Apple Tries To Patent 3rd Party In-App Purchasing 244
bizwriter writes "Apple has spared no effort in trying to injure its arch mobile rival through the courts, like blocking Android vendors from important markets through patent and trademark infringement suits. Now it's developing an additional angle: an attempt to patent in-application purchases from third parties, as an application filed on April 26, 2010 and made public on Thursday made clear."
How can this not be prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
Steam is a third party from Windows, I can buy programs/apps through that years before this filing. I am sure some 3rd party apps on the iPhone had in-app purchasing pre-filing of this. It wouldn't be the first time Apple patented something it saw a third party app do, however.
Re:How can this not be prior art? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Until the attempts in Windows 8, which will have its own app store.
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Re:How can this not be prior art? (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume you are referring to the App Store and the walled garden approach? Non-computer people place very little value on having an open ecosystem. If you are not a programmer you won't be writing your own apps so having an open system is worth very little.
Given some of the drawbacks of the Android Market, it not clear see why "the general population" would consider that the walled garden approach is "against their better interests" or that an open system would offer any significant benefits.
All four of the people I know to have Android phones have installed malware at some point. I have to wonder if any of them have spyware sitting their phones right now. I'm not saying that nobody can sneak malware into the Apple store but AFAIK it hasn't happened yet. The general population probably cares much more about that than the restrictions of a walled garden.
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>> Non-computer people place very little value on having an open ecosystem.
Ok, so they don't realize what's better for them in the long run. Your point?
>> All four of the people I know to have Android phones have installed malware at some point.
Sounds like your friends are idiots. I have more than 4 friends(and I post on /.!) with Android phones and no one has ever complained of malware.
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you have got to be kidding me.
Objective C is a freaking nightmare for any developer. XCode is buggy as hell, and you have to use OSX - each to their own, but I found it horrible to use.
I guess you can use one of the other javascript or HTML5 toolkits, that convert to native iOS5 code, but your claim that its "not very hard" is just false.
I'm 29, I work as a software engineer, I started programming when I was 10. I have no issues learning new programming languages and tools.
I was able to complete a simple ye
Re:How can this not be prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-computer people place very little value on having an open ecosystem. If you are not a programmer you won't be writing your own apps so having an open system is worth very little.
Oh, I dunno; I suspect you could explain it easily to most people with the canonical auto analogy: Would you consider buying a car if it were impossible to buy any accessories or spare parts from anyone but the auto maker's dealers? Yes, some people do buy everything from their auto dealer. But most people understand that making this mandatory is basically a way to make you pay a lot more money. Who'd want to be restricted to buying, say, new tires only from the dealer?
I'd guess such simple example could easily get across to all but the real dummies why they should support an open market for add-ons of any sort.
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I wonder when the Kindle for iPhone app was designed/started. It could potentially be prior art here.
Well, apparently amazon thinks it's all valid. I did a quick google of "in-app purchase", and on the first page of hits was a report that the kindle iPhone app no longer lets you buy from the kindle store. You have to either buy via Apple's store (and then Apple gets 30% of the price), or you can use the browser. That's sufficiently complex (i.e., more than just one or two clicks) that most non-geek users will probably give up).
The folks at amazon.com have gotta be a bit annoyed by this.
I wonder if
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prior art (Score:2)
As of late, is often seemingly ignored by the patent office.
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Outside of the digital realm, this basically describes the concept of stores. But, you know, stores "On A Computer" "On The Internet" "On A Phone!" That makes it meet the qualifications for patentability in the US 3 times over.
Go back further (Score:3)
A person buying produce in a Middle Aged marketplace was most likely buying from a 'third party' because the Feudal Lord du jour was the owner of the land and made the rules. I'm sure similar circumstances existed way back into late prehistory.
Re:Go back further (Score:4, Funny)
Grrrrr...Middle Ages, not Middle Aged. Even with preview my middle ages brain sometimes typos.
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I hope this does not get awarded, but my guess is they are going for a different approach of "service to offer in app purchase to a third party app".
Steam is, on itself, selling stuff for itself. If you want to buy DLC for a Steam game, you do that from the main Steam app.
Their claim may be one about being able to buy the DLC from within the app, but having the store (Steam or Apple) process it.
If that's what they are going for, I am not sure there is any prior art (Google offers it now in Android but it wa
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But Steam and Team Fortres are first party titles developed by Valve, owners of Steam. Do they offer that same API as part of Steamworks, though? Can anyone do the same?
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With Steam you buy it from Steam through Steam. With Apple's in-app purchase you buy it from iTunes through the third-party app.
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"...on a mobile device".
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It's a description of automated drop shipping. Oh wait, it's novel because they added "in an application."
You mean, like the eBay application on my Blackberry? Or the application Amazon puts out that allows 3rd-party purchasing?
Re:How can this not be prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think I'd like to submit the following patent:
Claim1 - Refer to the claims of all patents that have already submitted, and add the words "on a phone" to the end.
Claim2 - Refer to the claims of all patents that have already submitted, and add the words "on a computer" to the end.
Claim3...n - Refer to the claims of all patents that have already submitted, and in turn add the words "on a " plus each word from every dictionary ever published in any language to the end.
Claim n+1...infinity - Refer to every dic
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I used to work at a wireless networking startup. That's pretty much what they did, except instead of phone it was 'proprietary networking technology we didn't even invent'.
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You'd think it'd be easier to teach patent examiners what "non-obvious" meant. But no.
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Prior art and first to file are not mutually exclusive. In fact, publicly disclosing your invention prior to filing would constitute prior art and thus be grounds for application refusal.
Re:How can this not be prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
First to file has nothing to do with prior art. You are just the "first to file" for a patent on something not patentable (prior art, obvious, ...). So you won't get it - and if you get it, it can be invalidated in court.
First to file only matter when 2 or more people try to patent the same patentable invention at the same time (remember, it takes years to get a patent). The patent office needs to give the patent to one of the applicants, before it tried to painfully determine the first to invent, now it just give it to the first to file.
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Prior art means nothing anymore. ------ First to file, remember ! .
Go back and do your homework. You can't patent what is widely available in the market place.
Prior Art still means something.
Patent Requirements (Score:5, Interesting)
I've finally realized how these types of patents keep cropping up.
The dumber the population gets, including experts, the more the phrase "non-obvious" covers.
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That and it's as old as the internet.
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I've finally realized how these types of patents keep cropping up.
The dumber the population gets, including experts, the more the phrase "non-obvious" covers.
I don't think it's that, most of the time. It's just that information accumulates at a much faster rate than people can keep up with; this almost never came up until the last 50 years or so. While some people have made ignorance a kind of vogue I think even they do it out of subconscious fear, for the most part.
Information overload can overwhelm basic cognitive skills like pattern recognition, and that must affect a patent office crippled by bad law and under-funding to the point that their backlog until
Prior art? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't Lodsys already have a patent on this?
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/06/11/164209/Lodsys-Expands-Patent-Lawsuit-to-10-More-Companies [slashdot.org]
W.W.S.D.? (Score:2)
.
Surprise! (Score:2, Insightful)
Meet the new Microsoft.
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Just like the false claim that Microsoft had a "monopoly". There were many CPU architectures that Microsoft did not even work on.
"Desktop computers" was (and is) a meaningful category that bears no relation to CPU architecture.
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Yes, you could. But in practice >90% of people ran Windows.
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That choice was dictated by the market. When all useful apps are written for one platform, and there are proprietary file formats (and back then there weren't specs for .doc etc on MSDN) which are only available in such apps, there is a strong detriment from running any alternatives.
Anyway, it sounds like you're using the libertarian definition of monopoly, which is basically "someone forces you to use this". That's not the one that most people use in real life. Having a sufficiently large marketshare alone
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Re:Surprise! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is far worse than MS ever was (Score:3)
Perhaps if Microsoft had successfully banned the sale of all non-Windows computers on the grounds that they came in rectangular boxes, there might be a comparison. As it stands, Apple is far, far worse than any major corporation in memory.
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If you go prior to Windows, to the DOS days, they did exactly that - or indirectly: In order to get a major discount on DOS, the vendors had to sell a DOS license with every PC, no matter what OS the customer wanted (e.g. DR-DOS or CP/M). Apple does not have anything like this "Microsoft tax" - I can go into a store with mobile phones and buy a Sony Ericsson device without paying Apple anything - there is no "Apple tax".
Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
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A browser is a Program or Application and not an App. See the missing letters. Applications are for big things like computers and laptops, Apps are for small things like phones. Does this make sense now?
First Person Shooter Patent (Score:2)
Really? WTF (Score:2)
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Why?
I'm not trying to ge a dick. In fact personally I think large corporations should be broken up. But WHY, from Apples perspective, should they stop?
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Wow, you really don't know what younger talking about. The case against Microsoft involved copyrights, and most of the claims in the lawsuit were denied because of a previous license agreement with MS, not because they were invalid.
Moreover, the copyrights they claimed turned out to not be sufficient for their offensive, which is precisely why they opted to use patents this time around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation [wikipedia.org]
Knowledge, it's a wondrous thing.
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>> Wow, you really don't know what younger talking about
That should be "you're" not "younger.". Damn you, auto-correct!!
Poster cant read (Score:2)
This is not present in-app purchasing or in-app purchasing in general. It is purchasing from within the app from an external source with external information but without actually leaving the app. I think the crux of this is you could buy something via an add in an app without leaving the app itself.
And remember the new rules are if you dont patent it somebody else can and sue you for your own idea and you have no defence.
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We all know how... defensive Apple is with its portfolio.
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Yes actually Apple is very Defensive with its patents. Have you ever once heard of Apple going after a patent violator that wasn't using it on a product directly competing with Apple. If Apple ever went offensive the courts would run red with blood.
Now Trademarks and Copyright they are much more proactive with.
Back to the old Apple hatin' days... (Score:2)
It is now 2011. It appears Apple wants it all. (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement) [wikipedia.org]
if you can't beat 'em.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be protectionist actually (Score:3)
Obiviously /. has forgotten, but it was not long ago when iOS -and- Android developers started getting sued by Lodsys for apps that used in-app purchasing. I know Apple is a big bad evil company, but my first thought actually is that this is to cover the angle and protect third party devs, before some patent troll comes along to cover it from this angle too.
Where do we buy futures? (Score:2)
I know Apple is a big bad evil company, but my first thought actually is that this is to cover the angle and protect third party devs, before some patent troll comes along to cover it from this angle too.
If this explanation is true, then the patent lawyers certainly dealt themselves a big hand. Where do we buy futures?
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While that's possibly accurate, that is also the way the American patent system works in regards to patents and patent trolls. If you don't have the patent, someone else will get it and use it against you. No. This isn't a great way of life. But I regularly write my congress critters about my distaste for this system, do you?
Patenting malware...? (Score:3)
According to TFA, they are trying to patent malware (and same could be considered prior art).
Claim 1: A method comprising: presenting an application offering a product for purchase, the application being from a first entity; presenting a purchase interface overlaid the application, the purchase interface being from a second entity; and completing a sales transaction without navigating away from the application.
The method of claim 1, wherein the application is an advertisement.
The method of claim 1, wherein the application is from an application server that targets applications to users.
The method of claim 1, wherein the purchase interface is for purchasing a product directly from an online store.
This sounds like a common practice by which old-school adware and malware operated - in the case of ad-supported software, an ad for a purchaseable product would be presented in the supported application's window. When clicked, either the user's already-installed browser or an embedded MSIE instance would open for the user to complete the purchase using 'the internet'. For bona fide malware, the ad-spawning application was windowless and lurked in the background, popping up ads on top of whatever "app" the user is currently working in, and obviously without quitting said app (being a multitasking OS and all). Oftentimes, the specific ad would be triggered by what the user was doing in the other app (e.g. by monitoring for specific words typed or URLs visited). Knowing lawyers, the nuanced prior-artiness of each case might hinge on whether an IE instance and webpage embedded the the app constitutes a third-party "purchase interface" or not.
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Sadly (or not), I've never been called for jury duty, much less for a patent case. I'd certainly do my part to put an end to this garbage. On the other hand, if I ever wanted to get out of jury duty I could just reveal my various online handles.
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Or, opening a Paypal purchase interface in a new window would meet claim 1. I certainly hope that if this ever issues, it ends up a lot more detailed than what was originally filed.
Remember the "X with a computer" patents? (Score:2)
Remember all the patents that came out 10-15 years ago that were common business practices, but computerized?
Well, now Apple's doing "X with an iPad".
Pathetic.
How is this even news? (Score:2)
Rather than make a better product or compete on their merits, apple continues to try and get ahead by litigation, frivolous patents, and buying up the competition.
This is par for the course for the company.
I'm NOT going to even RTFA. (Score:2)
Since the U.S. has encouraged patent filing, all tech news is starting to trend toward it.
How about changing the mechanism to:
1. Company doesn't patent some arcane, small mechanism in a product of theirs.
2. You, yourself, file for said patent. You know, just for the hell of it.
3. PRO^H^H^HPost an article online saying how dumb the subject company was for not patenting it first.
It will be the new Rick Roll, or whatever referential point you want to use in this sentence.
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Thanks to Apple though it does appear to becoming standard
That has always existed. Various tech companies have sued competitors like crazy - all the big corps have tons of cross licensing agreement. For some reason, big companies managed to convince us that they were nice people and only got patent to protect against evil companies (troll). That is simply not true - they use their patents in the way that is the most profitable to them, like they do with everything else. They are companies, not some sort of charity.
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I'm always full of great ideas. I should become a patent troll ;)
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Re:Prior Art is no longer an issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a patent attorney. You are clearly not.
You have no idea what you are talking about. First to file did not change anything prior art-wise. It did not get rid of prior art. I cannot see you doing something and then file a patent application on it myself. Please, for the love of god, stop spreading this bullshit FUD around. You and everyone like you that keeps saying this is making the slashdot community dumber with your posts.
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I am a patent attorney.
I wouldn't say that too loudly around here, doc. We hang boys like you in this town...
PS - the above was an attempt at humor. If you find it offensive, well, too bad.
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No offense taken. I've been around slashdot a long long time (see userid).
I am usually hesitant to say I am a patent attorney. And once upon I time I tried to educate the slashdot crowd and help them navigate the nuances of patent law. But it's gotten so bad over the last four or so years I don't even bother unless I something egregiously wrong. This first-to-file-means-I-can-steal-your-invention or prior-art-no-longer-exists keeps getting posted and I just had to say something.
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This first-to-file-means-I-can-steal-your-invention or prior-art-no-longer-exists keeps getting posted and I just had to say something.
I thought "first-to-file" means I can't steal your invention anymore by faking documentation that I invented it earlier than you.
I respectfully disagree about first to file (Score:2)
I respectfully disagree about first to file
The patent on the laser would have been granted to someone other than the inventor due to the inventors mistaken belief that there was still a "reduction to practice" requirement.
You have to grant that that particular case would have unfairly gone the other way under the first to file standard.
First to file is going to favor large corporate interests with the ability to pay for the work necessary to complete filings, and disfavor individual inventors and entreprene
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I should have known that first to file didn't mean first to file. It is, after all, legalese. Pray tell, since you are a patent attorney, just what does first to file mean in real english versus the gobbeldy gook that serves for legal double talk
Re:Prior Art is no longer an issue. (Score:5, Informative)
We shifted to first to file to get rid of "interferences" which, contrary to the hype, were really not much of an issue. The rest of the world is first to file, so it made sense for us to shift too. Here's what it means:
Under the old system, say I invented X on January 1st and you invented X (exact same thing) on March 1st and neither of us know about the other person's inventing X. If you immediately file a patent application on April 1st, and I continue tinkering and perfecting, and finally file a patent application on September 1st, I win because I was the first to invent (assuming I can prove it by documentation and I was in fact diligent).
Under the new system, you win because although we both invented the same thing, you filed your patent application first. That is all first to file means.
Now, if I publish about my invention on March 15th, after you invented but before you filed your patent application, my publication is prior art and kills your patent application. DEAD. This is why prior art is not gone under first to file. It used to be that my publication would not autokill your application and you could "swear behind" my publication, showing you invented it before I published.
Now, same set of facts, but say you didn't really invent anything and instead knew about my work, when you file your application on April 1st, you still need to submit an Oath that you believe you are the first to invent X. If you sign that oath and you in fact didn't invent X - you just copied my work - you have committed fraud on the Patent Office and your patent is unenforceable. DEAD. This is true under the old system and the new system. This has nothing to do with the change to first to file and this is why first to file does not allow you to just copy someone's idea and get a patent on it even though there isn't one.
The last scenario is a bit of a prickly pear, but it's not because of first to file - it's the same under the old system. If I invent X and sit on it, using it in secret for years and years and then you independently invent X and file a patent application on it, and your patent is granted, you can then sue me for something I have been doing for years. Remember, if I had published, your patent application would have been DOA, so it is designed to encourage people to publish early.
Hope this helps.
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Maybe. But maybe their above someone having ordinary skill in the art. I'm not disagreeing with you - it's a common theory.
What is "obvious" is a very muddy lake. I mean, you have to compare the claims to this nebulous test of what a hypothetical person having "ordinary" skill in the art would know.
But I hear ya.
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Perhaps, but if this patent is as obvious and unoriginal as posters here are implying, and it still gets granted, and it's somehow more likely to get granted, then first to file has effectively been changed by the new law.
Admittedly a lot of if's. But, if anything in the new law effectively grants a greater presumption of originality than before, and a prior art claim requires you to sue to override the stupidity of the patent office, then first to file grants a temporary monopoly to anybody that can frame
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No, the patent office did that years ago, as they've proven that either they can't recognize it, or they draw the definition so narrowly that adding magic words like "on a mobile device" mean it doesn't count any more.
Of course you can. It's fraud, but what's to stop you?
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What's frustrating is that there are indeed patents which claim some common technique "on the internet" or "on a mobile device". How they got to be that way, I don't know. I doubt the "inventor" started out trying to patent technique without the "on a mobile device" and then added it on after
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Most times people read patents on here, they ignore that every claim limitation matters
Fuck yeah. Why should we expect patent examiners to do their jobs when they can approve absolutely everything to the same effect (what's valid is valid, what's not will be sorted out later by the courts). In fact, your way is faster and easier. Abolish the patent system. Just send a letter to the patent office with the description in it and get awarded a patent, whether for the wheel or One-Click or whatever. No need to even examine the application if you require the courts to rule on every single pate
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A tab on a computer is not one click, and your - and everyone else's - insistence on ignoring the claims (my original point) and distilling an entire claim down to one idea is why this place never has a good patent discussion.
The last time I ran a tab, I provided payment information to the barkeep, then ordered and "paid" for future orders by one-clicking by saying "put it on my tab" at which time the pre-arranged payment method is charged and the product delivered.
Like running a tab, you must pre-negotiate payment. You must be authenticated at the start of the transaction, and you must be authorized for all the one-click transaction (I've had trouble with a tab when there were two barkeepers and the other didn't put my order
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First to file did not change anything prior art-wise.
I've read here the "experts" saying things that imply that under first to invent, if you saw someone else's publishing of their invention, and then patented it before one year from that publish date, you should be awarded the patent, unless the actual inventor applied as well.
But, under first to file, you are expected to file before publishing such that if you did the same thing with first to file, you should not be awarded the patent.
Is that how it is? If not, where is the error? If so, then your state
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Your understanding of "first to file" is incorrect. The concept of prior art still exists, and can still be used to overturn a patent or prevent it from being granted. It does eliminate the (difficult and often arbitrary) process of determining who "really" came up with and acted on something "first" when two entities attempt to patent the same invention.
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First, let me say thanks for trying to have a reasonable and non-torch and pitchfork carrying conversation on the subject. Now then...
From what I understand, prior art has increased in scope. Where before the only prior art that counted was other patens or scientific publications.
Not exactly, though it has been broadened somewhat.
Now any kind of publishing is prior art, if anything was published before the patent application in first to file, the patent is dead.
This is actually how it has been. Anything that was "generally accessible to the public" in the US counted as prior art, e.g., public use or sales, publications, etc. It used to be that public use outside the didn't count as prior art, although publications and papers outside the US did. Now public use anywhere counts.
Sittin
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This was filed in 2010.
What was your point again?
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Steve manages to commit his perfidious deeds from beyond the grave. What a fiend!
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If the best you can say of Apple is, "Hey, they're only about equally bad with Edison!", then that speaks volumes. What's next? If China invades Taiwan, will you be chiding us for talking about that instead of Alexander the Great?
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So what if President Assad has had over 2,000 civilians killed now? Hitler killed millions, why aren't you talking about him!!!! How dare the news engage in such anti-Assad trolling!
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The difference is that all the patents filed by Edison are now expired and no longer matter.
Also, its unfair to compare a rather vague design patent (like the ones Apple are using to sue Samsung over its Galaxy Tab) to patents for something as fundamental as the light bulb.
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1) What ideas have they stolen? Do you still believe the myth about Jobs' visit to Xerox? Without bothering to check why Xerox' suit was thrown out? (Apple had paid for access to the tech, unlike Microsoft when Bill Gates went there.)
2) Innovators/inventors should patent their ideas, Apple included. If you want to attack ridiculous patents, go for the XOR cursor patent instead.
3) "Cannot innovate and are losing the tech battle" how exactly? Because they don't bother with a numbers game or wait with implemen
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