Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#61

Post by rmrfrmrf » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #50

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say the same thing about software and hardware patents, though. What incentive will any company have to innovate if they're constantly getting copied? IMO too many people let their emotions dictate their thoughts about business -- Company X is big enough, so it doesn't deserve patents. Company Y sues everyone in the sun for using their technology; what a horrible company! For every high-profile case like these, tho…

Empirically, we know that in, say, the 1990's, when hardly any software patents happened, software companies still innovated. Are you trying to suggest that there has been some kind of fundamental economic shift since then that has made innovation impossible in the absence of patents? What is that shift? What are these stories about small businesses and new inventors getting screwed by people who steal their ideas? I…

The one that comes to mind is the FuzziBunz brand of reusable diapers. If you follow Shark Tank, you may have seen the owner on there lamenting about patent infringement -- an employee of hers that was responsible for coordinating the outsourcing of her product to China then abruptly left the company and started her own line of FuzziBunz clones using the same factory.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#62

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:31 PM UTC

ignostic wrote: post #26

JulianMorrison wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware patents shouldn't exist. Business method patents shouldn't exist. Drug patents shouldn't exist. Gene patents shouldn't exist. All patents are bad.

My opinions on patents are still evolving, but I tend to see drug patents as a good thing that needs reform. I know it's a bit of a tangent, but would someone mind explaining a little? My main concern is that we can't expect anyone to invest m/billions in necessary drug research if they can be copied the instant the drug shows success. The R&D cost per new drug brought to market is often between 1-12 billion.[1] Even…

There are two main issues with that argument (they don't completely invalidate the argument, but you should be aware of them):

1 - Most of that R&D cost is created because companies must create small differences between their products, requiring new tests. That is, if patents were absent, the society would need to spend a much smaller sum for the same gain.

2 - The pharmaceutical industry isn't an unbiased party of that research (quite obviously) and thus it isn't the ideal party for administrating it.

But, like I said, it does not invalidate the argument. Those issues also don't have an obvious solution (as far as I can see), but they exist.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#63

Post by shmerl » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

gibwell wrote: post #57

shmerl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem. 1) There is nothing confus…

Android has the larger market share. If it were just a matter Apple being jerks, all the open goodness you want would be widely available. But it isn't that simple.

Android doesn't affect media players directly. Also, even with biggest market share, as far as someone with smaller but still significant market share sabotages codecs adoption - there is a problem. Only if Apple will become completely irrelevant as in "can be ignored", then it won't affect the situation. But so far it didn't happen yet.

Surely Apple aren't alone in causing these kind of problems, but they are a major factor.

They managed to sabotage open codecs for audio and video tags in W3C, but now there is some hope that WebRTC will make open codecs part of the standard, and Apple will be forced either to follow the standard or admit they are jerks.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#64

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:38 PM UTC

chroem wrote: post #39

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say the same thing about software and hardware patents, though. What incentive will any company have to innovate if they're constantly getting copied? IMO too many people let their emotions dictate their thoughts about business -- Company X is big enough, so it doesn't deserve patents. Company Y sues everyone in the sun for using their technology; what a horrible company! For every high-profile case like these, tho…

Fine, let's use your example of the small business. Suppose that this company invents a revolutionary technology, such as a cure for cancer or a teleporter. That company is perfectly within its rights to just sit on the technology for 20 years . Even if it does decide to produce the technology, there is no way that it could keep up with demand, so it ends up shipping very small numbers of a very expensive and exclusi…

> Do you know why 3D printing is finally taking off? The patents are starting to expire.

That same history happened with almost every technology since patents existed. Some quite famous examples are the steam engines, electronic valves, and airplanes. It's an easy to spot pattern, new tech just takes off only a patent length interval after it leaves the labs.

That alone is not evidence that patents are bad. But coupled with the fact that most of those techs were concurrently invented by several people (who often got bankrupt, because they couldn't sell their inventions) it becomes very strong evidence.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#65

Post by josephlord » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:40 PM UTC

spot wrote: post #58

gibwell wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because doing so would be shooting ourselves in the foot. All of the major players are equally guilty, if not more so, of 'abusing' the patent system. Google and Samsung have tried to control the whole industry through assertion of FRAND patents. Also, you do realize that you are calling for a total monopoly on the entire industry to placed into the hands of Google? I can't think of anything more destructive. Note: I…

Google and Samsung are just fighting back against Apple.

There may be an element of truth to that but Google/Motorola and Samsung are fighting extremely dirty by using FRAND committed standards essential patents.

It can easily be seen that a large amount of [inspiration/copying/ripping off - choose your adjective depending on viewpoint] was done of the original iPhone. There are a reasonable range of views as to whether Apple should have had the right to bring any action about that but they were clearly angered and used the available laws to try to prevent it (which due largely to the slow movement of the legal system they have largely failed to do). I can see a range of valid views on the proper protection from copying of products and I don't believe it is possible to prove one better than others (although some might be obviously bad). I don't see anything evil in one mega-corp using the legal system to try to stop another mega-corp from copying it.

From Samsung's point of view if getting their current share in smartphones costs them a couple of billion dollars in damages that would be a good deal for them.

The patent law is a mess. I would prefer patents MUCH harder to obtain but that could be normally assumed valid once granted and with a legal system able to bring injuctions fast enough to get infringing models removed before they are obselete/replaced.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#66

Post by mwfunk » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

"Androids". Ugh. At least they didn't just say "Droids" to mean all Android phones, but c'mon people. That's almost up there with "MAC" as far as being a flag indicating that the author isn't super clueful about the subject matter.

On topic: software patents are usually freaking terrible, but (as others have pointed out) this article misrepresents the whole situation, presumably for clicks. Not saying that the patent holder is in the right here, just that the situation is vastly more complicated than how it's presented.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#67

Post by kondor6c » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

josephlord wrote: post #45

acjohnson55 wrote: post #40

As I type on my MacBook Pro, I also wonder at what point we as a community are going to start voting with our wallets against Apple and the extent to which they are abusing the broken US patent system. Of course it's only rational to expect that they will use any means at their disposal to get a competitive advantage, but that doesn't mean that we must reserve moral judgment. For me, Apple has already moved into "pre…

And where would you go if you were to boycott Apple over the actions you deem to be "abusing the broken US patent system". I think Google/Motorola and Samsung have behaved far worse when they attempted to obtain injuctions and excessive licensing fees over patents that they had committed to license on FRAND terms. Microsoft has a horrible history of anticompetive behavior. Maybe Blackberry phone and linux based compu…

As far as phones go, perhaps FirefoxOS when it matures more. Too bad the OpenMoko project never picked up enough speed. If that really doesn't work, then there are several attempts to use a pure ASOP on other phones like the HTC One or something like that.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#68

Post by josephlord » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:51 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #54

josephlord wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vorbis doesn't have hardware support on many chipsets which means that battery life would not be as good as for MP3/AAC. I find it quite hard to see Apple as evil for implementing International Standards and while they are not free (or Free software compatible) they are open. There are plenty of good reasons for not adding support to additional codecs without good reason to. 1) Different (and confusing) compatibility…

Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem. 1) There is nothing confus…

1) So Apple add Vorbis in the iPhone 6 and iPod fifth generation. "Why does this work on his iPod and not mine?"

2) For the iPhone 8 a new super low power, low cost chip with better integration of audio output becomes available but doesn't support Vorbis. Nevermind we will just use the old expensive high power chip instead. Every feature you add is a limitation on the future changes you can make.

3) Not always. Just a new encoder that does something differently can work on one player and not others, then you have to work out whether it is an encoder bug or decoder bug.

I meant almost all users get AAC/AVC/MPEG4 from their OS provider or Linux users can install open source (although probably not patent licensed) AAC/AVC/MPEG4 codecs from various locations. I wasn't clear and I will re-edit for clarity.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#69

Post by reginaldjcooper » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:03 PM UTC

camus2 wrote: post #11

throwawaykf wrote: post #5

Ugh, no. Yes the patent was upheld. Yes, all the claims survived intact. No, the claims are not on "touch typing, multitouch"; they cover a very specific use of a heuristic to differentiate between scrolling and panning. No, it's very unlikely that it will allow "ban on most Android" devices. I think Samsung (and probably most Android vendors) have already worked around the claims. As with all tech media discussion a…

Unlikely doesnt mean impossible. A Few month ago it was unlikely Apple's patents were upheld. This could be a huge issue for any os that runs on a phone that uses the same multi-touch tech as the iphone. MSFT striked a deal , Google screwed up big time.

One of my fondest hopes is that Apple and Google mutually assured destruct in a legal war, leaving plenty of space for Mozilla and Canonical.

Re: Apple Patent on Touch Typing, Multitouch Upheld; Allows Ban on Most Androids

#70

Post by shmerl » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:10 PM UTC

josephlord wrote: post #68

shmerl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding Vorbis in hardware is not hard. The reason it's not usually added is because of Apple precisely, since they are one of the major manufacturers of hardware players. I.e. if they'd add support for Vorbis, it will become widespread pretty soon. So your argument is reversed. And, in mobile SoCs it is gaining traction now, because of Google and WebM. Hardware players are a bigger problem. 1) There is nothing confus…

1) So Apple add Vorbis in the iPhone 6 and iPod fifth generation. "Why does this work on his iPod and not mine?" 2) For the iPhone 8 a new super low power, low cost chip with better integration of audio output becomes available but doesn't support Vorbis. Nevermind we will just use the old expensive high power chip instead. Every feature you add is a limitation on the future changes you can make. 3) Not always. Just…

1) So? Instead of breaking your head on "how and where do I get a player which supports the codec I need", you'll worry about "which of these from the same manufacturer supports the codec I need". I surely prefer the second case to the first.

2) Why doesn't it support Vorbis? Let them make it low power low cost and add support for all modern codecs. It's doable. Apple sabotages it not because of any technical reasons.

Also, modern SoCs allow optimal decoding of any custom codec potentially, by allowing it to be defined programmatically, even if hardwired decoder is not available. See:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEON_%28instruction_set%29#NEO...

* http://mobile.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon....

3) Let them debug it. Or they shouldn't make players if they can't support modern codecs because it's "hard to debug".

It's not about what users or developers and publishers can do. It's about what they can't (because of Apple). And what people can't do is using open codecs without worrying that some users won't be able to access them.