A US judge rules Samsung 'infringed' Apple's auto-complete text patent

I'm confused how Samsung's lawyers failed to show prior art or the fact that it was an obvious development. Autocomplete is on every IDE worth a bean, every T9-based phone... even if iOS was the first to bring it to the touch-screen, that's not exactly a huge leap.

It's not patent trolling because Apple is suing to defend its design as implemented in an actual product.[1] Moreover, I'm going to guess there is more to the patent than just "autocomplete for touch devices" considering Apple is just seeking bans on old Samsung Galaxy devices. Samsung did some very shady ripping off the iPhone in those models, so it wouldn't be surprising if they managed to infringe on Apples' patent even taken very narrowly and specifically.

The usual arguments against patent trolling don't apply to Apple v. Samsung, in my opinion. There is nothing "innovative" about Samsung's early Android devices: they were copy-cat designs that ripped-off Apple in order to get quickly to market and take advantage of the mindshare around Apple's product. That's not a business tactic that should be encouraged.

[1] "Trolling" means to lie in wait for an unsuspecting passer-by, like a bridge troll. There was nothing "unsuspecting" about what Samsung did. This document was damning in the original suit: http://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit-inter....

Apple vs. Samsung is in no way equivalent to patent trolling. Patent trolling is done by companies that don't make anything.

Agreed, at this point why not sue 90% of Android's custom keyboard makers into oblivion? At their core most of them have the same feature as the patent. The Samsung keyboard is barely different from the stock Google Keyboard anyways. Selective patent trolling at its finest.

> Who knows, but last time around they clearly got enough to buy another judge.

Same judge. Still have to convince a jury though.

> specifically on a touch screen device with a soft keyboard

But also rather ambitiously includes the use of autocomplete using a physical keyboard.

> 7. The method of claim 2, wherein the keyboard is a physical keyboard that is not a part of the touch screen display.

Which appears to describe a nearly identical system to the one used on www.google.com and in many other places; also for which examples of prior usage almost certainly exist. At first glance, I don't see anything that would prevent this patent from being asserted against a laptop manufacturer.

Specificity != innovation.

The job of parent trolls is exactly to write specific patents for common sense things or things they didn't invent, and then file some 200 other patents changing one detail. Now you have a broad net of specific patents.

White hat trolls, like Apple, just skip the last step to not be blatant. But they are still just describing common sense. Which is all patents are in the end. You just have subjective rules to draw a line on how common is the common sense being described. And using punctuation while predicting text is not that clever, sorry to break that out to you.

I've read it, claim 1 is, in plain English, ”auto-complete on a touchscreen keyboard". All the extra detail they provide adds on to that, to provide defense in depth, but they're claiming the whole enchilada too, just in case they get away with it, because there's no real downside for them to do something so immoral. (You might think that's inflammatory language, but Apple itself talks about theft of IP, yet they'll happily try to steal this from me and you)

Having auto-complete is not the issue. You have to look at the patent claims, which would describe a specific approach. In this case, it seems to involve Apple's specific approach to auto-complete when paired with a touch screen interface.

At this stage, it is clear that the US patent system is, many times, leveraged to enable court-backed extortion. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Apple's ethics.

Samsung has good lawyers and deep pockets so there must be a lot more to it. Autocomplete is not a novel invention from 2007.

"... Seeing as this is a software complaint, it should be directed at Google, NOT Samsung, who have little/nothing to do with the software on a Nexus device."

It is imported (attached to hardware) by Samsung so why should it not be their legal problem? Now you would hope that the software's provider would indemnify you and/or fight the legal battle on your behalf but that is for Samsung/Google to sort out not the company allegedly being infringed.

Note that I currently have not looked at the patent or this case in detail and I don't yet have a position on validty, infringement or even know if this is Samsung's own software or Google's.

[Edit - Fixed: "so why should be their legal problem."

They aren't, that's the whole point of it. Increase Android's (or any other competition that isn't Apple or Windows Phone) Total Cost of Ownership, by adding layer after layer of frivolous patent licensing.

Now Microsoft and Apple even own their own patent troll (Rockstar Bidco) and they plan (or already have) made plans to split the patents over many shell companies, which can pass the patents along to each other like a merry-go-round, giving each plenty opportunities to sue a company time after time.

Android has a low cost of ownership at the moment which makes it interesting for OEMs. If Apple, Microsoft, Rockstar Bidco or any other trolls keep on attacking Android, the balance will tip over back to Microsoft for the 'accessible' OS that OEMs will want to license (or risk patent attacks of the likes of giant trolls like Rockstar Bidco), opening the door for them to claim all the ground that Android had to cede, and give or take a few years you'd get the same thing as on the Desktop: Apple small marketshare but high profitability, Microsoft high marketshare which compensates less profit margins. But the open mobile development spirit will be dead, as worst case it'll be a minefield with more trolls than innovators, as the former will deplete the market they're in until it's no longer profitable.

Oracle went after the development (break the programming language -> break the platform), Apple went after Samsung (break their biggest manufacturer -> break the platform) Microsoft went after the other OEMs, a bit more stealthy, but they too have attacked Motorola, HTC directly or through subsidiaries. (Patent tax the OEMs -> force them off Android to their own OS)

Anyway, that's how I see it, and it's not getting any prettier anytime soon. Alas, this is all perfectly 'legal'. So I foresee much more lawsuits that'll strangle innovation and limit mobile software development to the 'happy few', unless the USPTO changes (unlikely) or SCOTUS comes up with a solution to this unholy mess.

You've got to pay into the system in order to solidify the dibs - which is what big companies do because they can afford to.

Seeing as they appear to have gone after Samsung, and not Google, whose keyboard also has this functionality (and in fact, an image of the Google keyboard appears to have been used in the ruling, referred to as an image of Samsung's), it seems more like a specific attack on Samsung with anything they can find, rather than them tracking down anyone infringing on that specific patent. There are literally hundreds of keyboards in the Play Store that have this functionality, as well as it being a staple feature of every modern mobile OS platform. I doubt they'll care much about your app TBH. You should be safe enough.