Posts by cloudgazer 341 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jun 2011
Erm, yes it does - but keep thinking.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=encumbered+patent#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=%22frand+encumbered%22&pbx=1&oq=%22frand+encumbered%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=14990l25855l0l26271l30l16l5l7l8l1l255l2303l4.10.2l26l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=e77a90f121cf88b&biw=796&bih=582
No, not because it's essential - because Samsung took part in setting the standards such as UMTS which made them it essential - and as part of that made a commitment to license it under FRAND.
Apple has never sought to embed its IP in industry wide standards and so it isn't so encumbered.
Samsung got denied any chance of an injunction by a dutch judge, where the IP was under FRAND.
'today the Rechtbank's-Gravenhage (a Dutch court based in the city of The Hague) made it clear that Samsung won't be able to win an injunction against Apple's products based on standards-essential, FRAND-committed patents. As a result, Samsung's motions for preliminary injunctions against the iPhone 4S in France and Italy are also very likely to be denied, though the courts in those countries have the right to take different decisions than their Dutch counterpart.'
From Foss-patents.
'Soap AND warm water is needed for at least 10 seconds of vigourous rubbing after doing a wee'
Unless you have something significantly wrong with you such as a UTI, your pee will be sterile. Obviously it's good manners to wash your hands properly after peeing, but it's a far smaller deal than putting down the toilet lid before flushing from a bacterial perspective.
The law is what the law is, intentions don't matter. IP law is not supposed to benefit consumers in the short term anyway, it's supposed to benefit them in the long term by encouraging innovation by offering short term monopolies to innovative firms.
Whether it works or not is a political question, maybe we should change them, but today Apple, Samsung and friends have to play with the laws as they are right now.
why not link a picture of this tablet that looked so much like an IPad? From what I saw of windows tablets pre 2010 they looked utterly different from an iPad, they had big thick bezels rather than flush glass screens with borders for starters. The bezels had buttons and frequently ornamental insets.
Really really thin, or just officially really thin? The 10.1 is reported to be very slightly thinner than the iPad-2, .2mm thinner, but actual photographs show it as very slightly thicker.
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/03/25/samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-actually-thicker-than-ipad-2/
And reports have suggested that this is due to supply shortages, so that not all 10.1s sold are actually 8.6mm thick.
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-to-be-thicker-than-ipad-2-due-to-supply-shortage-10158766/
Typical samsung bait & switch.
If you created a new and recognisably different laptop enclosure design and were awarded a design patent on it, then that would be a reasonable question to ask. In fact if you held up a unibody MacBook and any other contemporary device - yes - it would be pretty easy to spot the difference, especially if you were a lawyer who's job it was to argue that such a difference was present!
For me it's new album releases from a few favourite bands, or new books from a few favourite authors. I'll buy those on the first day of availability - heck I'll sit eagerly by my computer waiting for the digital availability, or get up early for the delivery from amazon.
Just because somebody else is excited about something different to you doesn't make them sad. Actually sad/depressed people are the ones who get excited about nothing.
They do - this is just more sloppy reporting from El reg.
http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/2011/10/operators-claim-iphone-4s-sales-breaking-records/
'O2 claimed it had sold more iPhone 4S devices in the first hour of sales than the iPhone 4 handset in the same period when it was released last year. It also said white versions of the device were outselling black ones.'
the german ruling doesn't cover the EU, the preliminary ruling did, but then Samsung were able to get it reduced to just Germany. This was a technical ruling,
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/galaxy-tab-101-injunction-suspended-for.html
The EU-wide ruling is from the court in the Netherlands.
The Dianamania is a natural reaction to the passing of the man, because he shared a number of things with Diana.
He was mega-famous, up there with movie stars and rock stars.
He was also accessible to regular people. Answering emails, answering questions at the AGM, interacting with grunt level workers at Apple. Jobs clearly never forgot the day he got his break from Bill Hewlett.
He was charismatic, and we got a dose of that charisma every time he gave a keynote or an interview.
The combination is powerful, and results in people mourning a connection to a guy they never new, because they're mourning the connection that they might have made.
This all brings to mind the idea of the hierarchy of needs.
Borlaug was a giant, and he attended to the most important need of all - the need for food. But once people have had that need met, we don't appreciate it.
Those of us in the west with our 'first world probems' care more about the people helping us to meet our still unresolved needs.
While the Delai Lama isn't going to be starring in any Pride parades, he's not a homophobe, nor does he have a sky god (Buddhism doesn't have a creator god). I may not share his views about achieving enlightenment, or reincarnation, or oral sex, but that doesn't mean I think that he's a hateful man in the way that Pope Benedict is.
I haven't looked for a while but this was always the problem with the scanned out of copyright books from Google - there was a lot of noise in amongst the signal. So if you wanted 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' for example, it was easy to find, but relatively hard to find all 6 volumes from the same edition.
It's a great idea, and ultimately it will be transform the world of literature - but we're not quite there yet.
The big 5 publishing houses all switched eBooks to the so called agency model when iBooks was launched. This means that Google, Amazon and Apple all sell at the price that the publisher tells them to - they don't have any freedom.
Google won't end up being cheaper than Amazon due to competition, but neither will Amazon be cheaper due to volume. They'll both stay around the same - and they both have cross platform readers, so there's no particular lock-in with either of them.
'Samsung’s Mk. 2 Galaxy S is, depending on whose numbers you read and believe, the best-selling smartphone of 2011'
Hmm, I think you meant that to say 'the best selling smartphone released in 2011', because the way it's worded currently makes it seem like it's sold the most units in 2011, and that's just not true - as I'm sure you're aware.
You misunderstand how the WTO has changed international IP laws, read for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS
What you'll see is that the WTO has required all countries to create a patent system and enforce it, but that's not the same thing as making US patents suddenly applicable in every nation. If Apple, Oracle or Google patents a new invention - then they have 1 year to patent it in all other jurisdictions. After that year they can no longer get the patent in any other market, and they only have patent protection in the markets in which they've filed.
So if MS hasn't filed the key patents in India, then they cannot use them to sue an Indian company making products that are for the Indian market.
'so I guess you haven't heard about the apple fiasco a few months ago, about the iphone storing its location every while, for any app to see.'
It wasn't for any app to see, you don't have filesystem access with an iOS app, except to files created by your app or through certain API calls, some media files such as music. In order to breach privacy somebody would either need to hack and root your phone or a law enforcement type would need physical access to the handset.
Sorry, but this is an order of magnitude worse than Apple's location storing - which at least had a sensible purpose behind it. Remember, Google does exactly the same kind of location DB build up, but it does it all server side - which is in some ways better and in some ways much worse.
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