Apple Wins Injunction Banning Import of HTC Devices 314
Newly accepted submitter squish18 writes "All Things D reports that Apple has won an injunction banning the import of some HTC phones starting in April 2012. The ruling by the ITC stems from two claims of the '647 patent concerning software used to enter personal data in mobile devices. It is interesting to note that the ITC has also reversed previous rulings regarding regarding infringement of two other '647 claims, as well as patent '263 claims."
It looks like Apple's victory is relatively minor. They lost claims on all patents except for one, and HTC/Google can work on implementing similar functionality in a non-infringing way.
Re:even if it's minor, pretty ridiculous (Score:4, Interesting)
So the non-frivolous claim on which Apple actually prevailed was essentially a regex to find things that look like phone numbers in unstructured text documents, which then link to a dialer app?
It's slightly more complicated than that IIRC, but pretty much.
has it always been like this? (Score:4, Interesting)
The flurry of international tablet lawsuits seems much more rigorous than I remember for any past technology. Was it always this bad?
Smart phones didn't sue each other this badly. Nor did DVD manufacturers. AMD & Intel went at it hard during the 80's & early 90's. Sony & Betamax sorta duked it out. But the tablet wars seem to be nutso.
At least the economy for lawyers is booming...
Legal costs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Minor victory? (Score:4, Interesting)
This should also be want Slashdot wants.
I like diversity in Slashdot opinions. If all Slashdot readers were Apple fanboys like you, it would be boring around here.
Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?
It's ironic that you chose the word "competition" to describe forcing people out of a space via an effective monopoly.
Re:has it always been like this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Smart phones didn't sue each other this badly.
Smartphones are STILL suing each other, including involvement by Apple. DVD was handled by a consortium and there's no money in going after unlicensed players, although the low-hanging fruit is picked just to keep the people making such things on their toes. Intel totally boned AMD. Betamax was a Sony technology, ITYM Betamax and VHS, but putting onerous licensing terms on a technology and killing it is actually called "Betamaxing".
USPTO in bed with Apple? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Evil Monopoly (Score:1, Interesting)
Nope. It's a choice. Apple is choosing to strangle the competition while they have the strong hand.
Which is something the patent system is specifically designed to encourage. The idea is to encourage entities just like Apple to spend billions of dollars researching some new technology, in full confidence they will be able to recover those billions of dollars in future by having a high profit margin on their product.
If someone else has the right to bring the same technology to the market with razor slim profit margins, then nobody will spend billions of dollars researching new technology.
Say what you want about Apple, they *do* spend billions researching new technology. And they should be allowed to recover that money.
Personally I'm not convinced the patent system is a net positive. But calling it an "evil monopoly" is a bit much I think.
In contrast, IBM and Google (generally?) don't pursue patent suits unless they're attacked first. (At least, that's the impression that's been put forth by tech journalism.)
I don't know anything about IBM, but Google seems to run around with their head in the sand until someone slaps them in the face with a patent lawsuit. They were told by their lawyers not to create Dalvik without a licensing agreement with Sun, but they ignored the advice. And now their getting their ass handed to them in court, because Sun/Oracle wants compensation for their inventions, and Google isn't making enough money off Dalvik to pay any reasonable sum.
Re:Evil Monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, companies are choosing to act the way they are, but the current patent system is incentivizing this behavior. The question should be whether there is a system with better incentives, not whether companies should stop doing what they are doing, because some companies will behave responsibly, but others invariably won't and you have to expect that behavior.
I'm not convinced any companies, even patent trolls, are truly acting irresponsibly. It's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't valid without going to court. And it's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't being infringed without going to court.
This leads to disagreements between patent holders and potential licensors about just how much should be paid in any licensing agreement, or whether any licensing fees should even be paid at all. To make matters worse, the courts are making stupid decisions all the time.
In my mind, this is a clear situation where we need to blame whoever wrote patent law in the first place for failing to predict the mess they created. And blame more recent government(s) for failing to do anything about it.
But how to solve it? That's the trillion dollar question.
Re:Evil Monopoly (Score:2, Interesting)
The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?
Do I really need to answer that?
Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?
Re:Evil Monopoly (Score:1, Interesting)
IBM: here is a list of 20 patents we believe you infringe, pay us $20 million.
Company X: But we don't' even use any of those 20 patents you listed!
IBM: Ok, here is a list of another 20 patents we believe you infringed, pay us $20 million.
Company X: But we didn't use those either!
IBM: We got all day to play this game if you want. Just pay us the $20 million, we have 10,000s of patents and there is bound to be 20 you have infringed so pay up.
Google on the other hand doesn't really have any patents which is why they went on a multi-billion dollar buying spree recently to try and catch up. Heck Stanford University even owns the main Search Algorithm patent that Google, Inc. licenses.
Nokia and Apple both with a shit load of patents ended up agreeing for Apple to cross-license Nokia's GSM and other industry standards patents, paid them a few $100 million in back payments and ongoing royalties for FRAND based patents.
HTC, Samsung, Motorola have all used denied Apple licensing for their GSM and related standards based patents they are obligated to under FRAND terms. Instead they have said Apple should cross license the iOS specific patents in exchange for FRAND standards based patents. Additionally Motorola have changed the cross license agreements with Qualcomm to specifically exclude the Qualcomm cross-license to apply when Apple is a purchaser of Qualcomm chips in iPhones. This is why the EU is currently investigating the lot of them for Anti-trust violations.
The reason for all of this is Google decided very early in Andriod's development that they wouldn't bother with any patent licensing with Andriod. Because they would not "sell" the software only give it away and make money down the road from advertising on Andriod devices they figured they where immune. Andriod uses a Java based language but decided not to pay anybody for it, so Oracle is suing them as they are the current owners of Java. Google developed open source implementations of key technology that Apple developed for iPhone and told the world quite clearly they had patents on. Google decided that patents suck and they wouldn't bother even talking to Apple about getting licenses.
Lets face it Google is the guy who goes to a party empty handed and gets drunk on the "free beer" everybody else paid for any brought to the party. Whats more Google gave away other peoples "free beer" to get some girls drunk at the party (HTC,Moto, Samsung) so it could get into bed with them. For some reason Slashdot seems to think that taking other peoples beer at a party to try and get chicks drunk so you can fcuk them is cool. I personally think it's just pathetically cheap and Google deserves a punch in the face for being a dick.
Re:Evil Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel [zdnet.com] when it comes to R&D spending by tech companies in recent years. I think this is part of the reason they so irk technology enthusiasts. We don't like having proof that marketing > technology rubbed in our faces.
Re:Patentable inventions must be novel and unobvoi (Score:4, Interesting)
meh it wasn't. I think you're forgetting how 1996 was. you could select email addresses back then in some sw and send email. even 1993 you could find prior art.
when was lynx made? because what it actually does if there's an email tag is analyze the input and make it clickable and give you a choice to send email, no? the patent is so broadly worded that it's rather irrelevant if there's the tags around it or not.