Apple Wants To Block Some HTC Products From US Under Tariff Act of 1930 297
An anonymous reader writes "Days after filing another suit against Samsung, Apple took aim at smaller rival HTC, filling a claim with the International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the sales of the competing smartphones and tablets. Apple said that HTC was infringing on 'groundbreaking' [technology] that Apple developed for its iPod, iPhone and iPad products."
So what are the patents? That is the question. (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary makes a big deal about the law being used dates back to the 1930's. But the part Apple leverages is simply the part that bans import on things that violate U.S. patent holders, by itself a perfectly reasonable rule no matter how long ago it was imposed.
Now what MAY be unreasonable, are the patents in question. So what are they? It could well be THOSE are some of the absurd software patents we all know (and hate) so well, but it could also be some hardware related thing that is a perfectly reasonable thing to go after. The story by itself doesn't provide any help there...
It sure seems nothing much usually comes of these injection requests so I hardly expect it to go anywhere. Perhaps Apple is looking for some kind of reciprocation behind the scenes for something else...
Oh the irony! (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in 2000(yes 11 years ago!), I had(and still have) a Compaq iPaq, with a PCMCIA sleeve, containing a GSM card and a IBM Microdrive, it made calls, could play mp3s and video, and surf the web and email, it was incredible! I wasn't the only person in the world at the time with a similar set-up, I'm sure, but seriously, how many years later did the a-word company release their devices?
Todays devices are more compact, the battery life has been sorted and the screens are better too, but in terms of what could be done with them, even back then, it was a more capable, and less limited device; and guess who actually made it, that right HTC...
So, apple copies HTC's ideas(and a few people who could 'see' the potential of such a device), claims that they came up with it, try's to prevent the guys who came up with the ideas originally from selling their products, all while trying to create monopolies around every service that some hard working kid proves works...
What ever happened to free competition and regulators preventing monopolies, rather than helping them...
Land of the free, my arse!
How about, land of the lobbyist and advertising budget!
Re:I'm not sure why this is modded funny (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, no. The The iPod was *the* fashionable thing to own... back in the first part of the last decade. But not anymore. The iPod market is starting to fade - both because people *do* buy MP3 players that aren't iPods, and because phones in general and Apple's own Touch are starting to replace the handheld MP3 player.
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Interesting)
Its actually a lot less then copy, a lot of Apple patents are based on prior art, i.e. a modification of something that has already been patented. Should Apple be able to patent touch screens when they have been around since the 80's?
I think the patent system needs a good overhaul, is it right that a software patent should last for 20 years? I'd think that 3 years is reasonable, if you haven't made profit on it by then then you have only taken out the patent to stop someone else innovating.
Re:Does it work? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all a matter of context I guess. Companies like MS, Apple, Oracle & co sit on treasure chests in the form of patent portfolios. The LAW makes it so. It would be foolish of them not to try and make money out of them.
So they go against people that are obviously infringing their overly broad patents. But they have so many of them that it's becoming impossible to fight, unless you have yourself a huge patent portfolio.
In that view, I don't understand why google didn't put everything they had behind the Nortel portfolio. They NEED it in order to make Android a sustainable product - from a commercial perspective.
What is dead wrong in this system is that none of these lawsuits will ever result in a judgment. So all in all, the justice system is just a means to grab money and nothing else. And none of the players here want any of these lawsuit to go before a judge. Because none of them can afford to lose one of these lawsuits. They just move their pawns in court and then settle.
In my view, a judge SHOULD be able to declare a lawsuit "non settleable." This way, those companies would think twice before starting such lawsuits because there would be a chance that one of them would actually go to the end of the procedure. Then it would be obvious to everyone (or at least to the DOJ) that the patent system is just here to benefit trolls and major patent holders, but hardly anyone else. And it should be obvious that ANY NEW PRODUCT will infringe millions of patents because everything has been patented many times already.