Motorola's Most Important 18 Patents 137
quarterbuck writes "Bloomberg has a story on Google's acquisition of Motorola and quotes IP lawyers who claim that 18 patents dating to 1994 are probably what Google is after. These patents cover technology essential to the mobile-device industry, including location services, antenna designs, e-mail transmission, touchscreen motions, software-application management and third-generation wireless."
Okay, I give up. (Score:5, Informative)
Which 18 patents are they? You'd think in a 23-paragraph article they would have found space to list them.
Re:Okay, I give up. (Score:5, Funny)
Details? We don't need no stinking details!
What would expect from a financial news site. The bean counters eyes might glaze over if they revealed such information.
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Or reveal insight as opposed to whatever they feel rings true with their own marketing belief.
Take Forbes...
Thinking Of Buying A $99 TouchPad? Don't [forbes.com]
Reasons for not buying a TouchPad, a more than capable piece of hardware that is perfectly functional, lets you browse the interwebs, run photo slideshows, play media files, etc. etc. so even if it's not exactly a Galaxy Tab it still makes for a kick-ass digital photoframe?
1. Hardware: Bulkier, lower battery life, just one camera.
2. Software: There's not as many
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"just one camera" - wooh
Does anyone else believe that Apple should have put one decent camera in the iPad instead of two crappy ones? Here's a review:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/just-how-bad-is-the-ipad-2-camera/ [wired.com]
Why buy a tablet with no support? (Score:2)
I was thinking about buying one.
But there's no good reason to do so. Lets break it down by use:
1) Use as normal tablet. The iPad has better hardware for the most part, and vastly better software. Even an Android tablet would serve you better software wise.
2) Use for a mix of hacking/normal tablet use. Essentially the same argument, only now you start to consider the hacking communities are greatly more robust for either Android / iOS.
So basically if you are about to buy one, stop and think - might you n
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I'm not saying the tablet was not pretty nice. But I really can't see owning one... are you sure you can't get a better digital frame for $100 these days?
I am as guilty as anyone here of buying gadgets at various times that were interesting but then just sat around. Already having an iPad I couldn't see that I would ever use this. I thought about buying one for my parents but that seemed more like a curse than a blessing. Basically there are a lot of ways $100 can be better spent, including as part of a
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Quite sure.
For one thing, the vast majority of the digital photo frames out there do not have built-in batteries. That means you can't just pass it around (without strangling people with the cord).
For another, most don't do video beyond a subset of 640x480.
Add another.. say somebody likes the picture, and would like a copy? Most digital photo frames, you're screwed. Remove the card, stick it into a computer, find the picture again, etc
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For one thing, the vast majority of the digital photo frames out there do not have built-in batteries.
While true, you'd mostly want a photo frame to be plugged in all the time anyway. If you want to "pass around photos" mostly you use a tablet for that...
For another, most don't do video beyond a subset of 640x480.
How long has it been since you have looked at digital photo frames? Most are beyond VGA res now, like this one [slashdot.org]. That's well under $100.
Also note that it LOOKS like a photo frame, not like a tabl
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What? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. I was being bombarded with too many ads to hear what you had to say about financial details. :>
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The Patents (Score:4, Informative)
6 patents from Illinois 1 lawsuit [patentlyapple.com]:
5,311,516 [uspto.gov] Paging System Using Message Fragmentation to Redistribute Traffic
5,319,712 [uspto.gov] Method and Apparatus for Providing Cryptographic Protection of Data Stream in a Communication System
5,490,230 [uspto.gov] Digital Speech Coder Having Optimized Signal Energy Parameters
5,572,193 [uspto.gov] Method for Authentication and Protection of Subscribers in Telecommunications Systems
6,175,559 [uspto.gov] Method for Generating Preamble Sequences in a Code Division Multiple Access System
6,359,898 [uspto.gov] Method for Performing a Countdown Function During a Mobile-Originated Transfer for a Packet Radio System
6 patents from Illinois 2 lawsuit [patentlyapple.com]:
5,359,317 [uspto.gov] Method and apparatus for selectively storing a portion of a received message in a selective call receiver
5,636,223 [uspto.gov] Methods of adaptive channel access attempts
6,246,697 [uspto.gov] Method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access signal
6,246,862 [uspto.gov] Sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device
6,272,333 [uspto.gov] Method and apparatus in a wireless communication system for controlling a delivery of data
7,751,826 [uspto.gov] System and method for E911 location privacy protection
6 patents from Florida [patentlyapple.com]:
5,710,987 [uspto.gov] Receiver having concealed external antenna
5,754,119 [uspto.gov] Multiple pager status synchronization system and method
5,958,006 [uspto.gov] Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data
6,008,737 [uspto.gov] Apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device
6,101,531 [uspto.gov] System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client
6,377,161 [uspto.gov] Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information
Email transmission? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Email transmission? (Score:4, Informative)
Errr .. because email was around way before 1994. Maybe not in it's current form, and maybe not as prevalent - but it certainly existed way before then
Outlook and Exchange weren't around in 1994. POP3 and SMTP most certainly were.
Email actually hasn't changed much at all since 1994.
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right, which would imply that any patent on email from 1994 or later would run into prior art.
(got my first email account in 1989, not much has changed except the clients)
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"Email", yes, but this patent is for "email on a mobile device!"
Re:Email transmission? (Score:4, Informative)
SMTP is described in RFC 822 dated August 13, 1982.
By 1994 e-mail was pretty much as it is right now. Maybe without current spam-blocking techniques.
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Re:Email transmission? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but spam didn't become a major phenomena until two Utah lawyers published a book on how to make money fast by plundering Usenet, just as e-mail viruses didn't proliferate until Outlook, the Sendmail and Vax Mail scripting bugs notwithstanding.
The good news is that Queen Elizabeth didn't start using e-mail until 1974, so she's not to blame for unsolicited mass mailings.
it was a simpler time then... (Score:2)
because none was needed. until a pair of low life bottom-feeding douche bag lawyers [wikimedia.org] spammed usenet with their green card lottery spew (repeatedly,) and "inspired" millions of other bottom-feeders to copy their exploits (effectively destroyed usenet and e-mail as an useful communication medium,) spam was unheard of. (no, don't get me started on AoL'ers)
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Like almost everything that's been patented in the last twenty years, A) this wasn't really new, it was just new on the internet*, and B) it was obvious enough that someone else would have done it shortly thereafter anyway.
Doesn't make them less scummy though. =)
* Crap left in my door, bulk mail, and robocalls all predate this.
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Remember....
The Web is not the internet - The internet is ~ 20 years older than the Web
Email is not tied to the internet, it is around 10 years older then the internet .... !
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Junk mail predates SMTP. It's described as a problem in RFC 706 [ietf.org], Nov 1975
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Considering I wrote documentation for some software called "Pegasus Mail" for a university, I'm pretty sure e-mail was alive and well (as part of my high school co-op program no less).
Not available to normal pleabs maybe, but it was available mostly for education and government uses.
But your right, that was also the time I was still dialing into BBS's with a 2400 baud modem...
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1994 and 2400 baud? You were behind the times. In 1994, 14.4kbps was standard and 28.8kbps wasn't uncommon. That's the era of the P75 - P100 socket 5 Pentiums with 4-16MB ram, double or quad-speed CD ROMs, and 14" - 17" CRTs with a maximum resolution of 1024x768 or 1280x1024. With a good graphics card (3dfx Voodoo Rush or Riva TNT), you *might* have gotten 640x480 Quake at 30 fps. Back then, AOL really did suck - 700ms+ ping times and per-hour billing.
btw, a few BBSes still exist.
Try telnetting to bbs.goldengate.net.
Christ. Slashdot has turned into a virtual nursing home.
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Why not? It's not like patenting something dcades after it was actually invented by someone else is unusual...
But not all the patents will be from 1994, just the oldest one (one would hope, since that's an expensive way to get some patents 3 years before they expire)...
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Why not? It's not like patenting something dcades after it was actually invented by someone else is unusual..
Correct.
It's not 'performing the act' that's something that's considered "wrong" or "unethical" in patent-hungry individuals' minds, it's 'getting caught' that matters.
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Mmmm... Dare I even suggest that people read the claims of the patent before concluding that it was invalid?
Oh, right - the article didn't provide any useful details or a link to the patents, so all we can do is jump to conclusions.
Score: "Journalists" 1, Readers 0, Slashdotters -1.
(Yes, I'm in the last group. Mea culpa.)
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Except that no conclusion about the patents validity was being made at all (well until you jumped in I guess).
Just that one person thought an email patent at that time is strange, and one person did not. Neither making any comment about the validity or not. And a comment on general patents, not on the ones in question.
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Really? I interpreted
Why not? It's not like patenting something dcades after it was actually invented by someone else is unusual...
as implying that the patent should be invalid because the invetion was decades old before the patent was granted.
In any case, I only suggest that it's hard to judge the validity of a patent without seeing the claims. Aside from arguments about the validity of patents in general, of course.
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No, implying that having a patent from 1994 related to email transmission isn't strange, since email transmission was decades old at the time so you would expect there to be patents left and right. And since there are numerous patents for things that clearly were invented by someone else earlier there's bound to be huge numbers of them for decades old technology.
Though yes any from 1994 would have to be invalid since nothing non-obvious had been done in the 20 years prior, but that wasn't the point. Lots wa
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How the hell can a 1994 patent cover email transmission?
Well, the lawyers saw that "on the Internet" was already taken, but not "On the wireless".
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I thought they were called "transistor radios" rather than "the wireless" by the 1990s. Damn.
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There are RFC's for sending messages/mail over a network back in the 70's.
The original RFC for SMTP is from 1982 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt
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What I'm wondering is . . . don't they have only like 3 years left on those patents?
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Well, I guess blocking Apple out of the market for 3 years, or even just for two years, would be disastrous for Apple. So those patents can be an effective weapon even with only 3 years left.
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If Google were to purchase ANOTHER portfolio of mobile patents that could be combined with Motorola's.. then that might have a chance at helping to counter the lawsuits.. as it stands tho, absolutely nothing has changed.
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And this stopped the lawsuits over the GIF patents?
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I just got the same feeling that my professor in Computer Languages 101 must have gotten (around 1994)
when I asked the following question after he
told us that he programmed the first compiler 196X...
I asked, but "what language did you use to program the compiler?"
"HEX, young (ignorant) man, we programmed it in HEX"
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Early computers used Octal, not Hex, and technically the language would have been the instruction set not the format of entry. I also suspect your professor was confusing assemblers with compilers. I will also have to deduct marks from your professor for poor use of language.
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It was supposed to be femail transmission but they typoed it - and lived in solitude for ever after.
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The same way a 1999 patent can cover using a regex to markup email?
The game is simple. Take an old existing concept (email). Find some simple way to adapt it to a modern UI (regex match URLs, numbers etc.). Incorporate this into your GUI (highlight the text). Voila! You now have a feature that is patentable.
Motorola's "18 patents" include several that could apply to email:
Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data,
System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless clie
FRAND Encumbered Patents (Score:3)
Some of those patents are encumbered by FRAND : Fair, Reasonnable and Non Discrimatory.
Such patents are essentiel to a global normalisation in which participant have to disclose their related patents and licence them in a fair, reasonnable and non discriminatory way. You can use them to get royalties but you'll have a hard time using them to block someone.
Remember, in Nokia vs Apple, Apple settlement rather quickly. In Apple vs Motorola, the litigation is still pending. So it seems that Apple considers those patents are rather weak.
At last, remember, Google bought Motorola also because it threatened OTHER ANDROID licensees !!!
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Some of those patents are encumbered by FRAND : Fair, Reasonnable and Non Discrimatory.
You're full of shit - I read the article and nowhere does it mention that. Have you *any* evidence that makes you believe that even one of those 17000 patents are FRAND patents?
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=motorola+patent+frand [lmgtfy.com]
Not exactly conclusive evidence, but on balance, you're the one with more shit.
Congrats on reading the article though. Next time try a bit harder before randomly insulting people.
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Heh. Get a life dude.
I'm not aware of any court ruling that those patents are not frand patents either. You're at least as baseless in flinging that shit around.
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Or, alternatively, perhaps go back to bible studies where arguments like the ones you and ggp are making carry weight.
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Some of those patents are encumbered by FRAND : Fair, Reasonnable and Non Discrimatory.
Such patents are essentiel to a global normalisation in which participant have to disclose their related patents and licence them in a fair, reasonnable and non discriminatory way. You can use them to get royalties but you'll have a hard time using them to block someone.
But would these patents be good for defense, and not in a "mutually assured destruction" kind of way? Do they act as anti-weaponry and nullify the attacks of Apple, Microsoft and others?
If so, then Google may still be able to utilize Zerg tactics, using defenses to delay offensive manuevers, while building a massive swarm that engulfs the battlefield. Yes, I see Google as the Zerg, Apple are the Protoss, and Microsoft are the Terrans.
RTFATitle (Score:2)
RTFATitle : "Most important 18 patents" and the potential FRAND encumberance relates to those.
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RTFATitle : "Most important 18 patents" and the potential FRAND encumberance relates to those.
More BS - there are no FRAND encumberances. You've obviously got a fucking agenda here, spouting FUD. Do you get paid for this? Your employers should ask for their money back
(Yeah, I got a bone to pick with google as well (see recent posting history), but at least I've got legitimate gripes with them. I don't go making stuff up)
Only 18 of those 17k+7k used in court (Score:2)
If MMI thought it had stronger patents in its portfolio, it would have brought them to court agains Apple and Microsoft. But only those 18 were put forward.
You are NECTBAL (Score:2)
Not Even Close to Being a Lawyer
Sure, but they have acquired 17,000 granted patents and 7,000 pending ones.
The whole reason they mention these 18 is because it's not about volume, it's about content and quality of the patents. How many are for things like special case screws, or things related only to interacting with cable systems?
The list of 18 is an attempt to suss out which patents actually MATTER. Note that in any of the large lawsuits we are talking about, it's not Apple or Microsoft using 4000 pate
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A FRAND encumbered patent can mostly allow obtaining licensing revenues. The only defense would be to enter a cross licensing deal where both party are avoiding paying licenses to each other.
There are 3 kinds of entities attacking Android :
- Apple wants Android blocked or at least some of its feature. Apple want to keep very distinctive feature to itself and does not intend to license them. A FRAND patent would help have Apple pay licensing fees, like it did for Nokia but it would not have Apple stop trying
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A FRAND encumbered patent can mostly allow obtaining licensing revenues.
Citation oh so badly needed! AFAIK, no one has yet come forward identifying any of those 17000 patents as FRAND. Last I checked, FRAND patents are few and far between - something on the order of 300k patents for every 1 FRAND patent.
Yeah that must be it (Score:2)
It can't possibly because Motorola is a huge manufacturer of mobile phones and Google, as they have shown many times in the past, is interested in further diversifying their product line beyond software (well, really just ads) and expanding into the more difficult to get into but also much more stable field of hardware in order to deploy their Android platform in a more consistent manner, can it? No, surely it must just be for this patent portfolio. After all, patents are the only thing of value these days.
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Maybe (Score:2)
so who will buy the HP Mobile business (formerly Palm AFAIU)?
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My understanding is that the talent at Palm left when HP took over, so it's not exactly an attractive proposition.
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Favorite quote in the article (Score:3)
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This site may encompass Google soon.... (Score:1)
Too bad they don't have a search function.
No, I'm not biased; this is posted to make a statement about the direction of Google, which is also not biased. Just observation.
http://facesoflawsuitabuse.org/ [facesoflawsuitabuse.org]
1994? I thought patents were 14 years max. (Score:1)
Re:1994? I thought patents were 14 years max. (Score:4)
I don't know where you heard that... All I've heard is 20 years or 17 years, which is what's pretty well summarized here:
Quick quote from it:
For applications filed before June 8, 1995, the term is 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the earliest claimed domestic priority date, the longer term applying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law [wikipedia.org]
Patent maintenance fees (Score:3)
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believe it's 14 years for a design and 20 years for functionality
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5 for design, actually - so yes, in 2006 you could make an MP3 player that looked like the original iPod (but only in looks - functionality is covered by a different set of patents). Heck, it was speculated back then if the iPod competitors would look like the original iPod.
And patent law's really strange enough - it's 20 years after filing, or 17 years after approval, depending on when the patent was actually filed. We're coming to the end of
Cheaper? (Score:2)
If they only wanted the patents, wouldn't it have been cheaper just to license them?
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You can't use a patent you've just licensed as a weapon in a patent dispute.
Annnnd... guess who's in the middle of the fray (Score:2)
(FTFA)
"In a patent-infringement case that started today at the International Trade Commission, Microsoft
accused Motorola Mobility of infringing seven of its patents and requested a halt to imports of certain
Motorola phones. The trial is the first smartphone dispute to be heard since Google announced it would
buy Motorola Mobility."
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If you only have a license for a patent you can't use it as leverage against trolls like Apple - by owning core patents they can fire back...
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You might wanna pull your head out of your arse and look up the term yourself there matey.
Now, obvisouly, if you where so sure of yourself you wouldn't be hiding behind AC, but for others as confused as AC wiki, can as always send you in the proper direction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll [wikipedia.org]
Now a patent troll is *often* someone without an actual product, but Apple is indeed a troll since they are using their patents to try to force other players out of the market *while ignoring* said players port
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...anonymous...
Connection with Apple, maybe? I'm just saying.
Even if you want to say something that's controversial, don't play the anonymous card. Own up and back your position.
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When I say that, I mean "own up and back your position, just like Splab". Posted too fast. D'oh!
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I'm posting AC because I'm at work and I don't log into website from work. Want to know who I am? whisper_jeff Feel free to do a search for me and add me to your ignore list if you'd like. I'm fine with it.
As for your definition, the first paragraph of your link: "Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company that enforces its patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered (by the party using the term) unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to man
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But I thought that I was whisper_jeff!
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Apple is NOT a patent troll.
Oh, please, don't cry! No, darling, Apple is not a patent troll! Bad, bad Splab!!!
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"those patents are considered essential patents and thus Motorola is forced to license them at reasonable terms"
What is this concept of essential patents? The information i can find only applies to those made available to standards bodies, not sure how deactivating the touch sensor when next to a person's ear or data compression or any of the others mentioned in the article apply.
Please can you provide more information.
Re:Doubtful (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure where you get the idea that FRAND applies to anything that is widely used, or is a defacto/ad hoc standard. It applies only in a very narrow use-case.
I sincerely doubt that email is a National Standard.
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It is clear: Google wants to get into the hardware business.
Or the patent troll business..... ?
Re:Doubtful (Score:4, Insightful)
It is clear: Google wants to get into the hardware business.
Or the patent troll business..... ?
From what I've seen over the past few years, the two are synonymous. You can't be in the hardware business if you can't counter-sue.
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This is so sad.
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From what I've seen over the past few years, [hardware and patent trolling] are synonymous.
I thought the accepted definition of "patent trolling" on Slashdot was the practice of a nonpracticing entity, or one that holds and enforces patents but doesn't produce its own implementation of the invention. This definition would disqualify hardware makers (e.g. Motorola) and blueprint makers (e.g. ARM and Fraunhofer) from "troll" classification.
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It is clear: Google wants to get into the hardware business.
Correction. Google is already in the hardware business. They are the world's 4th largest server manufacturer.
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What do you mean by "manufacturer"?
Manufacturing of actual hardware components (parts) or assembly of already-manufactured parts (components) on the whole-unit scale; hard drives, memory, power supp., etc?
Cite your statement and you may have a good pointer to something that's going big.
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"Those two things make it a useless toy when it comes to the corporate world."
Thank fuck you blew your cred with "WM was the top dog before the iPhone came out", completely ignoring Symbian and Nokia. Why, if you hadn't done that you might well have got me there buddy.
Home country of Apple, Google, M$, and /. (Score:2)
Thank fuck you blew your cred with "WM was the top dog before the iPhone came out", completely ignoring Symbian and Nokia.
Then please allow me to rephrase: "WM was the top dog in the United States market before the iPhone came out." Nokia doesn't have much presence in the country where Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Slashdot are headquartered.
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The top dog in the US market would have been RIM, not Windows Mobile and certainly not Nokia.
WM was the top dog among people who didn't want to spend effort developing real mobile applications (to the extent that you could do that on, say, BlackBerry OS or Symbian) and just shovelled Microsoft development tools and old code at handhelds because it was cheap and easy. In that sense, it owned certain vertical markets (warehousing, point of sale, courier) where it was used to run client applications. Web app
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It will be interesting to see if Google allow the iPhone5 to launch. Clearly, when the situation is reversed, the whole product is banned [techradar.com], but as we all know Google do no evil. Or is evil justified when it's the only way of dealing with the evil being done by another?