Apple loses iPhone patent lawsuit A jury in the US District Court in Delaware has ruled that Apple infringed on three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas LLC of Chevy Chase, MD. "We're very pleased," MobileMedia CEO Larry Horn told Bloomberg. "We think it's justified." MobileMedia Ideas, reports the Los Angeles Times, is a patent holding company formed by Sony …
No mistake, each of the jurors left the court and were observed making calls on bright yellow phones. When confronted the jury Forman commented ," so it's a new Nokia win8 phone, I won it in a raffle, though I don't remember buying any tickets, but look 10 years worth of free calls!"
You forget they are ALL at it - the stakes are too high not to. Everyone wants to patent anything on the slight off-chance they can claim it's being infridged years later. Often they have not even used the technology - we might as well go around patenting most of the stuff in Star Trek as one day it may come true.
Do you mean slate like portable input devices that can be activated by either touch, a stylus or by voice command?
Or perhaps does that open automatically as you open them (with or without the swoosh noise).
Or perhaps you were referring to the flat screen computer terminals that double as both display and input device.
Replicator, One Guinness Cold.
Ah, but Gene Rodenbury did patent most the technology ideas and then bequeathed them to the general public in his will as wanted people to have the chance to deevlop upon them. Alas the look and feel are a different matter resulting in their holder (is it Sony or Time Warner) threatening anyone who make anything even close to resembling the look.
Don't forget the stunning "turn page" patent, which freed the human race from thousands of years of bewilderment trying to figure out exactly how to use those mystifying pieces of paper bound together as "books".
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/19/3659382/apple-design-patent-on-virtual-page-turn
And let's not forget their recent amazing innovation, surely at Nobel prize level in its dazzling breakthrough, again enlightening all mankind together by inventing the "leaf" - that's right, at last we have a name for those puzzling little things no-one had thought of before which covered trees.
http://www.techtree.com/content/news/2227/apple-patents-leaf-patenting-rectangle.html
Round corners? Fuck 'em - there's loads more of this hilariously desperate shit coming as Android eats their lunch.
While this is certainly Apple getting a taste of their own "obvious" medicine and watching them lose at their own game gives a warm fuzzy feeling, the patents in question are still rediculous.
The two regarding incoming calls basically boil down to: phone receives call and displays contextual tasks, user selects the task (accept/reject) to perform.
True, Sony and Nokia land-grabbed these concepts in the 90's, but seriously, what else would you do with a phone that receivse incoming calls?
I agree with the poster below that says that almost all IT patents are obvious or prior art. It's just land-grabbing and patent trolling. The system is still broken and this is still just irrelevant numbers being batted from one corporation to the next.
So Nokia sues Apple, Apple settles for millions, and then Nokia sues Apple again through another company they created together with Sony?
Btw, for the others who are loving MobileMedia over this - get ready, your favourite company's turn will come soon. RIM is already in court with them.
>Unless that company is already doing the right thing and paying the licence fee.
>Not every company has the morals of Apple you know!!!
Doubtless many do or reach agreements - but this if this is the same Larry Horn of MPEG_LA, Apple are also using him to play the other side of the coin when it suits.
that those 'merkin courts don't seem to talk to each other.
Like this it will take decades until all judges had a case of overwhelmingly obvious morosity and learned to just kick them out.
Mind you, I did snigger a bit at the creators of the leaf-adorned-rounded-corner-device-unlocking slider having a taste of their own medicine.
No - I think you'll find we know the difference between a patent troll and a company suing another company over completely obvious and trivial patents that should never have been granted... there isn't one.
IF Apple's patents were really novel and non trivial then they might get more support... I suggested the notion of changing pages of a electronic newspaper by swiping with a finger at a Science Fiction convention in 1988... there is now way anything as obvious as that should be patentable.
"people who don't know the difference between a patent troll, a non-praticing entity who only holds pieces of paper to sue others with "
Yeah because a joint venture between Sony and Nokia is obviously nothing but a fly by nighter patent troll. After all its not like Sony or Nokia would have any products that might use those patents would they?
*slaps forehead at the stupidity of fanbois*
So you notice every room you walk in smells of brainfarts from the ignorant? Those brainfarts are your own - please get a clue and stop stinking up the conversation in here...
"Those brainfarts are your own - please get a clue and stop stinking up the conversation in here..."
While the brainfarts may be his or not - there is no conversation in here. This is so far all just apple bashing. (This may be deserved, but don't kid yourself).
"In a communication terminal device, the connecting state of a call can certainly and easily be controlled without learning troublesome operating methods which are different depending on the connecting state of a call by providing controller for displaying processing items available to a call a display and controlling the call into the connecting state corresponding to the processing item which is selected and determined by the user's operation of an input unit, the user can control the connecting state of the call by merely selecting the desired processing item. "
Have you read that first patent? How about that being thrown out in '96 because it wasn't even written in english? No time for me to moan about the others... that train isn't going to catch itself.
...is not only obvious, but probably also the only sane way to do it.
It's worth following the link. The patent describes a system that examines the caller's ID, compares it against a list provided by the phone's owner, and rejects the calls coming from people the owner doesn't want to talk to.
OK, so if we accept that this isn't the most obvious implementation possible (a big if) then presumably the court feels there are other criteria for rejection that phone manufacturers can use instead. Perhaps they could reject every third call, or calls from numbers with a 6 in them, or all calls on Wednesdays, or...
> Welcome to innovation in the 21st century.
The call rejection one was filed in 1998, for starters.
Prior to this, the 8110 (Banana/Matrix phone) was released (my first phone). In it you were allowed to assign profiles to entries in your contacts list - among the profile types was "silent" - i.e. you wouldn't know they were calling. Personally, I'd put the rejection patent as a potentially obvious extension of this - although it reads as if the patent is actually on a standards implementation of a feedback mechanism to the calling party within the paging response on call setup attempt, I'm guessing it's an IE in a call setup reject message and so doesn't fall into the scope of a standards essential patent.
Having a quick rummage on the 3GPP standards website at standard 04.08 (the GSM standard detailing call setups and whatnot) and you can find that there was already a cause field prior to the filing of this patent that would specify a call is rejected by the end user - I'm guessing historically this was activated manually by pressing the "hang up" button when you received a call.
The specific field is:
"H.1.9 Cause No. 21 "call rejected"
This cause indicates that the equipment sending this cause does not wish to accept this call, although it could have accepted the call because the equipment sending this cause is neither busy nor incompatible"
In context, combining the "silent" profile with this aspect of the standard gets you this patent - personally I would agree with Apple that it is a tad obvious as all you are doing is automating an existing process. But then IANAPatent Examiner, merely a lowly telecoms engineer.
I agree that it is rather delicious that Apple are suffering this way, though... Their petard seems to be a bit hoisted.
"The call rejection one was filed in 1998, for starters.
Prior to this, the 8110 (Banana/Matrix phone) was released"
This would be the Nokia 8110, then. That would be the same Nokia that then patented the call rejection system, yes?
You do realise that turning the ringer off isn't the same as rejecting the call, don't you? Well, obviously not, but still: They aren't even close. With the former, the connection is still made and you can't make or receive other calls until the existing call is ended. The latter rejects the connection so your phone is available to be used.
Doesn't validate the patent: This is just to correct a misconception.
I'm not saying it's the same thing, merely a logical extension of existing functionality.
Actually, with both systems the connection is made in the control plane. The difference is in the rejection plane the phone signals an explicit reject with a particular setting to the Cause information element in the paging response message.
Also, you are still able to take calls with a call up - it's called "call waiting" and it's a feature that's been around for just as long
I'm not going to defend the validity of the patent since I have rather mixed views on patents, especially with regards to software. Though to be completely fair, before the phone system became at least partially digital, there was no way to screen calls prior to answering. I only glossed over the abstract of the patent, not the full explanation, but there is a bit of novelty to the patent in being able to reject a call without first answering it.
That said, I personally do not agree with any sort of software patent and feel that software should be protected by copyrights and trade secrets alone. But eh, what's my opinion worth?
was no way to screen calls prior to answering
Usually called the Secretary who held in their hands a list of people allowed to talk to the boss. Oh wait. Just because you have replaced a know function with the same function, but with new technology, thats worth a patent? Suppose it must be true, 'cos how else would Apple get a patent on a slide bolt.
Beer and upvote for this, starve the patent world of oxygen. Regardless of the result of this one case, patents are clearly no longer serving real, original creators of novel ideas in the way they should.
Ever since companies started counting number of patents registered as a marketing tool has this been broken.
Of course it's only about the money - what the hell else do you expect it to be about?
Whether they get the money by stopping Apple using the patented technology which enables them to sell more devices, or whether they get damages or whether they agree a back-dated license arrangement it's still always only about the money!
...riding on some road back in the days of Wild West.
- Jim, I bet you wouldn't eat your horse's dung for a hundred bucks!
- For a hundred bucks, John, I betcha I would!
So he does, getting his buck... and they continue riding.
- John, I bet a hundred, that ya wouldn't eat dung yourself, now would ya?
- Course I would!
So he does, gets 100 bucks and they continue riding.
- Eh... Jim... don't you think we just ate dung for nothing?
Nice, but they are called lawyers to day. They never take any part in inventing or developing anything in the big firms they work for. They are so well paid that those big companies feel they are important. They are well dressed good speaking, honest (sorry) and they feel they (rightfully) have to do something important to earn the money they get. But, as the modern cowboys they are, they never eat dung. Dung is for you and me and the companies who have become so dependent of them.
As for modern, I am not so sure though. Was it Swift, perhaps, who wrote about this (fairly) poor woman who had five cows. The bastards too three and her lawyer took the rest.
Of course, I referred to companies as cowboys in this parable. Lawyers would be horses then (in the best case), and dung would be software patents. The sooner the companies realize they get no net long-run profit from eating... sorry... abusing software patents, the better for them (and us).
Let me see, so Apple is a "troll" because they assert the right to patents they have registered and actually used in shipping products that have made Apple the richest company on the planet??? The business model of Apple is to sell a gajillion units of desirable gadgets to consumers and make a lot of money.
I think you have it all wrong.
A patent troll in any common sense view, is a company that acquires patents and asserts their ownership via litigation against companies that actually produce things that use said patents. In other words, the business model of a patent troll is monetising patents.
It requires a perverse Apple hatred to conflate "Apple" and "patent troll", but as usual, it is frothing away here at the register, where the decline in average intelligence of the human race is on show for all to see.
Apple did not have a patent on rounded corners
Congratulations for not letting facts interfere with you opinion.
Patent D670286, granted 6th November 2012. CLAIM: The ornamental design for a portable display device, as shown and described.
If you think that SII looks blatantly like an iPhone then I suggest that you procure professional support from Mssrs Dolland and Aitchison, Specsavers or that ilk.
If you'd like to get a true definition of blatant, I suggest that you review the following, note even the textured back:
http://phandroid.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/samsung_galaxy_s_ii_official.jpg
http://teletimesinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Huawei-Ascend-P1-2.jpg
In the first 10 seconds I notice a dozen separate design elements that are different.
These two devices are "copies" of each other only if you are blind in one eye and cannot see from the other.
Try harder, though that seems like a request unlikely to be able to be honoured.
Has anyone done a serious analysis of how much e.g. microsoft, apple actually spend on producing their software/hardware vs:
- filing/contesting perverse patents like these ones
- advertising
- astroturfing
- leveraged buyouts of firms that used to do something useful
- tax dodging
- blah whatever those dudes in suits are supposed to be doing
I mean seriously, I could have re-skinned debian and ordered a crate of dell laptops painted white from some chinese factory in like, a week..... (cf psystar)
Troll or not, Apple has infringed patents held by someone else.
And this isn't the first time. A while back, they had to cough up money for using the patented intellectual property of a Swiss photographer, the Swiss railways, and a company called VirtnetX.
And it came out in the VirtnetX trial that Apple's engineers and designers develop Apple shiny without a single care about other people's IP.
You said it's wrong to steal, Mr. Cook?
Then you won't have any trouble with the courts agreeing to that against you.
...Apple's engineers and designers develop Apple shiny without a single care about other people's IP.''
Blame the US courts for that state of affairs. Sadly a court (not SCOTUS) held that by doing a search one became an "intentional" patent infringer, rather than merely an infringer. Or some such rubbish ...
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