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

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#151

Post by tcbawo » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

lancewiggs wrote: post #120

EricDeb wrote: post #40

How about simply having shorter tech patents? I feel having a patent length of 5 years would absolve these problems quickly. The tech industry moves too fast for 14 or 20 year patents...

And how about compulsory licensing after, say, 2 years, at reasonable terms, subject to arbitration and penalties for excessive demands. The patent system needs to be fixed globally. Current international trade agreements are going in the wrong direction, driven by the USA negotiators who are ultimately driven by Disney, MPAA and so on. The rest of te world would dearly like to see US citizens get involved - the TPP…

I have an idea of creating an Intellectual Property tax (similar to property taxes) based on an assessed value of the licence. You would pay yearly to maintain a patent. Or, you could enter it into the public domain.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#152

Post by mnutt » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:01 PM UTC

writetoalok wrote: post #72

csallen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Are we talking about patentable innovations, or something else? A lot of patentable innovations do not make anything, a lot things which are not patentable make boat load of bucks. Your comment seem to have clouded this distinction. It seems to me that you are questioning the basis…

The problem is that it seems nobody actually benefits from reading patents when implementing ideas. First, if you read a patent you can be found liable for willful infringement, which can triple the damages. Second, patents are intentionally written to reveal as little information as possible. Drug patents in particular often do not explain a reproducible method for creating the drug.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#153

Post by mjhagen » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:02 PM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #92

ForrestN wrote: post #89

This is absurd and frustrating. Apple is not responsible for the broken patent system. Apple is a public company. If Apple decided to hold itself to a set of standards more stringent than its competitors, it would be hampering itself and acting against the interests of its shareholders. Complain about, and work to fix, the system. Don't expect Apple to fix it by ceding the rights it currently has to its competitors.…

Apple genuinely seems to believe that the blatant copying of iOS in Android is unethical. Its unethical because the Android - iOS relationship can be narrowed down to one person...Eric Schmidt. He sat on the board of Apple, absorbed the process of Apple getting into the smart phone market, then emulated it at Google while he was CEO there. Although to be fair, Android innovates in some areas where iOS does not explor…

In this case, no. It was a case against Samsung, not Google. And was about Samsung's hardware and their own implementation of Android.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#154

Post by ryanwaggoner » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:03 PM 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…

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

You have no way of knowing whether this is true. Patents could come with a host of disadvantages and drags on innovation and still be a net positive for innovation. There's just no way to know without a control group.

As long as we're throwing out opinions, I find it very hard to believe that the patent system, broken though it is, is anything other than a HUGE net positive for innovation. I'm talking about the patent system across all industries, but I suspect the same would be true for the tech industry specifically. Companies across many industries regularly spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to develop products that are primarily protected by patents. If we did away with patents, many of those investments would no longer be made, and the rest would be as shrouded in secrecy as possible. And secrecy is a patent that potentially never expires.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#155

Post by imperialWicket » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:04 PM 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…

"before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR"

Some of us may have been, but technically speaking that's not true. Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Nokia all had high end devices available with large touch screens prior to Apple's iPhone release. What Apple offered (that was revolutionary) was an easy way for users of their device to purchase content. They achieved this since they required users to have an iTunes account when provisioning their device; and they got away with that because they already had many of the users in iTunes already.

Apple definitely made advances to large screen smartphones (ex: their touch screen was far better than all other offerings at the time, and remains superior to most alternative devices); but to say that it was the iPhone alone (a piece of hardware) that revolutionized the mobile industry shadows integral aspects of the legal and historical argument.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#156

Post by Joeri » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

timmyd wrote: post #84

Vivtek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of one-click, it's first important to note that in addition to prior art, a patent must also pass the obviousness test. One-click does not. You may not be a developer, I don't know, but I know any developer here could implement one-click in a day. Patents are not intended to be a lottery rewarding insight. Patents protect development effort . One-click fails that test. But in terms of prior art, Jeff Bezo…

But again - "i know any developer her could implement one-click in a day" and indeed a huge number of inventions could be implemented in a day. But you are again applying retrospecitivity (at least in my mind) - you need to remove that. Just because something is simple - doesnt mean it is not innovative. You contend that simply because something is simple that therefore it fails the test of obviousness - but that is…

> Just because something is simple - doesnt mean it is not innovative.

Just because something is innovative doesn't mean it isn't inevitable.

I believe capacitive touchscreen interfaces like the iphone's were inevitable. In fact, pinch to zoom was widely demoed before the iphone's launch. That doesn't invalidate the patent, but it does invalidate the idea that without apple it wouldn't have been invented.

Should the first on a market that was going to arise anyway get the monopoly rights on that market? If we were talking about a 5 year patent I could begrudgingly accept it, but to see the touchscreen device market chained to apple's whims for two decades cannot be anything but bad for the customer.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#157

Post by wklauss » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:09 PM UTC

pgeorgi wrote: post #65

gearoidoc wrote: post #39

I wish I could back in time and convince Steve Jobs not to do the iPhone and (Butterfly Effect style) return to present day and see what phones were like. I'm guessing we'd be viewing the web scrolling up and down on a Blackberry's nipple :D

Unlikely that there's a difference. It wasn't Apple (or Steve Jobs Himself[tm]) that invented the capacitive touch screen and made it available in large quantities (ie. mainstream compatible). There were prototypes at many (probably all) mobile vendors exploring the capabilities unlocked by that technology. Apple "merely" was boldest - but then they hadn't to consider how a new HCI impacts the brand, since they had n…

Capacitive screens were already used by one terminal, I think an LG phone. But the iPhone put something different in the market: multitouch and gestures. Some things like slide to unlock or pinch to zoom seem trivial now but they weren't really product of the normal evolution of phone interfaces. Locking the screen was done with a hardware button because it was deemed safer, zoom was double tapping in the part of the image you wanted to magnify.

Had the iPhone not been introduced I doubt small little details like these would have changed at all, and there are tons of these small subtleties in the current smartphone OSs.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#158

Post by Tichy » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:13 PM 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…

"before the iPhone we were using tiny screens with Nokia SMS interfaces or Motorla RAZR."

Unless you had a Palm Pilot or a PocketPC. Stopped reading your essay after that.

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#159

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:14 PM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #86

beedogs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What? No, we weren't. I had a Cingular 8125 (HTC Wizard) a year and a half before the iPhone was introduced and it was perfectly fine. Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD.

Apple just added shiny icons and took away the keyboard and stylus. BFD. I actually think that is a BFD. If it had a keyboard, the whole idea of dynamic UI's would not exist. Would anyone think that angry birds is cool if we had to play it with arrow buttons on the keyboard?

[deleted]

Re: The Tim Cook memo: line by line

#160

Post by printer » Sat, Aug 25, 2012, 2:20 PM UTC

wangweij wrote: post #140

printer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you ever think about patenting a double touch interaction when you were the first to implement a double click action on a touchscreen? I think these things are so obvious I would even be ashamed to call them my innovation.

If you think it's obvious, Have you ever tried to double click the screen or pinch an image on your old Palm Pilot hoping the size would change?

Well the Palm Pilot isn't multitouch so ofcourse you can't do a pinch there. But double click just works out of the box on almost all devices when an existing OS is used.

I think you should give this a read: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html and notice these words: "What I am pointing out, however, is that "new" technologies - like multi-touch - do not grow out of a vacuum."