The Tim Cook memo: line by line • Hacker News Board

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#21

Post by zakshay » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:39 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #8

I think this is an excellent occasion to relink PG's essay on Apple's behavior from 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html Maybe Apple thinks they can afford to play bull in the china chop of developer opinion right now but I'm sure I'm not the only developer that felt a little sick to his stomach firing up Xcode today. I plan to put iOS and Apple in my rear view mirror.

Hindsight, I don't agree with a lot of things in that essay. Its mostly hard lined towards software development point of views.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#22

Post by csallen » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:43 AM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

Just because something makes you money doesn't mean it's inherently good or useful, and it doesn't mean it should be protected by law. Every time a company's competitors catch up to it, and every time technology makes a company's business model obsolete, they turn to the law to try to wipe the competition/technology out of existence. And, quite frankly, it's bullshit.

You're right, the entire basis of patents was to protect the little guys. But nowadays the exact opposite is happening. Over the last 200 years, the big guys have wielded their influence to change the system to their benefit. And now they abuse patents to crush anything that threatens their leadership position, whether that's a little guy trying to innovate or another big guy trying to play catch up.

Either way, the consumer loses, and for what? Innovation certainly isn't any better off.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#23

Post by onedev » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:44 AM UTC

pclark wrote: post #2

I think it's bullshit that Apple did this for money.

You think Apple cares about a measly $1b?

Think about it, the company itself is worth 600+ billion dollars.

They did this more out of principal and to defend their products than anything else.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#24

Post by danmaz74 » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:45 AM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #20

danmaz74 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's no different than Amazon's One-click." exactly: It is just as outrageous as 1-click.

Then if its not innovative - show me the prior art ? There is none - so it's innovative under law - regardless of whether I agree or not. Amazon patented an innovative process unthought of at the time - the fact you apply retrospectivity to it now and look at it as ridiculous does nothing to prove it was not innovative back in 1998. If you thought of this process - would you be happy not to charge Amazon if you paten…

Nope. The patent should be granted only if it is "not obvious to a skilled practitioner skilled in the art", not just if nobody published the same exact thing before. 1-click WAS obvious in 1998 to any skilled practitioner who knew about cookies.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#25

Post by robin_reala » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:45 AM UTC

thomasf1 wrote: post #11

It´s very clear that it´s been a personal mission by Steve Jobs who felt it´s wrong. I´m personally quite conflicted in this case: Apple has a point that Samsung was copying them. Pure copying, not using elements of it and turning it into something new. On the other side, the ways of protection with patents of tiny bits of it is silly and broken. They are trivial and regard the overall design and should not be allowe…

While lots of MacOS was taken from Xerox’s work it wasn't’t copied, it was licensed.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#26

Post by csallen » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:48 AM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #20

danmaz74 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's no different than Amazon's One-click." exactly: It is just as outrageous as 1-click.

Then if its not innovative - show me the prior art ? There is none - so it's innovative under law - regardless of whether I agree or not. Amazon patented an innovative process unthought of at the time - the fact you apply retrospectivity to it now and look at it as ridiculous does nothing to prove it was not innovative back in 1998. If you thought of this process - would you be happy not to charge Amazon if you paten…

You're overly-focused on the existence of prior art. Simply being the first to do something shouldn't automatically give you the right to prevent anyone else from doing it. That philosophy, applied consistently, would lead to ridiculousness.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#27

Post by FaceKicker » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:48 AM UTC

taligent wrote: post #3

All this blog post is one person's misunderstanding of patent and copyright law. Jacques would have been better served trying to understand what trade dress means and why Apple's UI patents were about the implementation and not the idea. After all the idea of "how to let the user know they have reached the top of the scroll view" can be implemented many ways. Apples is one way. LG, Samsung and HTC all have different…

Is it possible that there's in some sense a unique "global optimum" of UI and/or aesthetic design (as opposed to just a bunch of equally good but very different designs), at least as far as is possible under the constraints of available technology and resources at any given time? I would guess probably not for aesthetics (too subjective), but it's reasonable IMO in at least some very minimal cases of UI design - e.g., the idea of using some kind of touchpad gesture to scroll on a laptop. If so, maybe that optimum should be considered a "public good" that no single entity should be allowed to monopolize (or, they could be allowed to monopolize it only for a certain period of time like in the pharmaceutical industry and/or forced to license it for a reasonable fee) - otherwise for all of eternity it's illegal for any other company to use the "best possible UI" in their competing product, and in the meantime the company that filed a patent for it could have stopped developing their product entirely.

Less abstractly, I think the author's point about the standardized "UI" for cars is a good one - society is better off, not worse off, as a result of companies copying each other in the auto industry. If you can drive one car you can drive them all (well...except for the automatic/manual thing). You don't need to spend three days relearning how to drive every time you rent a car. In the same way, society benefits a LOT from familiar UI design across different software companies - e.g., anyone who has ever used any mainstream desktop OS in the past 15 years or so can pretty quickly figure out the basics of any other mainstream desktop OS - they all have programs partitioned into "windows", have a "desktop" with "icons", etc. These UI elements all seem trivially obvious to us precisely because of copying, but there are certainly alternatives to all of them.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#28

Post by danmaz74 » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:48 AM UTC

onedev wrote: post #23

pclark wrote: post #2

I think it's bullshit that Apple did this for money.

You think Apple cares about a measly $1b? Think about it, the company itself is worth 600+ billion dollars. They did this more out of principal and to defend their products than anything else.

They didn't it to get $1b from Samsung. They did it to stop anybody else to compete with the iPhone, and so be able to make even more money.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#29

Post by thomasf1 » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:49 AM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

The Jury system in the US is actually well suited deciding complex moral questions and too much fine print hinders more than it heps, which was evident in this case.

To me, instead of a patent office there should be a central online register to archive jury-understandable photos and descriptions or ideally videos of the stuff you do simply to have a validated reference of when you thought of it.

And then patent/IP Law may simply should read soething like this: It is ok to base any creative work on the work of others as long as the result is something new and great in it´s own right.

It´s not ok to copy the work of others without significantly improving it simply for making money.

Done. Plain Language.

Everything else, the moral right or wrong would be left to a Jury with guidance from a Judge.

Which they basically did in the Apple case. All that patent BS aside, I guess they descided on the basic morale question and started the paperwork.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#30

Post by timmyd » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 8:50 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #22

timmyd wrote: post #17

Hmm - i really dont agree with this. Apple revolutionised the industry - before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR. Apple frankly blew the industry apart. "These are not patents on innovation, they’re patents on simple ideas and features that you didn’t even think of first but you were the first to patent." Then the magical aspect of patent law called "prior art" would com…

Just because something makes you money doesn't mean it's inherently good or useful, and it doesn't mean it should be protected by law. Every time a company's competitors catch up to it, and every time technology makes a company's business model obsolete, they turn to the law to try to wipe the competition/technology out of existence. And, quite frankly, it's bullshit. You're right, the entire basis of patents was to…

I do agree with you in this regard. True innovations should be patentable and it's been the consistent bashing of the law to extend the scope of what is patentable that comes to the fore here. By fundamentally - having a patent and litigating a patent are hugely different things and that's a big problem. The patent offices around the world have timelines and deadlines - even if they approve a patent which shouldn't be - they rely on the courts to determine whether it is or is not. That's a huge time cost, financial cost and so on - thats the system today. So you go to court - you spend literally millions arguing and you get a decision as to whether or not it's innovative. That's wrong in my mind.