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Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

arstechnica.com

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Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#441

Post by Snoptic »

curiousDog wrote: post #110
pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

I'm now ashamed I ever worked at Microsoft and I'm assuming a lot of devs there will feel the same way :(

Did you forget the 90s happened, when MS earned the name Evil Empire?

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#442

Post by snowwrestler »

bane wrote: post #234
pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

Yet hackers will continue to vote with their wallets, buying Apple products and perpetuating this continuous pattern of bad behavior. Of course the pragmatic alternative, Microsoft, isn't exactly know for being the good behaving kid on the block either. And mucking around with home-built PCs running some Linux distro doesn't have the same appeal to me it had 10 years ago. So what to do?

I choose to not care so much, based on who the parties are.

There is more to life than whether one giant company is suing another giant company. I would care a lot more if Apple used their patents to squash small competitors, but they don't. This is purely a clash of the titans.

I use Apple computers because they are the best computers for me to get my job done. Patent suits don't change that. I use Google search for the same reason.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#443

Post by usefulcat »

The patent system probably added more value 200 years ago when the dissemination of knowledge was not nearly as easy or cheap as it is today. The reason for this, of course, is technology.

Looking at this situation from a very meta- perspective, I find it fascinating that what's effectively happening is that the patent system is seeking to undermine the very technological forces that have made it less relevant. Almost like watching two different species compete against each other in nature.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#444

Post by snowwrestler »

pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

This is a clash of the titans. I think most techies will react according to which companies they are fans of.

If Apple were deploying their patents to squash small competitors or startups, I'd feel differently, but they're not.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#445

Post by fauigerzigerk »

bnegreve wrote: post #304
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree completely. Protesting against these things (i.e participating in the latest outrage on HN and elsewhere) without sacrificing your entire livelihood is exactly the right thing to do. Being cynical about these things is what changes nothing, or rather it changes things for the worse. In countries where everyone is resigned into the idea that every government official is always going to be corrupt and every…

> Protesting against these things [..] without sacrificing your entire livelihood If you invest your time and money into say, an iPhone application, you're heavily supporting the Apple store. Once you've done that, the fact that you've expressed your disagreement with Apple policies on online forums is more or less irrelevant. Look at Facebook: there is a rather large number of people complaining about their privacy…

I don't have an app in the App Store (partly for these reasons) and I have actually cancelled my Facebook account in protest. I can afford to do that.

But what I'm saying is that depending on your field of work, you may not have much of a choice other than to support the dominant players in the industry. No one should feel under any moral obligation to forego 50% of their income every time NastBigCorp X does something nasty.

It's useful to protest and still keep doing what you do. Maybe down the road there's an opportunity to hurt them without hurting yourself even more. Protesting shows there is a desire for something different.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#446

Post by [deleted] »

bnegreve wrote: post #304
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree completely. Protesting against these things (i.e participating in the latest outrage on HN and elsewhere) without sacrificing your entire livelihood is exactly the right thing to do. Being cynical about these things is what changes nothing, or rather it changes things for the worse. In countries where everyone is resigned into the idea that every government official is always going to be corrupt and every…

> Protesting against these things [..] without sacrificing your entire livelihood If you invest your time and money into say, an iPhone application, you're heavily supporting the Apple store. Once you've done that, the fact that you've expressed your disagreement with Apple policies on online forums is more or less irrelevant. Look at Facebook: there is a rather large number of people complaining about their privacy…

[deleted]

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#447

Post by samspenc »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #403
Datsundere wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame the patent system. While it is true that patent system should be reformed/eliminated, those companies chose to take advantage of it. Just because you can steal something when nobody is looking doesn't mean it's justified to be stolen.

> They chose to take advantage of it. What would they do, just let Google acquire even more mobile-related patents? You think Google would never sue them? Let's not be naive, the only reason Google is a good citizen with patents today is because a retaliation would make a dent on them, and they know it. The parent is right, the problem is the patent system, which gives a disproportional power to the holder and create…

That's not quite true. The newer generation of tech companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) have taken to using patents very very defensively, at least so far.

Google has gone as far doing an "open patent non-assertion pledge" which is far beyond just not using patents: http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/

Twitter has an Innovator Patent agreement: https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators-patent-...

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#448

Post by akavel »

cs702 wrote: post #346
pg wrote: post #61

It's a little early to say for sure, but I predict this will do more to hurt Apple's reputation in the tech community than anything they've done before. And that is not a good community to alienate. I would not be surprised if they look back on this move one day and feel that they ended up net worse off as a result. Apple used to be careful not to alienate hackers. And Microsoft has been gradually digging itself out…

I'm unhappy with Apple and Microsoft too, but the real enemy is a broken patent system that creates the perverse incentives that motivate companies to launch lawsuits like this one, to the detriment of society. Regardless of who wins, we have already lost, because we have a patent system that discourages innovation and competition in software! Maybe the prospect of patent Armageddon will finally force lawmakers to ad…

If patent system was OK, with their power and money they could always find another weapon if what they really want is to attack a competitor. That said, I don't want to mean that the system is OK, obviously, this weapon surely looks too powerful.

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#449

Post by masklinn »

pg wrote: post #439
cs702 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unhappy with Apple and Microsoft too, but the real enemy is a broken patent system that creates the perverse incentives that motivate companies to launch lawsuits like this one, to the detriment of society. Regardless of who wins, we have already lost, because we have a patent system that discourages innovation and competition in software! Maybe the prospect of patent Armageddon will finally force lawmakers to ad…

It's certainly true that the patent system is broken. But the fact you can get away with doing something due to broken laws doesn't make it ok to do it.

The operative word in cs705's comment is incentive. The patent system is broken in such a way that not only does it makes possible to get away with this behavior, it encourages and rewards it. That's very different than merely "making it possible".

Re: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

#450

Post by ansgri »

fpgeek wrote: post #271
Joeri wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience. In reality almost everyone nicely complies with google's compatibility definition, constraining how far they can fork android, just in order to get access to google's closed source apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Google%20Inc... Only amazon has managed to m…

> You can fork android and not license the google services, but it means doing without youtube, maps and chrome. That's a horrible experience. Not to hundreds of millions of Chinese Android users.

Same in Russia, where Yandex presents a very viable alternative. Their maps, for instance, are better.
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