Apple Loses Patent Case For FaceTime Tech, Owes $368 Million 139
beeudoublez writes "Apple was ordered to pay $368 million today to a software company named VirnetX over patents related to Apple's FaceTime technology. Apple engineers testified they didn't pay attention to any patents when building FaceTime. 'The jury, which had sat through the five-day trial, ruled that Apple infringed two patents: one for a method of creating a virtual private network (VPN) between computers, and another for solving DNS security issues. ... It's not the first time VirnetX has won a payout from a major tech firm: the company bagged $105.7m from Microsoft two years ago, and it may not be the last either. VirnetX has a separate case against Apple pending with the International Trade Commission and it has court cases against Cisco, Avaya and Siemens scheduled for trial next year.'"
It's not all bad news for Apple today, though — according to Ars, they've won a new patent for a rounded rectangle (D670,286).
So f*cked up (Score:5, Insightful)
The Patent Office should be dismantled (along with the TSA)
Re:So f*cked up (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I dislike Apple - for being patent trolls and bullies - it makes me sick to my stomach this happened to them. I mean I enjoy the suffering and all, it's just a really bad thing for the tech world in general. The patent trolling, not Apple suffering.
Re:So f*cked up (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple suffering over this, means *we all* suffer. To Apple, this is just raising the bar to market entry. $368 millions is peanuts to them. Effectively, this just means a steep artificial fee at the troll gate, which effectively supports the dinosaurs just fine. They don't care that they're sucking the life-blood of the economy. So if reform should start somewhere, it should start with the law and financials.
Re:So f*cked up (Score:5, Insightful)
In this particular case Apple suffering may help us all.
Remember the famous patent troll of recent past Amazon? Now Amazon is actually starting to suggest patents are going overboard and trolls need to be shut down. If Apple gets on the losing end of enough of these battles they may actually join hands with Amazon and *gasp* Samsung when they've had enough to lobby to fix the problem.
Until then troll them and the other patent troll companies until they have a change of heart.
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Re:So f*cked up (Score:5, Informative)
Fine.
Patent abuser then.
Let the trolls attack the abusers.
Re:So f*cked up (Score:5, Insightful)
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Incorrect. A patent owner is under no obligation to license. In fact, the whole point of the patent is to give a limited term monopoly. The revenue source of a patent troll is through legal actions based on forced licensing or settlements of patents it has acquired. This is not the same as pure IP companies that develop technologies for others to license but do not produce any products or services themselves, such as ARM and MIPS.
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In fact, the whole point of the patent is to give a limited term monopoly.
In exchange for making the invention public. One would assume that making the invention public isn't intended to prevent competition altogether.
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Incorrect. A patent owner is under no obligation to license. In fact, the whole point of the patent is to give a limited term monopoly. The revenue source of a patent troll is through legal actions based on forced licensing or settlements of patents it has acquired.
The legal professionals running the legal system have chosen to implement certain text in the Constitution in this fashion. Just because the legal professionals running the legal system have chosen to implement a certain part of the Constitution in a particular way, does not mean that they necessarily have the legitimate authority to do so.
Recall that once upon a time, legal professionals in parts of the USA authorized children of African-Americans to be enslaved: do we wish to consider this an act that t
Re:So f*cked up (Score:4, Informative)
Patent troll [wikipedia.org] is only applicable to companies who lobby patent suits but don't make things; usage stretching behind that is sloppy terminology. The reason for that distinction is that patent troll companies are normally a non-practising entity (NPE), which lets them sue without fear of a counter-suit. That's what makes them so troublesome. When Apple and Samsung battle, ultimately both have products covered by patents held by the other. While Apple may not like licensing their patents, it's possible for them to be forced into cross-licensing with another company that builds real products, or both companies can be deadlocked and unable to sell. That possibility isn't there on a true patent troll company. They only sue for infringement and never need to license to cover their own products, because they don't have any.
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Do you know what a patent troll is?
Let's clear that up right now. The proper technical term for what Apple and Amazon do is "Patent Thuggery". Let's not get sidetracked on issues of whether they practice their patents or not, but whether or not they are thugs.
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I agree that there's a growing opinion in the industry that things need to change, but I don't think this is the solution. If lawmakers form their policies by only observing the words and actions of major corporations, they will in turn enact policies that favor the same large organizations while in the meantime, the small businesses and start-ups that don't have the capital to start out will get drowned out. In effect, we'll be back where we were in the 90s and early 2000s (if it hasn't even yet stopped) w
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Apple suffering over this, means *we all* suffer. To Apple, this is just raising the bar to market entry. $368 millions is peanuts to them. Effectively, this just means a steep artificial fee at the troll gate, which effectively supports the dinosaurs just fine. They don't care that they're sucking the life-blood of the economy. So if reform should start somewhere, it should start with the law and financials.
Its always hillarious when I see people on the internet try and give some grade school armchair comment and it just falls completely flat and makes absolutely no insight at all. Its just a bunch of blubbering that somehow sounds intelligent, savvy and informative in their heads while to everyone else its not much more than charlie browns teacher could muster.
And for the record, if you think ANYONE anywhere in the world regardless of how rich or poor they are would say "360 million? Thats peanuts" then you a
not quite (Score:4, Interesting)
live by the sword, die by the sword.
Patent trolls suck, but apple has no defense against being victimized for it when they're trying to do the exact same thing. In fact, apple is worse because they have billions of dollars to shut down entire companies with. A troll does not.
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Of course, the problem is that pretty much every major company has to get involved in patent lawsuits.
Microsoft has been in and out of litigation for decades. Motorolla is in there playing.
I'm pretty sure if you started a new company to make a product, you wouldn't get anywhere in a lot of cases, because you'd be sued as soon as you started making any money.
It's hard not to see this as general stupidity of the whole system -- and I no longer care if they're supposed to be the good guys or the bad guys. Th
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No, they don't. It's a perception, which has been proven wrong by courts almost continually, if people read what courts actually say.
Whether it's potentially lucrative in the short term only? Yes. Have courts basically disallowed it in general? Also yes.
I'm staying out of development when it comes to technology because I know any ideas I have will make me be sued off my ass before I can even start a busine
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Name one lawsuit that has been initiated by Google?
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still waiting for an example of something that's not a response to getting sued by someone else. As in - google actually doing patent shakedowns, etc.
Google count = 0.
With apple, MS, oracle? There are plenty.
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This company would still be suing Apple, if Apple decided not to sue Samsung.
Moron.
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they are in no way trying to stop Apple from making products
If the sum of the royalties due to all the different patent holders exceeds the difference between wholesale and cost of goods sold, then yes, they are trying to stop Apple from making products.
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Apple isn't competing on price, and arguably never have. If the costs were raised $XX per unit to cover some license, they'd pass it along, and I don't think I'm being unrealistic in that most people in the market for an Apple device would not change their mind. While, yes, customers do like a deal and would grumble about paying more, but if Apple customers were shopping on price, they would have turned towards more commodity-priced hardware alternatives.
Royalty as a percentage of wholesale (Score:2)
If the costs were raised $XX per unit to cover some license, they'd pass it along
Unless the royalties are a percentage of a product's wholesale price. If enough patent holders come out of the proverbial woodwork to bid up the royalty total to 90 percent of wholesale, it'll be kind of hard to pass along a tenfold price increase.
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live by the sword, die by the sword.
Patent trolls suck, but apple has no defense against being victimized for it when they're trying to do the exact same thing. In fact, apple is worse because they have billions of dollars to shut down entire companies with. A troll does not.
I can't name one company that Apple shut down due to patent trolling. Can you?
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how you use the money matters - in apple's case, using it to shut down competition (antitrust) is worse than extortion. Even in the cases of extortion companies can still survive.
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Re:So f*cked up (Score:5, Informative)
That's a design patent, which really has little to do with "real" patents. It's closer to a trademark than a normal patent.
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Sorry, but if you're being attacked, a design patent is very similar to a real patent. You're guilty if you infringe even if you didn't know about it, the limits of what is covered is vague and intentionally obscured, penalties can be huge, and defending yourself is rediculously expensive.
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So true. The fact that they ignore the patents of others while completely ignoring those of others should honestly have a negative impact on their case when they attack other companies. Sad that it hasn't....
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I sometimes root for the Cubs.
cheers,
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Apple is hardly clean of any of this as well with the way they've been throwing their weight around as well.
If anything, everyone involved needs to be dragged into the street and told to knock it off before kneecaps start getting busted. Sadly there's too much money to be made, by all involved, for that to happen.
But dont pretend Apple is innocent in any of it, just makes you out to be a shill instead of having some kind of actual point.
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Say what you will about Apple, but without them we'd still be the slaves of the cell carriers
You must live in an alternate universe or something. You can get Apple phones from where? Huh, only place I can find is from the same carriers you seem to be claiming Apple freed someone from. They had the Apple fans enslaved exclusively to AT&T for quite a while. The only thing Apple is doing is adding another layer of enslavement to Apple.
Lets see. I can get unlocked Google, Samsung and Motorola phones from all over. I can get phone service for many of their phones from Ting where they even have a for
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Except that Apple saved its customers from the worst of AT&T. Carriers would love to sell you a subsidized phone with crapware on it, locked down so you had to pay them to do anything with it, with small and expensive data plans. By buying an iPhone, I get a subsidized phone with relatively little crapware, immense numbers of things I can buy cheaply without paying AT&T, and a good data plan. I still have to deal with carrier limitations and customer disservice, but I can get my phone looked at
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I don't think the patent office should be dismantled. But there needs to be some reform.
All we see here on Slashdot and the rest of the media are large corporations and law firms abusing the system. We don't see any stories about the lone inventor working in his garage, patenting his invention, starting a company, and creating lots of jobs while getting rich. Dean Kamen comes to mind as an example of the patent system and the American Inventor dream working - as far as I can tell.
So, please let's not throw
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Don't patents already expire after ~18 years now, or was it extended?
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All patents older than 20 years should be eliminated
Since patents only last 20 years, all patents older than 20 years have already been eliminated.
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"A functional system for promoting invention and avoiding all the piles of crap that stifle innovation". Add a block diagram and it sounds like you've got yourself a patent right there.
I've always wanted to file a business process patent for patent trolling, and then sue all the patent troll companies for violating it.
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Require the patent holder to swear an oath that there is no prior art and that the patent is valid when registering the patent. Then if it is invalidated, imprison him.
That should cut down on the number of applications.
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All we see here on Slashdot and the rest of the media are large corporations and law firms abusing the system. We don't see any stories about the lone inventor working in his garage, patenting his invention, starting a company, and creating lots of jobs while getting rich. Dean Kamen comes to mind as an example of the patent system and the American Inventor dream working - as far as I can tell.
But that's not what the patent system is supposed to be about. The purpose of the patent system is not to reward
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....except when it rules in favour of Apple, then you should send them gift baskets and puppies. I am sure you wanted to say.
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Apple and their patent wars (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple and their patent wars (Score:5, Insightful)
I took this picture while I was in Manhattan this summer [google.com]. I took the picture due to that saying, there was a part of me laughing hysterically at the glass houses thing.
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Apple has another motivation to protect their patents. All their competitors have valuable technology related patents, many of them essential for implementing mobile phone standards. Apple only has a bunch of design patents that it doesn't really want to license anyway and may be invalid, so are basically worthless to anyone else. That leaves them vulnerable to paying huge amounts of cash for the use of standards essential patents.
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It's too early to say whether Apple is heading for a wall, as many predict...
I don't think it is too early at all. Just scan the comments to media articles on Apple's recent product introductions. They are just full of comments of the form "I am an Apple fan, I have apple products X, Y and Z, I love them but I am not going buy this Apple product because I disagree with their patent suits, their profiteering on the backs of oppressed workers, and thumbing their noses at EPEAT." Oh, and "this thing costs too much". And "but I just bought the iPad 3, I'm so upset". Easy to verify, you
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Apple's stock has lost 20% of it's value in the last 6 weeks alone. This is, in monetary terms, a decrease of over $130bn in value:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL#symbol=aapl;range=20120917,20121107;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined [yahoo.com];
Their legal strategy is now beginning to fall apart and they've not innovated in over 2 years now, offering only minor updates on their products. It'll be interesting to see what happens regarding the appe
Schadenfreude? No so fast... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's good to see a patent pest get what's coming to 'em, but consider... the plaintiff was nothing more than a patent troll.
Personally, *ALL* software patents should die.
Good luck getting anyone in power to agree to that, though. :(
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Good luck getting anyone in power to agree to that, though.
How about this strategy:
1. Get major tech companies losing big bucks to patent cases.
2. Major tech companies bribe^H lobby congress to change the law so they won't lose big bucks again.
The effect of the trolls has been that there are now organizations with lots to lose, previously kept in check by Mutually Assured Destruction, that now have to actually deal with the patent concept that had previously been used only to smack down start-ups that refused to play nice with them.
Re: Robin Hood ? (Score:1)
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Yes, it's good to see a patent pest get what's coming to 'em, but consider... the plaintiff was nothing more than a patent troll.
Sorry man, but I just don't have it in me not to be happy about this turn of events.
This is, indeed, poetic justice. We should hope for more it.
Come on Obama! Patent reform! (Score:1)
Do some real business reforms and make everyone happy.
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That would require pissing off the people who paid for his reelection campaign, though he can't be reelected again so he might as well do something useful now.
Hell, Bush didn't give a fuck during his second term and it showed. I'm just hoping Obama actually cares a little bit and doesn't send us further down the shitter.
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Do some real business reforms and make everyone happy.
Fat chance of that happening.
At risk of sounding trollish, and no matter what your personal ideology on the matters, Obama got re-elected by pushing for as many niche issues as he possibly could - gay marriage, abortion, unions, you-name-it.
He's got enough to do towards keeping those constituencies happy (even though he's lame-duck, his party isn't), and isn't going to have much time towards doing anything beyond that and the day-to-day stuff.
Re:Come on Obama! Patent reform! (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama got re-elected by pushing for as many niche issues as he possibly could - gay marriage, abortion, unions, you-name-it.
How are any of those niche issues? Anyone who works has an interest in unions. All women and most Christians have an interest in abortion. 5% of the population is gay and again a large number of Christians seem to care about it.
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> All women and most Christians have an interest in abortion.
My favorite old saying: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
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How are any of those niche issues?
Easy - let me walk you through the issues mentioned first:
Anyone who works has an interest in unions.
Outside of governmental employees, union participation has dropped over the years, is most likely single-digit, and is getting smaller (as a percentage) every year in the private sector. QED: niche issue.
All women and most Christians have an interest in abortion.
Unless the US Supreme Court overturns itself, or a new constitutional amendment is made (good luck with either), this issue is immutable insofar as the federal government is concerned. Why would someone try to promote 'defending' an activity
Per an Ars comment (Score:3, Informative)
"Design patents are extremely narrow - you have to do your level best to copy them exactly in order to be found in infringement. Plus, they specifically cannot cover functionality - that has to be covered by a utility patent, if it's going to be protected. This design patent only protects a "portable display device" (that's the wording in the Patent itself), and only one with those specific design elements that are shown in the Patent Figures."
With this being the case I would imagine that you shouldn't see a lot of battles about this design patent unless someone is deliberately making counterfeit iPads (and by shouldn't I mean "but probably will").
Re:Per an Ars comment (Score:4, Informative)
Did you notice though, that the only part of the drawing that wasn't dotted lines was the shape? The speaker, the button, the I/O ports, even the depth were drawn in dotted lines, meaning those features weren't part of what was being patented. The only thing patented by the new patent was the basic shape of the top surface of the device. Once you consider that screen aspect ratio is going to dictate device ratio, and the fact that no one wants a 90 degree corner jabbing them in the thigh, you're pretty well guaranteed to be infringing if you make a tablet in that size range.
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I'm curious, Apple's got enough cash and not paying dividends to buy up Sharp now, and probably on the cheap when they fold, so why wouldn't they let that happen? I'm sure they would like to get their panels at cost and liquidate the rest of Sharp.
Are there any business majors in the house?
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You don't need to be a business major to see that a high margin business buying up a low margin business means lower margins. Never mind that Sharp doesn't make the best displays. But I'd love to see Tim Cook do this, to extend his string of blunders.
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Man, Sharp makes great displays. I had a 32" and it stunk like solvent which was a massive failure, but it was so fantastic I got rid of it and got a 52". What do you have against Sharp?
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You're probably right about that, Sharp TVs have a good rep though I never bought one because there always seemed to be a better deal around (LG last time). It seems Sharp's difficulties are on the production side. A one-two whammy with higher production costs than the Korean competition and a plummeting TV market. So let's revise this comment: how much sense does it make to buy a flat panel manufacturer that isn't competitive?
However you slice it, Apple burning its bridges with Samsung is one of the more d
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I'm curious, Apple's got enough cash and not paying dividends to buy up Sharp now, and probably on the cheap when they fold, so why wouldn't they let that happen? I'm sure they would like to get their panels at cost and liquidate the rest of Sharp.
Japan tends to be a fairly nationalist country, and they believe in lifetime employment. I don't think the Japanese government would be very happy with a US company buying a large Japanese conglomerate and laying off most of its employees just to get the one par
VirnetX is a real company (Score:3)
look it up, they have a few patents part of the LTE- Advanced spec where all voice will be data. their part of the patent pool is security for SIP
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Yes, it does seem to be a legitimate company with some history in non-consumer industries. The patents also seem to be in the name of the technical director, so its probably not fair to try to tag them as patent trolls. This could turn out to be a real problem for Apple unless they can get the patent(s) invalidated ... which I presume is something that M$ tried or at least considered. Of course the claim that the apple engineers didn't look into patents is just a bs argument to avoid triple damages. As lon
Legal Depo? (Score:2)
so sorry but... (Score:5, Interesting)
No matter who won (Score:2)
Please stop calling "design patents" "patents". (Score:5, Informative)
They are really more a kind of trademark registration. They deal only with appearance and never with utility.
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No. Don't stop calling them 'patents'. Because this one has 'brought to you by a patent lawyer' written all over it! It's as broad and vague in the scope as it can be. Look at the picture in TFA - the patent claims that the protected features on a 'portable display device' are the ones outlined by the unbroken line - and there's only one. It doesn't even mention proportions. Apple could claim infringement on any display device with a flat surface and rounded rectangular shape of any proportions.
If you look
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No. Don't stop calling them 'patents'. Because this one has 'brought to you by a patent lawyer' written all over it! It's as broad and vague in the scope as it can be.
Just because you don't understand design patents doesn't mean they're broad in scope or vague. For example, you note:
It doesn't even mention proportions.
... which implies that you believe that they should have mentioned specific lengths and widths. But, see 37 CFR 1.153: "No description, other than a reference to the drawing, is ordinarily required."
That's not necessary with a design patent. Rather, the proportions are the ones shown in a figure. Break out a ruler and a calculator, and that ratio is the proportion claimed. Deviate substantia
Ahah (Score:3)
In your FACE!!
rounded rectangle (Score:1)
Ironic that the patent claim has gfx in Quicktime (Score:1)
Didnr realize that QUicktime Format for graphics was acceptible. THis is getting about as ugly as Steve Jobs iYacht.
Open-source Facetime (Score:3)
Suddenly, it's becoming more clear why Apple did not, as they promised, release the information needed about the protocol to make third-party Facetime clients possible.
They didn't truly own the rights to the methods for the connection.
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Is there a coherent explanation anywhere of the "invention"? Their marketing fluff talks about secure-dns-vpns or some such nonsense, but none of the Facetime protocol analyses I've read found anything DNS or VPN related.
(Even the "demo" video on their website only had some handwaving b.s. about automatic-secure-dns-vpns and their multi-billion dollar licensing potential.)
Obvious to one skilled in the art (Score:1)
This is ridiculous. The fact that the Apple engineers developed FaceTime without looking at any patents should be proof that the patents do not reflect anything patentable. If another engineer independently invents the same technique, it clearly demonstrates that the invention is not non-obvious.
The patent holder should be required to demonstrate how these patents are not obvious to one skilled in the art, with the presumption being that separate invention invalidates the patent.
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Just because two smart people invent the same thing, does not mean that an invention is non-obvious. It means the invention is likely the best way to solve a particular problem.
Just because a problem has a "best way" to solve it; doesn't mean it is unpatentable. Look at the Carmack reverse, from Doom3 fame. Really good way of solving a particular problem; turns out; Carmack invented it completely independently of Creative. Does that mean it is obvious?
What? No apology? (Score:2)
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I need QuickTime to view the patent diagrams? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Those bastards in Texas again (Score:2)
From the article:
So once again this is the yahoos in the Eastern District of Texas imposing their draconian views on the whole country. Is Apple based in Texas? Is VirnetX? No. (They're based in Nevada, according to their website.) So why the hell was this trial held in Texas? Because the bastards know that by forum-shopping they
Rounded Rectangle Opportunity (Score:1)
I'll make billions selling pointy corners to Samsung and Google to avoid royalty fees.
Damn, Doritos beat me to filing. Never mind.
As much as I dislike Apple (Score:1)
Re:Trolls war. (Score:4, Funny)
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After we get done with laughing at Apple we will help them fight the patent trolls. After all, we don't need help from patent trolls to defeat thug Apple, Android is doing it nicely.
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Sounds like a trolls war, why should I worry..
Because a growing portion of your goods' retail prices are going to pay for this madness. ...or did you think that the corporations would simply eat the cost w/o passing it on?
.
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It's when a square dude eats too many fries.