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Apple's Billion Dollar Patent & Other Stories From Patentland
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:55 AM
from the it's-time-to-get-your-learn-on dept.
from the it's-time-to-get-your-learn-on dept.
DECS writes "It has been widely reported that Apple secured a patent worth a "billion dollars." According to a patent attorney involved in the issue, Apple will be "after every phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer to pay royalties." The good news is that all the news reports were based on misleading hyperbole. " Don't let the title fool you; the essay is a good background on patents, the horror stories of some of them but also why companies feel compelled to seek patents as a business "safety" precaution.
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So they did it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So they did it? (Score:5, Funny)
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Press Releases (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Press Releases (Score:4, Insightful)
I would correct Starkweather's last statement to be "That's why patent writing is a dark art, and requires the surrender of all ethical bounds checking".
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In my opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apple has shown some very litigious behavior for many years, I think it's a valid point if a bit overblown (and not really relevant if you RTFA, but heck this _is_ slashdot).
If you think it's not a valid point, why not refute it?
The Simpsons already did it. (Score:3, Funny)
Not getting it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd give it an A for research, but a C- for usefulness.
Also, what is up with the "we're being censored by Digg" bit at the end? Following his Digg links, it seems like everything is working fine. The only thing I found on the subject was this accusation [googlepages.com] claiming that Roughly Drafted is trying to game digg. The only thing I can figure is that some of the new algorithms (which favor users who have gotten stories to the front page) killed the stories from getting to the front page. Whether someone is gaming the system or not, he needs more established users in order to get his stories to the front page.
Re:Not getting it (Score:4, Informative)
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That's probably his stories are very biased pro-Apple. It took me one look at the Roughly Drafted Magazine [roughlydrafted.com] page a few weeks ago when his site hosted the Leopard vs. Vista article (linked to here on /.) to realize that. I didn't even have to read the aforementioned comparison, because I could already tell what it was going to say. The sad part is, I navigated to the RDM page to find Page 1 of the Leopard vs. Vista review thinking that maybe someone
Re:Not getting it (Score:5, Interesting)
The www.roughlydrafteded.com site is censored by Digg, not because stories are ranked poorly, but because the system automatically bars URL submissions from sites that have had a given number of submitted articles buried.
The anonymous poster of your link (ba01162.googlepages) is "Lackawack," a Digg user who announced he would set up a "vigalante army" of fake accounts on Digg and take down any articles that had been submitted from RoughlyDrafted. That was in response to unflattering reviews and general taunting of the Zune.
That resulted in Lackawack getting his user banned on Digg, but he immediately resurfaced as lackawack2 and started buring old articles that had been on the front page. He also attacked everyone digging any RDM articles. He started keeping a McCarthy list of "suspicious Digg users" who digg RDM articles, which is the page you advertise in your post.
Of course, if any of those users were fake, lackawack2 could have just submitted them to Digg and the site would ban them. Since he couldn't do that, he just raised a FUD screen of "sounds suspicious!!!" and kept working to bury old stories until enough articles on Digg had been sequentially banned so that Digg blocked further submissions.
That mechanism is designed to prevent domains from dumping a bunch of junk into Digg, but it is entirely worthless, as plenty of spam anonyblog domains caputure Digg's front page. All the "top 10 lists of stuff you already know" that link to anonymous googlepages full of Adsense, or domains all run by the same group of pay for say astroturfers (some of which have been outted on RDM) happily consume much of Digg's bandwidth.
The thing is, if you need to repress someone else's speech with your own noise, you're probably lying. I try to contribute original, worthwhile writing on subjects to balance the sensationalist and often poorly thought out press release regurgiations that are much easier and profitable to do. If you don't like my stuff, you can ignore it, but presenting a liar's troll campaign as a credable attack is just lame.
The vast majority of comments on RDM articles on Digg were very positive. It is only the miniority of anonymous trolls there who want to censor opinions that fail to hail everythign from Microsoft with effusive kowtowing. Digg just has systems in place that allows that type of abuse. That's making it increasingly less interesting to use Digg.
NewsFactor [roughlydrafted.com] looks interesting.
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it's interesting that they say apple isn't... (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess the author never heard of the "FreeType" library, I believe Apple threatened to sue them for the parts of their text rendering engine, that allowed them to effectively do things like antialiasing. Apple also, as mentioned in the article, tried to sue Microsoft for various violations.
He also never mentioned what the actual patent was about did he?
The article seems to have very little to do with the title, and the evidence is lackluster for the case, at best.
Re:it's interesting that they say apple isn't... (Score:5, Interesting)
The patents Apple has in TrueType also have to do with grid-fitting of curves, and not antialiasing - basically a way to provide hints to adjust control points for curves on limited resolution contexts, effectively so that you don't have to do any antialiasing (which on a B&W device is impossible).
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From the summary: "Don't let the title fool you; the essay is a good background on patents."
Seeabove, and from TOA: "the clear intent of the press release...was really all about the patent attorney,"
But, for the sake of reference, one more click gives you:
"Patent that covers the downloading of music and video with the ability to play music and video on a device."
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Not really. This is how things are done nowadays...especially in the BioTech sector. Its called "Mutually Assured Patent Destruction". Since it isn't really feasible to do anything without infringing on some company's patent, the best defense against lawsuits is a counter lawsuit. In the BioTech area, you will not get any kind of venture capital funding without a portfolio of pat
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Apple
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Kindof like we have computers now. Doesn't mean we have always had them.
apple patent (Score:5, Funny)
OR worse
This is a novel method of representing nothing. In the past, nothing was always something. We propose a special character that represents nothing (the lack of something) to be used in communication purposes. We shall call this character the "zero."
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ObOnion (Score:2)
Submited by Daniel Eran, the spammer (Score:2, Informative)
Check out how he was caught:
http://ba01162.googlepages.com/RoughlyDraftedBUST
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I am laughing hysterically... (Score:2)
Thay Did It! (sic) (Score:3, Funny)
It also doesnt exist in "Prior Art".
My god, they have found 3) ????:
3) Patent the letter "E"
4) Profit!
To clarify the patent (a bit) (Score:2)
"A recent out-of-court settlement between Apple Computer and the owner of the patent that covers the downloading of music and video with the ability to play music and video on a device (technology essential to the iPod and other music and video technology)"
That's pretty major.
Here's the link:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061130/lath054.html?.v =80 [yahoo.com]
Incentive Misconception (Score:3, Insightful)
My favorite is the line in the article about how without patents there would be no incentive for pharmas to, say, develop a new treatment.
Innovation will always be driven by necessity, not by profit. That, and laziness: if I can invent a cotton gin so I don't have to spend hours and hours picking seeds out of cotton by hand, what do I care if I don't have a patent on it? My life is still simpler. What about drugs? If enough people are getting sick, then people will pool together their resources and develop a treatment. Sure, it might not happen in the same way we know things today, but I think that patents are a form of competition, and I'm beginning to think that cooperation is a more powerful force in economics than competition, despite the prevalent thinking.
Eli Whitney cared (Score:5, Insightful)
Eli Whitney, and the U.S Congress certainly cared. Although Whitney was able to patent his cotton gin, the U.S. patent laws at the time (under the first Patent Act of 1790) were so weak he was unable to enforce his patent and nearly went bankrupt. Whitney himself sold few cotton gins as large manufacturers could undercut his prices due to their established distribution chains. The next two patent acts (1810 and 1836) were drafted with Whitney's story in mind and provided greater protection for inventors (Abraham Lincoln's famous "patents are the fuel for the fire of innovation" quote was referring to the 1836 act).
So, out of all the examples you could pick as to why patents don't matter, Whitney's cotton gin isn't one of them (it is probably the worst possible example).
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Ok, so maybe Eli Whitney's case isn't the best to use to support my case; however, my example is that particular device - or something similar - would be invented anyway even without patents. Indeed, your example proves my point there; the cotton gin was invented without the benefit of a good patent system!
I think as long as people have enough resources and free time, innovation will occur just because some people like to innovate.
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Not that this article [wikipedia.org] is authoritative, but I have heard similar claims in the past and wouldn't doubt them a bit. Apparently there are several possible inventors of the cotton gin around the time Eli Whitney got his patent. Most likely several people influenced the design, but Eli Whitney just happened to be the first to submit a patent application
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Exactly, and there's no reason patents are needed. Other industries still make products there is demand for, without ever registering a single patent.
Pharma research costs big money, because 1) paying your PHDs to do the research, and maintaining research facilities, costs quite a lot, and 2) the FDA approval process is costly and takes years.
They spend more on advertising than they do on research. The FDA thing is another government created
Article doesn't identify the patent. Here it is. (Score:5, Informative)
So we have an press release about a supposed Apple patent. The article doesn't identify the patent or give the patent number. Then we have a blog entry about the press release about the supposed patent. That doesn't identify the patent. Then we have the Slashdot article about the blog entry about the press release. Which doesn't identify the patent either. The end result is a clueless Slashdot article.
The actual patent is US# 5,864,868 (Contois, January 26, 1999), "Computer control system and user interface for media playing devices". The main claim is:
1. A computer user interface menu selection process for allowing the user to select music to be played on a music device controlled by a computer, comprising the steps of:
a) simultaneously displaying on a display device, at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs;
b) selecting at least one item from at least one of the data fields;
c) in response to step b), redisplaying all data fields not having an item selected therefrom with data related only to the at least one item selected in step b), and simultaneously maintaining all items originally displayed in the data fields with at lest one item selected therefrom;
d) selecting an item in the songs data field in response to step c), and
e) playing the selected song item from step d) on the computer responsive music device.
So it's an interface for a specific format of playlist interaction. Some players might have to change their interfaces a bit. Big deal.
Cheaper To Fight It (Score:3, Interesting)
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If you were one of the corporations that Apple tried to extort, you'd be a sociopath, willing to fund a shadow war of assassination and terror to dominate your market. Sue you for patent inf
How is it possible (Score:2)
Are the patent office asleep?
More to the point, why can apple think they stand a chance in court?
Surely everyone apple attempts to sue can easily get out of it by proving they had prior art?
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May be the spark... (Score:2)
Since we're on a patent rant today... (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also been that way for all of a year now?
Then again, software these days rarely, if ever, interact directly with the hardware. APIs are what matters now, and unfortunately APIs are something Microsoft has in spades.
Microsoft pushes for developers on Windows to use DirectX so that the game they create aren't portable. If they were to use OpenGL, or even worse for Microsoft, SDL [libsdl.org], they could build portable games. Do you really think Microsoft wants that?
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Re:Apple got a patent on not playing games (Score:5, Informative)
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