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It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

lodsys.com

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Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#21

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #15
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lodsys say that Apple, Microsoft and Google are "licensed", but they don't make clear whether those companies actually paid for a licence, or if they were granted it freely by Lodsys as part of a PR campaign to make them look bad for abandoning their developers.

Lodsys don't care about making Apple look bad. They're patent trolls, they care about making money. If anything they'd want to avoid upsetting Apple because the minute Apple's legal and financial muscle gets involved things are a lot lot harder if you're Lodsys.

Not if Apple's "financial muscle" decides it's easier/quicker/cheaper to buy Lodsys out than to let the uncertainty hang over their developer community. They're fairly clearly communicating "we are only in this for the money" in their blog posts. They clearly have been thinking of the best way for them to make money from these patents (which IV used to own but clearly didn't feel they could profitably licence or sue on the basis of) and creating PR problems for Apple that can be solved at a high price seems pretty good to me.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#22

Post by bruce511 »

maqr wrote: post #16

> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. It's pretty hard to drill on someone else's land, use someone else's music in a production, or use someone else's logo without realizing it. Software patents are nothing like this. Software pat…

>> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product.

> Software patents would be more akin to it being patented for an oil company to drill with a very hard diamond bit

It's even worse than that.

If you want to drill for oil on some land, then you need to get rights to drill on _that land_. A software patent though prevents you from drilling on _any_ land. It's not a right to the oil that's in question, it's a right to drill at all. A software patent is akin to "we've patented searching for oil". No wait, why stop there, let's patent "Digging a hole in the ground". You wanna plant a tree over there? Yeah, sure, digging a hole to put it in is kinda obvious, but I've got the patent on digging holes.

The problem with patents is when they move from patenting a "true invention" (and yes, that could be software, like say a better compression algorithm) to patenting the "obvious". therein lies the rub - who determines the legal standard for "obvious". Is Bitblt'ing obvious? Is Public-Private-Keys? Is buying-something-with-a-click?

Given the impossibility of defining the "obvious" I'm in favor of just dropping the whole sorry mess, and going back to the days when _machines_ were protected, the implementation of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Yes programs are copyrighted, but not code-snippets.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#23

Post by jonbro »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #10
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that but it's not just Apple that's being talked about - they've pointed out that Google and Microsoft have also licensed the technology and other large companies such as HP have been contacted about the fact that they haven't. This isn't an Apple issue, this is an industry wide issue. Apple owning the patent would make the issue go away for Apple but it might actually make it worse for other app stores (if A…

Lodsys say that Apple, Microsoft and Google are "licensed", but they don't make clear whether those companies actually paid for a licence, or if they were granted it freely by Lodsys as part of a PR campaign to make them look bad for abandoning their developers.

I didn't realize how true this was, in reading this page this morning, I decided that he was just lying about Google, Apple and MS licensing the patent, of course they don't need to do anything for him to grant them license. It would probably be good for him to show some proof of the license, but I don't expect him to.

Also, at the percentages that he is seeking, how much does he truthfully expect to get out of something like pCalc. I don't know how much it is selling, but I kinda expect that it is a bit south of 1Mil.

Is there any resolution to this situation in a similar way that EA games shut down the "Edge" trademark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games). I hope so.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#24

Post by adamc »

adestefan wrote: post #19
maqr wrote: post #16

> Oil companies do not drill on land where they don’t have the rights. Movies aren’t released that don’t clear all the music rights. Clothing manufacturers license logos from Disney or the NFL to include them in their product. It's pretty hard to drill on someone else's land, use someone else's music in a production, or use someone else's logo without realizing it. Software patents are nothing like this. Software pat…

Please don't think that this is only a software issue. There's patent abuse in every industry. The problem is with the implementation of the patent system, not the idea.

If the idea can't be implemented with the kind of patent examiners we are likely to get, or with the resources one could reasonably expect, then there's a problem with the idea.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#25

Post by kabdib »

extension wrote: post #17

"This ideation, as expressed in the patent, enabled a building block for others to build on and create more value." And right in the next paragraph... "Many industries study the IP landscape prior to releasing a product or service and either design around or acquire necessary patent rights if they need them to do their solution." So we need to hire lawyers to research whether we are inadvertently building on the idea…

Big companies tell all new employees: DO NOT GO LOOKING AT PANTENTS. Because if you read a patent, and you knowingly infringe, it's triple damages.

The system is broken. You can't know what is patented because it's too bleeping risky to even look.

There is no "teaching." All you can do is build up a war chest and rattle paper at people who try to come after you.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#26

Post by jcromartie »

"Dan Abelow is an independent inventor who visualized/created metaphors, documented for the world to see (in exchange for exclusivity) and created value for doing so."

Dan Abelow sounds like a self-aggrandizing jerk when he talks about himself in the third person.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#27

Post by mechanical_fish »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #7
sudhirj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I find it disturbing that they haven't already issued a statement about this - I would have thought they'd scramble to get out a statement saying that they're aware of the situation and are considering options.

Only in magical HN land do companies "scramble" to address issues like this. The best thing to do is to pretend these companies don't exist and you've never heard of them, their patents, or what they're up to. Once your patent lawyers have had time to study what's going on, then you're ready to do something. It's not "disturbing" at all. It's just common sense.

Yes. It is quite possible that Apple's patent lawyers are scrambling. It's just that scramble-speed in legal land is weeks, not hours.

Lawyers can read and write at superhuman speed, but it still takes time to prepare all that material and do all that research. It's not a field that rewards those who shoot from the hip.

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#28

Post by beseku »

sudhirj wrote: post #3

What happens if all the iOS developers gang up and file a class action suit to have the patents reconsidered?

I heard on some podcast or other that there is a clause in the iOS developer term that expressly forbids developers from acknowledging that any of the IP they use ISNT Apples? If that is the case then the iOS terms are preventing the developers from settling and the ball is surely in Apple's court.

Any devs got the terms handy?

Re: It’s only a few lines of code, or a button… pay up

#29

Post by barrym »

jcromartie wrote: post #26

"Dan Abelow is an independent inventor who visualized/created metaphors, documented for the world to see (in exchange for exclusivity) and created value for doing so." Dan Abelow sounds like a self-aggrandizing jerk when he talks about himself in the third person.

I'm not sure it's written by Dan Abelow - http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/13/honan-lodsys and http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-i...
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