlrola abuses patent system: no big deal

Apple abuses patent system: they are now the enemy

Yet hackers will continue to vote with their wallets, buying Apple products and perpetuating this continuous pattern of bad behavior.

Of course the pragmatic alternative, Microsoft, isn't exactly know for being the good behaving kid on the block either.

And mucking around with home-built PCs running some Linux distro doesn't have the same appeal to me it had 10 years ago.

So what to do?

  > mucking around with home-built PCs running some Linux distro

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

> And mucking around with home-built PCs running some Linux distro doesn't have the same appeal to me it had 10 years ago.

We're not ten years ago, you don't need to do that anymore. There are enough reputable vendors selling PCs with excellent Linux support.

I choose to not care so much, based on who the parties are.

There is more to life than whether one giant company is suing another giant company. I would care a lot more if Apple used their patents to squash small competitors, but they don't. This is purely a clash of the titans.

I use Apple computers because they are the best computers for me to get my job done. Patent suits don't change that. I use Google search for the same reason.

but say I want a smartphone, what is my alternative?

google, who works harder and harder to sell everything I do to advertisers (now you can't even rate apps w/o a google+ account), and who just shut off transmitting search data so they can screw site owners for more $?

microsoft, who is a party to this and actively worked to make the internet worse (and succeeded!) for the better part of a decade?

or apple, who at least isn't run by and for advertisers?

all choices suck

Marketing is a natural occurrence. All companies/people/groups market themselves in one way or another. Your not exactly forced to buy into whats being sold. Why is everyone so stuck on google core being a marketing company?

I think its the least of evil profit motivations since hell I might actually be interested in what google has figured out I may want... Vs being locked out without any options and force into dealing with a certain player.

For me the issue isn't marketing itself. It's that in order to show me personalized ads they need to know a lot about me. They have to compile and store a personal profile that can be stolen or subpoenaed by anyone who is sufficiently capable or powerful.

But I agree that there is a dilemma. The alternative to ad based business models is to make a payment via a credit card, which identifies me even more directly and is subject to even tighter regulation and potential censorship. In the extreme, I have to deal with companies like Apple enforcing their broken moral standards on my phone.

There are no simple solutions to this I'm afraid.

Microsoft and Apple make money by selling actual products. Google makes money by selling you.

Google isn't selling me. They're selling a service based on information they get from me in exchange for a product they make for me. It's just another form of payment. Every form of payment comes with it's own benefits and drawbacks.

(I didn't downvote you by the way. I never downvote)

Except it's not as simple as "don't use GMail and you're safe" - they have their finger in every pie via their ad system. You can very, very easily opt-out of using MS or Apple products.

Do you really think Microsoft and Apple don't sell "you" too?

They have (admittedly less-successful) advertising businesses that they show no signs of abandoning, they boast about the number of accounts and/or the number of credit cards they have for developers and partners and so on.

To a first approximation "everybody" wants your money and "everybody" sells you. Generalizations don't work. You need to look at the bundles that come with products/ecosystems on a case-by-case basis.

I am quite happy to be served personalized ads from Google and even Facebook. I regularly get ads for services that interest me greatly, like digitalocean, heroku, cloud66, newrelic, edx, codeschool, teamtreehouse. Thanks, personalized ads!

Buy an Android, and if you are worried about Google's targeted ads, then don't link it to a Google account. Or put Ubuntu or FirefoxOS on there.

There may not be a perfect option out there with no tradeoffs, but there are options that are far far worse for the industry than others.

Firefox OS and Jolla.

Firefox OS + ZTE Open: cheap and good battery life (70€ / $80, 2-7 days).

Right now Firefox OS on ZTE Open is a work in progress. It has tremendous potential, but in case you get one, don't expect the level of polish you get with the popular alternatives. But it's improving and it will get there and if you can, buying one is a good way to support its development.

I would buy Jolla right away if it had a hw keyboard. There may be a FOS device worth buying but I havent seen one yet. I am way overdue for a replacement, and sadly, I need to agree with your parent - there is nothing interesting on the market at the moment.

People bitch and moan about Gmail serving ads and yet people bitched and moaned when Google Apps dropped the free version, even though with paid accounts you don't get ads anymore and the pricing of Google Apps is insanely good compared to the alternatives.

Android, Chrome, Chrome OS are open-source. Amazon already forked Android. Android is also the only popular mobile operating-system that allows installation of software from third-party sources. And if you use Android, you don't have to buy into Google's services.

In my eyes it doesn't matter that Apple isn't being "run for" advertisers. Because Apple sure as hell isn't operating their business in my interests either.

Chrome is not in fact open-source.

Chromium is open-source, but lacks various functionality Chrome has (e.g. the PDF reader, and soon I expect playback of Netflix videos, since I doubt Google will be open-sourcing their CDM). Chromium is also supporting Flash via NPAPI, not Pepper, which Google is planning to kill off.

ChromeOS has similar issues with Netflix, at the very least: the open-source parts can't do it.

Well, that's true. But then when companies like Mozilla try to fight proprietary stuff like H.264 or DRM (because duh, these are incompatible with open-source), people start bitching about it. And that's why we can't have nice things, because some people suck.

You forgot about the Google Talk plugin, which was something that was upsetting me personally, but hopefully they'll fulfil their promise of moving to Web RTC.

Note - I'm actually a Firefox user, because when Mozilla wants to improve the state of PDF rendering, they do it in such a way that everybody benefits, i.e. https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js

Microsoft earns $10 per android handset, they make more from android than windows phone. So regardless of whether you buy windows phone or android you're paying microsoft. Apple and microsoft have a long-standing patent sharing arrangement, so they don't pay each other money. So, you can pay apple or pay microsoft to get access to a smartphone. Given the amount of patents they hold, any smartphone os is either flying under their radar or in their sights. If firefox or ubuntu succeed with their phone OS, they will get sued.

The problem is not these companies, it's the regulatory climate. Until we defang technology patents it will remain like this, with only a few tollkeepers who own the market.

The problem is not these companies, it's the regulatory climate.

But why is the regulatory climate so problematic? I guess it's because our current form of democracy is highly inefficient - politicians have much stronger incentives to do what rich entities represented by lobbying firms want than they have incentives to do what is beneficial for the general public. Bad laws are basically written by those who benefit from them and that's why it takes so long to change the bad laws and that's why the new laws are always half-assed and full of loopholes. This is not going to change any time soon.

The more I think about it the more I think that government regulation is neither fair nor efficient and I wonder... how difficult would it be to partially escape government regulation by creating a distributed company? Think of Linux on Bitcoins. No single entity to sue. Some kind of self-regulation based on millions of stakeholders carefully disconnected from their real-world identities voting with their money or something.

This is just a very vague idea - I am not sure it could solve anything and I am pretty sure that it would create a lot of new problems but I feel it is useful to think about this stuff because we cannot expect governments to efficiently regulate society in a way beneficial to general public. Democracy needs to improve in order to keep up.

Microsoft earns $10 per android handset

No they don't. This is one of those factoids that gains truth through repeated assertion, but it simply isn't true.

but say I want a smartphone, what is my alternative?

I agree all mainstream choices suck, but there are alternatives: FirefoxOS or Ubuntu Phone

Surely open-source handset OSes are just as vulnerable to patent attacks? If Firefox OS were to take off, it would immediately become a target for exactly the same sort of lawsuit.

The question was not how do I buy a smartphone which is invulnerable to patent attacks/lawsuits, but how can I avoid supporting this kind of predatory corporate behaviour (Apple, Google, MS were listed as examples).

I agree open source handsets (as far as they can be) would also be vulnerable to software patent attacks, but we could at least support companies which don't engage in such attacks.

How did Microsoft make the Internet worse?

For example by not supporting standards like svg and png as long as they had the market leadership?

On the other hand they ensured that every Windows user had free access to a high quality browser (at least, at the time IE6 came out).

Well yes, I think with 'decade' GP was referring to everything from the advent of firefox to the introduction of IE9, which might not actually amount to a decade (didn't check). Within this timeframe MS was severely lagging behind in standards, thus requiring everyone to choose between

* support only IE (which they were hoping for of course)

* introduce browser conditionals everywhere

* only use a very limited feature set as the lowest common denominator (leading to table layouts everywhere, using jpg instead of png, never even think about transparency)

This did IMO slow down the development of the web as a whole for quite some time.

By strongly pushing a browser that was rarely updated meaningfully and featured very slow JavaScript and buggy, incomplete CSS support. This held back the viability of web apps for years after they would have otherwise been viable.

Mozilla is working on your alternative with Firefox OS. We're still very early but there is no doubt in my mind that Firefox OS is going to do to the smartphone market what Firefox did for the browser market, get vendors fighting over users and developers by improving the user and developer experiences and opportunities.

We need a real competitor here with a completely different kind of agenda and, IMO, Mozilla is the competitor to do that. (Yes, I work for Mozilla on Firefox OS, but I'm not just spouting off. It took us a while to get from Mozilla in 1998 to Firefox but we did it and it fixed the browser market. We're getting into phones for the same reason and you can help us fix this market by joining the Mozilla Firefox OS project.)

That may be true, but it would be misplaced. I think we should channel our outrage into changing the screwy US patent system so this kind of stuff would become moot.

Why can't we do both? Let the companies know we don't accept their behaviour, and try to change the patent system. The patent system won't change overnight, but the companies can drop the suit in an instance.

yes. definitely agree..no one company (including Google) is truly altruistic here..as I said below if anyone we should be rooting for fireOS and not Android/Google.

Because until the entities, likely to exert huge lobbying pressure on legislation, are brought to heel, changing those laws will prove very difficult indeed.

No. Voting with your wallet works. We need to start treating companies like they are members of our society - if one of your neighbours turns out to be a jackass to your other neighbours, do you tolerate him just because, hey, he just wants to make a profit?

Fuck that. Companies must learn to play nice and it's insane to treat them differently than we treat people. It's a huge double standard and if you expect the system will change without us punishing companies with our wallet, then you've got another thing coming.

Well the problem with boycot is you will find some reason to boycot one of the big players every week. When everyone does their ranking at their yearly smartphone purchase, the whole boycot becomes intransparent.

If there were an association of smartphone vendors, a club of app developers or a federation of tech bloggers, saying "Don't do this or we'll stop to support you", this would work out very differently.

You can meet even large corporations at eye level. Just find their vulnerable points, it's easy.

Well, true, but we also have to adjust our expectations - the patents system will never go away or be fixed until these big companies stop supporting it.

When Apple released iOS as a really locked-down operating-system, I complained about it, but on the other hand it was nothing major. Heck, it was their toy, their hard work, their platform, when other people or companies want something different, more open, more tuned to certain niches, or whatever, then they should work in that direction by building their own operating-system, their own platform, right?

But patents lawsuits are evil, because it prevents alternatives from emerging. It's a really bad loophole that works against healthy competition. Say, Firefox OS takes off, do you think it will be spared?

So that's why right now I'm angry and I think we really should not tolerate patents trolling. It's one thing to acquire patents for defensive purposes. It's an entirely different thing when such a company becomes offensive (and don't think I have forgotten about Google not stopping the Motorola's lawsuits as soon as they bought them).

Apple has been hostile to hackers for my entire lifetime. From suing makers of mac-compatible hardware, through refusing to license their iPod DRM to other sellers, and the unprecedented closedness of the iPhone walled garden, to the ludicrous design patent lawsuit against Samsung. They've always been the enemy of anyone who was paying attention, and this latest move is no worse than what they've done before. I'd like to believe the tech community will turn against them, but the history just doesn't support this.

"ludicrous design patent lawsuit against Samsung"

You mean the one Google's lawyers told Samsung infringed on Apple's design? Right, ludicrous.

Lawyers just tell you whether a law applies to you, not whether it's ludicrous.

Google's continued abuse of the FRAND process has done nothing to hurt their image in the eyes of most. And likewise this suit won't affect Apple or Microsoft's reputation one iota.

Can you expand on this? I'm not sure what you mean about Google's abuse of FRAND.

That's because most hackers perceive Google's FRAND suits as a justified defensive counter-attack brought on by Microsoft and Apple's patent abuse, so they are given slack.

The truth is actually cognitive dissonance. No matter what you say none of the parties deserve slack of any kind.

You can be anti-gun person, yet if someone invades your home with a gun, I'd cut them slack of they shot them.

You can be for nuclear disarmament, yet still support mutually assured destruction until that happens. The point of Google using patents is that unless they apply pain to Apple and Microsoft, they will continue abusing the system. The only leverage to bring about reform or a peace treaty is to fight back.

Yeah, I don't like Google using patents to sue people, but let's not kid ourselves why they are doing it, or who fired the first patent attacks.

You're not getting away with that. It's not OK to say one thing and do another. It called hypocracy and it's low and one thing that Google seem to be doing a lot of late. Here's the thing; Microsoft and Apple aren't abusing the system. They are playing exactly by its rules. Lodsys are a good example of an actor abusing the system. Is the system a bad one? That's a different debate.

Furthermore the "they started" it argument is ridiculous. It doesn't matter who started it! It's also factually incorrect.

In an Iterated Prison's Dilemma, Tit-for-Tat and Win-Stay-Lose-Change are both viable winning strategies from a game theory point of view. If your competitor is playing one of those strategies, and you aren't, then not responding to an attack merely guarantees continued loses.

In plain English, you are willing to forgive Google their transgressions because you feel that they are being attacked and you like/work for them, but not Apple/Microsoft for spurious reasons; this being the cognitive dissonance I alluded to earlier. When it is pointed out that this is not the actual case, you claim that that they are in fact being attacked and it's not fair, so they have to resort to the same tactics, which is forgivable because you like/work for Google. Google are as bad as Apple and/or Microsoft.

By dragging out negotiations for years and then trying to use the courts to establish a ceiling (but not a floor) on FRAND licensing costs, I think Apple has done more to undermine FRAND. They've developed a "heads I win, tails you lose" playbook.

Remember, Motorola has been talking to Apple about licensing their FRAND patents since 2007. Over six years later, what do they have to show for it? I bet plenty of companies will start thinking that FRAND and royalty-free aren't all that different.

It's disgusting to me. I'm a bit of an Apple fan boy and i have a ton invested in the iOS/Mac ecosystem but this really pushes me further away. I'm really close to switching to Android and linux because of issues like this. Sure there are worse things a company can do but I have a real issue supporting a company that behaves in this manner.

Let's do it. I'm in the same boat... long-time OS X user and iOS dev. But I am not putting up with it anymore. OS X has been enough of a headache for development that I am ready to move to Linux for that alone, but this is just icing on the cake. They are actively pushing me away.

I love the way it was a group of 6 or 7 tech companies who bought the patents but you choose to single out apple. Was there a reason for this in particular ?

I love how people are so defensive about this patent suit because Apple is behind it. Any other tech company doing this without Apple would have been mercilessly attacked.

I'm not too sure. People have very short memories and attention spans. Companies are callous one day and in a few weeks most people cannot even remember about it.

Interesting that people can have such a different view on the same information. Since the first iPhone came on the market I always read articles that Apple would be alienating the hacker community. It also makes sense because they are mostly bought by hipsters who don't know as much about tech as they want to make others believe. I have no experience with Apple products, though. Therefore my information might be completely wrong.

This is a clash of the titans. I think most techies will react according to which companies they are fans of.

If Apple were deploying their patents to squash small competitors or startups, I'd feel differently, but they're not.

If you make software, you are likely in the exact same position as Google. There's no reason Apple couldn't sue you with the same broad patents. And while it's obviously unlikely that they will sue you, the fact that they did sue their competitor over these over-broad patents should deeply trouble you.

I doubt it will do any such thing to either company. The article states that Rockstar is acting independently and regardless of any promises that the consortium made (which includes Apple and Microsoft) that they are moving forward.

It was enough to seal my intentions to never buy an apple product again. And FTR I have a mac book air, and 2 ipods (touch, music) ... Never again.

With all due respect, they are already suffering as if they had done this, so I think they have little to lose by actually doing it.

Google threw the gauntlet when it took a billion dollar investment into a mobile OS and gave it away for free.

these dumping tactics ruined the market for licensed OS like Windows.

did anybody truly believe the rest of the software industry would take it up the ass from google without fighting back?

bing, apple maps, patents, etc - all part of the war. how much money does MS already make off android due to lost patents?

blaming a single player in this game is ridiculous. schmidt in apple's board was the ultimate insult.

It's called strategy, and from Google's standpoint, it's a brilliant one. Seems to be working very well for them, while keeping competitors at bay.

With regards to Schmidt on Apple's board, you're not the first to mention it here, as I responded to another comment, Apple was really dumb in this instance. Google bought Android in 2005, Apple brought Eric Schmidt onto it's board in 2006. So, either Apple was hoping to get some insight into what Google was doing with Android and hoping Schmidt might slip up, or they just shouldn't have brought an advisor on who was the CEO of a potentially major competitor. I was always amazed that that happened. Google Buys Android - 2005 http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-a.... Schmidt Joins Board - 2006 http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric....

I'm sure Steve Jobs was aware of that potential conflict -- he was pretty shrewd after all :). It's was probably along the lines of "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Plus he wanted the iPhone maps at launch, and probably a few other things which he could only get from Google. Steve had been around the block, and screwed many people over himself. His outrage was calculated.

Links don't work... :-(

Apple threw down the gauntlet when they made it clear that their devices would be a walled garden where they would have absolute control over what apps you can run.

Prior to Android, your choice was between your carrier overlords and the Apple overlord. Not only was that limiting for users, it was a vulnerability for Google business-wise to have their direct competitors as gatekeepers between their services and their users.

But with Android, the choice is between your OEM overlords and the Google anti-fragmentation efforts overlord. Yes; you can flash your own ROM and switch to CyanogenMod or Replicant. That is the freedom you are guaranteed in Android. But how many people actually take advantage of it?

I take advantage of it. I love it that I can take advantage of it. I also helped about 5 other people take advantage of it, by installing Cyanogen on their obsolete phones (I'm not from the US and down here people keep their phones longer than they should).

What you say is a classic logical fallacy. Do you repair your own car? Personally, I like having the freedom of doing repairs on my car outside of "authorized" repair shops, even though I know nothing about cars.

>But how many people actually take advantage of it?

Who gives a shit. The fact that the option exists means the "android locks you into google" argument is nonsense.

It means nothing of the sort. Regular consumers are absolutely locked into google by this, and as a consequence, so are developers.

The fact that a few hobbyists can back their phones does nothing to change this.

You forget about "Unknown sources". In practical terms that is substantial freedom (see: Amazon and other app stores) that makes Android phones qualitatively different from phones with an overload (OEM, carrier or otherwise).

>>how many people take advantage of it?

The Chinese do.

How dare they! And how dare Linus Torvalds "dump" Linux on the industry, or Mozilla "dump" Firefox. They should be required by law to charge high fees!

comparing Linux to Android is ridiculous. Linus released and built it from genuine, ulterior motives. google wanted a platform to display ads.

> a platform to display ads.

Wow, you used just a single line to describe an entire, complex, (possibly superior) open source operating system?

I'm done reading comments here.

No, Google wanted a platform that prevented Microsoft and Apple from completely controlling and owning the onramp to the mobile web with two dominant proprietary operating systems that prevent third party software installs without approval, a huge huge reduction in freedom even comparing it to Microsoft in the 90s. And in that regard, they did the world a favor, regardless of whether it was selfish or altruistic.

It doesn't matter how you try to downplay it. Google shipped a huge useful chunk of kernel changes to Linux, plus a mature, ready, out of the box piece of open source that anyone can fork and use as a foundation to make another free OS, like FireOS, Tizen, FirefoxOS, etc, and they successfully got a platform deployed on a huge number of devices around the world that don't completely lock down who can install what.

Even if they had completely evil motives, good has come out of it. If you're a rabid fanboy who wanted Steve Job's platform to have a monopoly on mobile, it's depressing for you, but it's liberating for everyone else.

Not to go all meme on you, but let me FTFY:

Google wanted a platform that prevented Microsoft and Apple from beating them to control of the next big advertising platform.

Nothing more, nothing less. "Open" has been shown conclusively to take a back seat to monetization. It is as much a marketing tactic (in the sense that it's useful to promote the platform, but can and will be discarded, with spin to explain why, when its usefulness decreases) as anything in Microsoft's or Apple's ads.

And it doesn't matter how you try to downplay it: companies other than Google have, whether they intended to or not, accomplished undeniable good through things they've shipped. Apple, for example, has contributed monumentally to LLVM, which is a large and useful public good. But it did so more or less explicitly to screw the GPL.

So, faced with all the major players doing this in some form or another, how, precisely, do you plan to rank them relative to each other in order to discern which one is "good" or at least "least bad"?

I give Apple props for for their contributions to LLVM or WebKit (and OpenCL, and Darwin), no one is saying they haven't done any good things for the ecosystem, but that doesn't erase the egregious damage that the iOS T&C impose on the ability of people to do what they want with their devices. To me, that ranks them lower. That, and the aggressive "thermonuclear" offensive litigiousness they have, not just on patents, but even going back to the Look-and-Feel lawsuit of the 90s. I'm an Apple fan boy when it comes to their hardware, I've owned every Apple device, I own an iPhone 5S, the A7 is remarkable. I love the hardware, I hate the closed nature of the platform, the fact that I need to jailbreak my device to have ownership of it.

For the average consumer, control of "the next big advertising platform" is a meaningless abstraction, it matters to people in the ad buying business, not consumers who generally don't like ads in the first place, and tolerate them mostly to get free stuff. And how does Android "control" mobile web advertising anyway?

But for the average consumer, telling them they can't install App X on their device that they spent $300 on because Apple censors don't like it is much more direct.

No company is perfect, but I can say as a Googler, your cynicism is basically wrong, that open source isn't just a marketing tactic, but that the rank and file at the lowest levels of the company, culturally believe in it. Google has disappointed in the past on the degree of openness, and there is much to improve, so I am not uncritical of it in this regard, but if you were to query the rank of file of Microsoft and Apple with regards to open source, and Googlers, you'd find a lot more zealots at Google.

The world isn't black and white, it's shades of gray, and some are just a much brighter shade of gray than others.

I'd go so far as to say that Windows RT is more open than iOS-with Windows RT you have built in Windows Explorer, and command line access. And a non crippled browser (desktop IE 11 vs mobile Safari).

Given the context of this discussion, it must be mentioned that LLVM license do not include a patent grant. Apple has patented several frontends of LLVM, and is likely to have several patents on the core parts of LLVM. Apple could do a oracle at any time.

"and is likely to have several patents on the core parts of LLVM"

While I work for Google, and was involved in the CPTN and Rockstar stuff (and thus can't comment on this article at all, though I wish I could), i can actually point out that this statement is not right.

First, companies that wish to contribute to LLVM are asked to non-assert patents involved in their contributions. This is covered in the dev policy, and has been for a long time. Their are non-assertions/grants on file for a number of companies now.

As for whether Apple owns any patents on LLVM core, Chris Lattner himself told me Apple held none, which is why they had not filed a non-assertion.

Apple may or may not hold patents on LLVM code that is not "in tree" (so yes, they may have non-public frontends or backends they own patents on), and I never specifically asked about the clang frontend, but I trust Chris enough to know that if there was in-project code, be it clang or core or whatever, he would have followed the dev policy and Apple would have non-asserted them.

While thats nice and all, Apple has made no binding or even public statement to that fact. They also have at least one patent which mention LLVM by name (Converting javascript into a device-independent representation), even if that "just" is a frontend.

There is simply nothing that prevents apple from using patents against LLVM users. We can only hope that none of their numerous vaguely written patents cover any technology used by LLVM or any of their frontends like Clang.

I wouldn't rush to that analogy. Microsoft dumped IE and we mostly agree that that was kind of dirty. From another angle, Google is trying to leverage one monopoly in order to break into another, and they did it by poorly copying the iPhone.

There aren't really any "good guys" in this picture, but I at least give Microsoft a nod for trying (and failing) to do something different.

There really are good guys and bad guys here. Lumping them all together is false equivalence.

Google isn't "dumping" by giving Android away for free. They have a different business model, and it makes money. It also keeps the competition sharp. Nothing wrong with that.

What's shitty is that Microsoft and Apple are doing everything in their power to delay and destroy innovation for their own benefit.

Google's actions have accelerated innovation. Android has been good for customers, good for Google, and good for the industry.

yes, Google/Motorola suing Microsoft/Apple for standards essentials patent was to foster innovation..LOL

Innovation happens when people can build on the efforts of others, and has been so for the entire history of man. Any system that puts up road blocks to sharing and propagating ideas inhibits innovation.

The justification for patents in software as providing shelter for inventors to work on their inventions while releasing the details of how they work is complete and utter bullshit and has been so for a long time. First, the way people share inventions in software is by publishing papers in journals, at conferences, or by shipping software, so that their peers benefit. No I know of has ever used a patent database or patent pending database as a search engine for knowledge sharing.

Secondly, software is shipped and revised so fast, and the time for patents to be granted, and successfully litigated in court, is so long, that more than enough time already exists for inventors to recoup their investments. It could take a decade or more to go from software patent application to successful litigation, so the idea that the patent protection is needed to shelter you while your startup executes is nonsense.

As far as I can tell, software patents serve one purpose and one purpose only: to inhibit and restrict competitors, or to shakedown successful companies with deep pockets.

These were defensive lawsuits and you know it. When you're attacked by patent trolls, the only option is to counter sue with a similar patent troll attack. Think mutual assured destruction nuclear style. But I'm sure you're aware of that and just being disingenuous to make your point.

> they did it by poorly copying the iPhone.

Sigh.

IE wasn't released unbundled from the OS as source for anyone to fork, so it's a false equivalence. If IE was released like Firefox/Mozilla was, no one would be complaining.

It was bundled, not dumped. But the bundle had more impact than an independent "dump". So, by substance if not by form, it is a comparable analogy. MS did not want to get shut out of desktop browser. Goog did not want to get shut out of mobile browser. They were both playing the same move strategically. Give away that which my enemey needs to sell to survive....

MS could not get shut out of the browser desktop market, period, there was zero chance of that ever happening, since they controlled the platform, >90% of the market. iOS is a locked down ecosystem, if iOS wanted to block Google ads, or change the default search engine, they could do it and Google would have no recourse. Big difference.

Note, Android allows Firefox, even as a default browser for opening links. That's impossible on iOS and on Windows RT.

I don't have any problem with people shipping free software, even Microsoft. The issue is whether consumers and developers have choices.

Microsoft didn't get in trouble for "dumping" IE. They got in trouble for trying to make IE an integral component of Windows which would have made other browsers unusable or unnecessarily cumbersome to use.

They are really evil people. Probably as evil as those who created OSes, languages, browsers, protocols, libraries, compilers, IDEs - and gave them away for free. If not for the "rest of the software industry", everything would be in ruins now due to evil commies that dare to give away software.

Exactly which part of investing billions of dollars acquiring and developing a technology and giving it away for free, lowering the price of consumer devices, needs to be prevented?

If they've discovered a business model that enables them to invest, develop and freely distribute their own tech to end-users benefits, they should encouraged, not a victim of established cartels using their cash war-chest to buy B.S. patents that they can use as anti-competitive weapons to legally attack their competitors instead of competing against them technically in the market-place.

ALL OF IT!

Seriously, who wants cheap superior products? Not me, that's who.

On a serious note, I hope those patents, get downturned and that 4.5 billion investment goes sour for all involved.

>> Exactly which part of investing billions of dollars acquiring and developing a technology and giving it away for free, lowering the price of consumer devices, needs to be prevented?

The part where it ends up eliminating competition and results in a mono culture?

It only results in a Mono culture if others are unable to compete.

Regardless, the world is better off with a mono culture around an OSS project than a walled-garden keeping everyone hostage to their whims.

> Google threw the gauntlet when it took a billion dollar investment into a mobile OS and gave it away for free.

Seeing as how MS sold Xbox consoles at a loss so they could sell expensive games, I doubt MS has much of a leg to stand on with this claim. Apparently, the Xbox One is the first Xbox to be sold at a profit or break-even from day one; this was such a bold move that Forbes devoted a whole column to it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/06/microsoft...

(Other articles indicate that most consoles are sold at a loss. I'm picking on MS because it was mentioned in the article as a party to this suit.)

> hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before

They're not the ones suing Google. Rockstar's a separate entity with its own corp leadership that has incentives to find ways to recoup their investment.

>Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers.

Google and their monopolistic practices and their anti-competition ploys is what has alienated more hackers than Apple ever will.

>Now in my mind they are both the enemy.

The only enemy is Google. They completely disregard intellectual property of others and attack everyone else's revenue streams by offering free products and refuse to pay IP licenses for anything.

Google's the most evil corporation today and it's sad that you, of all people, don't see it. Look closer Paul… they're the big brother everyone warned us about!

> They're not the ones suing Google. Rockstar's a separate entity..

You must be new here to not know the scammy tactics Patent trolls use to hide behind and operate within.

But judging from your newly created account, I'm going with just another standard shill.

> and their monopolistic practices... Is there any of the big hitters in the industry that aren't similarly "monopolistic"?

Agreed. This guy's a shill.

>offering free products

By my definition, that makes Google the good guys.

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