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rant/ Nothing instills rage in me more than companies, knowing how essential what they sell is, slagging each other for petty, pointless money. I hate to be dramatic, but these are disabled adults and children for christ's sake, people who need things like SfY. I just do not understand how someone at the litigating company thought "hey, let's go sue a company over some very complex and possibly unfounded patent alleg…
I get the fact that the way apple handled this is fairly standard, but it is still disheartening.
[1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/654641-apple-s-ceo-presents-...
" To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts , by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" - US Constitution Section 8 At the time of the writing of the Constitution something was needed to help spur innovation. It was written in the time of inventions like the cotton gin (easily copied 100x over by anyone who bought 1). But make no…
There are other alternatives. Have you ever wondered why bands are allowed to "cover" other bands music without any kind of prior permission? It is because the US Congress wrote something called a compulsory license into the copyright law. Music was thought too important to our culture to allow one person to have control over a new song. I say it is time we brought the idea of a compulsory license to patents.
I'm of the opinion that a patent that has not been reduced to practice should be regarded as ineligible for any enforcement action. If you can't make it work, you should not be able to tax the people who did make it happen. And you definitely should not be able to prevent certain technological developments using the legal system just to protect your existing business.
Have I missed something here?
[1] http://www.speakforyourself.org/About_The_App.html
Edit: Some interesting links:
Open Source Assistive Technology Software: http://www.oatsoft.org/
A collection of 5000 pictograms, necessary for an AAC application, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA: http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/arasaac-pictograms/
Edit:
pVoice, open source Augmentative and Alternative Communication: http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/pvoice
Earlier quoted context omitted.
clicking glyphs on a screen and having a device speak the words the glyphs represent is patent worthy? It's a perfect parallel to ASL. And there's enough social utility that we should help companies gouge parents $8k a pop [1] instead of $400 ipad + $unknown for software? [1] http://store.prentrom.com/
In fairness, nobody has mentioned what patent is allegedly infringed here. I'd be curious to see it.
Patents are supposed to be beneficial to society because they give incentive to the inventor to invent. But inventors inventing stuff doesn't seem to be a problem in computer technologies. We don't need these useless patents.
Does SfY have iOS specific functions? If not, one option would be to port it to Android, and then use it on a rooted android device. Since android doesn't depend on a single marketplace, it would be harder to remove it completely.
Most of it is in defense of their lawsuit, while the last paragraph is in defense of their request to remove the app from the Apple store.
Last week Prentke Romich Company (PRC) learned that Apple removed a language assistance app from its iTunes® store pending the outcome of a patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company that developed the iPad® app.
PRC and the licensor of the Unity™ system that powers our language devices jointly filed the lawsuit after our patent attorney found numerous instances of infringement on Unity patents in the “Speak for Yourself” app. Apple has a process that allows third parties to provide notice of infringement concerns as part of its terms and conditions. Accordingly, we reached out to Apple on two occasions. We provided Apple with a copy of the lawsuit, expressing our concerns about the “Speak for Yourself” app. We then responded to a later request from Apple asking for an update on the lawsuit. Last week, Apple elected to remove the app.
The Unity system is the result of the long commitment and hard work of Bruce Baker and his company, Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS). His life’s work, which he has refined over decades, created life-changing technology that has given a voice to thousands of individuals with profound disabilities. SCS and PRC filed the patent infringement lawsuit after we reached out to the app company’s founders and offered various business solutions, but were refused.
It is important to emphasize that while there are many useful language apps in the marketplace, “Speak for Yourself” is the only app named in the lawsuit because of its flagrant infringements on Unity patents.
There’s a reason patents are in place, to protect decades of hard work and research that go into our devices. To take someone’s life work and market it as your own is simply wrong. The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store.
We do recognize that new consumer technology, such as tablet-based apps, are playing a useful role in assistive technology, although it is unlikely they will be the best option for all clients. We intend to participate in this space but will only do so in a way that supports the best possible language outcomes for those clients with severe communications disorders.