Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Should Be Shared 347
An anonymous reader writes "In attempting to fend off Apple's suit against Motorola Mobility and advancing its own patent litigation against Apple, Google, which is facing a lot of regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad over what some allege is abuse of standard essential patents, has been arguing that proprietary non-standardized technologies that become ubiquitous due to their popularity with consumers should be considered de facto standards."
I decree that... (Score:5, Interesting)
nothing "great" about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Interface standards are not about "great technology", they are about convention and usability. There's little that's ever been innovative about how steering wheels look or work, where the hand brake goes in a car, how you turn on a TV or a light, etc.; many of those are just arbitrary choices. But there is a huge benefit to having these items standardized so that consumers can easily move from one car to another. The same is even more true for user interfaces: user interfaces benefit tremendously from standardization. Apple's user interface elements aren't "great" or innovative, they simply set the standard because Apple is first.
(And most of Apple's user interface elements aren't even Apple's inventions; sliding switches on touch screens, for example, were not invented by Apple, Apple just copied them and then patented their application to unlocking.)
Re:Google argues most patents should be SEPs (Score:0, Interesting)
You do realize Tim Cook and Samsung's CEO met in a court mandated mediation meeting, and Apple offered to license it, and Samsung's response is, fuck you, *YOU PAY ME* for my FRAND patents and give me a free cross licensing deal to your patents.
Samsung could have settled _ANYTIME_
Re:nothing "great" about it (Score:3, Interesting)
All you have done is go off on a hateful rant with nothing to back up those rantings, you have to explain why one company should have to forced to share it's own shitty patents with everybody else. What you've done is made an attack at the patent system and tried to attach Apples name to this uniquely, your words could apply equally to any of the major players. For example does google share its search patents with everybody? I don't know the answer to that but I don't see anybody looking into it round here either.
Does anybody else find it weird when supposedly intelligent people don't even _try_ to see all companies in the same light? That sort of blinkered view must spill out into other areas of thinking, in a way that must hurt reasoning skills.
Re:So would an analogue be the steering wheel? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like a HUD display too. Every car should have one.
Having been peripherally involved in the design of HUD systems for some american car companies, no you do not want a HUD system designed by a committee and managed by a US car company exec who still thinks more and bigger is better. Just look at some of the Windows based touchscreens in recent models and imagine a similar quality of design popping up in front of your face while you're trying to drive.
Re:Google facing regulatory scrutiny? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google bought Motorola. If you haven't heard about their FRAND patent licensing and the investigation thereof, you might want to get more background before reading this story.
Re:Punishing success (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you are missing the point. Its already happened via FRAND to the players that built cellular. Sure, they could have refused FRAND but then we wouldn't have robust wireless standards we can all use.
Now Apple can swoop in with trivial "slide to unlock" type of patents and charge an arm and a leg to license. They can then turn around and pay pennies for patents that took years and years and billions of dollars to develop.
And if its allowed to work this way - future wireless innovators are going to refuse to go the FRAND route. This would result in fractured standards, and likely patent induced stagnation in the wireless realm.
Apple is freeloading. The law may allow them to freeload, but that doesn't make it right.
Re:Bad Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
A point could be made that anybody trying to create a minimalist design, would invariably end up with a very similar design.
Re:I Dunno... Let's Ask John Galt What He Thinks.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's not overdo it. First, "Atlas Shrugged" is poor sci-fi, not a serious work of philosophy, although it is as lengthy and as boring as the swan song of your typical bad philosopher. I have no idea why it is treated as some sort of eminent philosophical work, it isn't.
Second, Rand does not "take collectivism to extremes" to build a believable "collectivist" society. That is what Huxley, Orwell and, well, Zamyatin (a Russian guy who wrote probably the greatest dystopian novel, "We") do. Hell, even Asimov does it much better than Rand in the latest Foundation books, in which he really takes it to the top by imagining the ultimate "collectivist" society - the one-counsciousness of Gaia.
Third Rand does not "take libertarianism to extremes" either. Adam Smith does in better the "Wealth of nations", where he explains how unrestrained, laissez-faire capitalism results in monopoly and social harm.
Finally, Rand's world of individual inventors who drive progress does not make much sense either. In the real world, advancement is incremental and depends of the collective work of many people ("shoulders of giants"). The more . An individualist, a Randian "hero" would by himself be a hunter-and-gatherer, even if he's very smart.
As a post script, even her "philosophical" works are junk. For all her claims about being objective, fact-based, scientifically oriented, etc, in her philosophy she has ignored everything that modern science has to say both about the individual (psychology) and about the collective (that would be economics and parts of sociology and political science).
Have time for Ayn Rand? You'll be better served by reading something from K. Anders Ericsson or James Buchanan.