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Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

venturebeat.com

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Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#51

Post by Niten »

flocial wrote: post #23
rickdale wrote: post #13

I really think Apple needs to take a page from Google's book here and adopt the 'don't be evil' philosophy. This is very disappointing to me because I see Apple like a tennis player who can tell you where he is going to hit the ball, yet still beat you there every time. I think they should welcome the competition and view copycats with pride. You don't get it right all the time.

Well I think they remember all too well what happened last time with PC wars. This time they're playing for keeps.

That they tried to exert too much control over their platform and lost out to competitors who could offer more choice and better value? Yes the same thing has happened here, but the answer is not for Apple to abuse the legal system as a substitute for competing on the merits of their product.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#52

Post by mbreese »

piotrSikora wrote: post #33
markokocic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only big, the biggest one. But given increase in costs (MS tax, now Apple tax, tomorrow who knows) at some point it could be more cost effective for HTC to stop paying anyone and just not sell in the states. WO patents are much harder to get and very expensive to keep, so no big problem there.

> Not only big, the biggest one. Statistics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_... ) would disagree with you.

I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a market.

If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a company would care about: profits.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#53

Post by gnaffle »

adbge wrote: post #47
raganwald wrote: post #32

There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken? I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is usin…

> Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. Apple actually does comparatively little spending on R&D when contrasted with the likes of Microsoft or even Google. [1] When it comes to design, it's well known that Apple is of the mentality that good design is something recognizable and, that being the case, they don…

I don't see how [2] says anything about whether Apple invests in HCI research. Whether they do market research or customer research is a completely different matter.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#54

Post by mbreese »

Niten wrote: post #51
flocial wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think they remember all too well what happened last time with PC wars. This time they're playing for keeps.

That they tried to exert too much control over their platform and lost out to competitors who could offer more choice and better value? Yes the same thing has happened here, but the answer is not for Apple to abuse the legal system as a substitute for competing on the merits of their product.

I'm pretty sure Apple learned a different lesson...

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#55

Post by inkaudio »

adbge wrote: post #47
raganwald wrote: post #32

There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken? I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is usin…

> Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products. Apple actually does comparatively little spending on R&D when contrasted with the likes of Microsoft or even Google. [1] When it comes to design, it's well known that Apple is of the mentality that good design is something recognizable and, that being the case, they don…

Apple is in comparatively less markets then Microsoft and Google so it would make sense that they could spend comparatively less then Microsoft & Google in R&D.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#56

Post by Bungholio »

raganwald wrote: post #32

There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system broken? I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect to the first point, Apple is usin…

So if Apple are against software patents (IIRC this is their official stance) then that leaves us having to believe what they say and not what they do.

BTW, why is it Google's responsibility to "spend billions dismantling the patent system"?

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#57

Post by piotrSikora »

mbreese wrote: post #52
piotrSikora wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only big, the biggest one. Statistics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_... ) would disagree with you.

I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a market. If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a company would care about: profits.

Yes, I totally agree with you... But do you have access to such data?

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#58

Post by Bungholio »

kiiski wrote: post #11
markokocic wrote: post #10

US patents can't be enforced outside of the USA. Why not just ignore US market and go on with the product in the rest of the world?

US market is kinda big.

The U.S. market is kinda shrinking (relatively, at least). Do you think the new, rising economies are going to embrace these U.S. rules?

From a purely selfish point of view (European software developer) I say bring it on, saddling U.S. software companies with these ridiculous rules should eventually make my life easier competing against them. I'll quite happily infringe these "patents" and sell my good outside the U.S.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#59

Post by orangecat »

econgeeker wrote: post #41
sek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are abusing the patent system to push competitors out of the market. They used a trivial patent to do this, these things are not valid in Europe. These things are not a problem for the real innovation guys the USA likes so much. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2729720

If you don't like the patent system, I have a sympathetic ear. I have issues with it as well. I've yet to see any proposals for an alternative, though, and an alternative would require amending the constitution. If you're going to abuse the system to push competitors out of the market, you can do this with every competitor. Apple has not sued RIM, Palm, Microsoft, or any of the feature phones that -- from an abusive,…

There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement.

Nope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_%28KE850%29, among several others. Apple took an existing idea and executed it well. By your standards, they should be sued out of existence.

Calling this "abuse" communicates to me that you think when it comes to software, people should be able to copy whatever they want.

If by "copy" you mean "create products with similar functionality without copying code", then essentially yes. Otherwise we'd end up with one spreadsheet, one browser, one touchscreen phone, and we'd still be on Friendster.

Re: Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary

#60

Post by mamp »

cageface wrote: post #50

We've all seen this but people seem to forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU Steve himself: "We have been shameless about stealing great ideas". It's sad to see him now, reduced to these tactics.

I think Steve is particularly pissed about Android. Consider that Eric Schmidt stayed in the board of Apple during the development of the iPhone without declaring a conflict of interest while Google were secretly developing Android. I imagine that apple vs android is personal. Basically google had a head start because of this inside information.
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