Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When patents attack Android

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 291 posts

Re: When patents attack Android

#221

Post by davorak »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #117
dangrossman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Google needs patents to stay in business because other companies have patents to use against them. 2) See #1. Stanford owns the patent on PageRank because it was developed by Stanford graduate students on an NSF research grant. Not really relevant.

Even more ironic: Stanford got a significant amount of shares from Google for allowing Google exclusive license. Also, it is a mathematical algorithm in every sense of the word. A lot of patents aren't.

As far as I can tell all software patents are patents on math. Here is one example of a software patent reduced to mathematics and logic the extends it to all software patents: http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2011/04/patent-58931...

Re: When patents attack Android

#222

Post by Steko »

hn_decay wrote: post #213
Steko wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe go look at the actual patent lawsuits against HTC, Samsung et al., they aren't hard to find. Maybe you can submit a copy of Minority Report on DVD as an amicus brief and the judges in those cases will say "oh shit, hn_decay's brilliance hath shone a light where before therewith was only shadow" and declare Android "free and open forever[1]" [1] exceptions apply

>Maybe go look at the actual patent lawsuits against HTC, Samsung et al., they aren't hard to find. You say so much while saying so little. Apple's assault on HTC is a perfect demonstration of the failure of the patent system. Dozens of trivial, laughable patents such as "recognize an email address in a string of text", patented decades after such techniques were commonplace. Do you want to show one with actual value…

Any patent can be made to look obvious by quoting half a sentence. Clearly you have no idea what that patent covers, I've only skimmed over it but iirc it was recognizing certain things then giving you a pop up list of choices based on what to do with them. There may have been more to it. And that patent may in fact be stupid and obvious, or it may not, IANA patent attorney.

And you clearly aren't either, even though you can dismiss every possible patent Google might be accused of infringing on while accusing everyone else of being a fanboy...

....

"Oh, hey, look, Android isn't actually open... What relevance does that have"

I was referencing the iceberg of irony that your good ol' ship (the HMS Zealotry) keeps crashing into.

Re: When patents attack Android

#223

Post by newhouseb »

econgeeker wrote: post #139
hn_decay wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are not aware of what the multi-touch patents cover, what the inventions are, and you are not aware of what patents are and so you think the movie "minority report" and non-multi-touch touch screens are "prior art". I know exactly what the multitouch patent covers, and yes the basic principals are almost entirely demonstrated in the movie Minority Report. Apple did not invent or have anything to do with multitou…

In order to patent something, you have to reduce it to practice. That is to say, you have to actually make it work, in the real world. That Stephen Spielburg was able to do it with computer graphics has no bearing on the validity of someone making it exist in the real world. The reason I am hesitant to debate this issue is because, as you have amply demonstrated, the anti-patent people often don't even understand wha…

> In order to patent something, you have to reduce it to practice. That is to say, you have to actually make it work, in the real world.

This is false. I could patent the idea of using, say, a camera's sensor to recognize the species of a plant based on a leaf without any idea of how I would actually build such a thing (what algorithms would be required, etc). I could similarly patent the idea of tracking a user's eye movement to control a user interface, without the slightest clue of how to track a user's eye movement in realtime.

To take one small example - if you were to pull up patents related to virtual reality, the claims (which tend to be written in the mid-1980s) are all ridiculous, the dreamy technology simply didn't exist to build the proposed ideas (i.e. computers small enough to stick on people's heads), but they were still patented anyway.

Re: When patents attack Android

#224

Post by kenjackson »

Steko wrote: post #158
hn_decay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Microsoft Surface came out in 2008" Surface was unveiled in 2007, with the final hardware design being completed two years prior. The project itself started based upon, humorously, Minority Report. "Well, where I come from, that means you lost buddy, and I have no further need to rebut you." Yeah you've said that a couple of times now. Kind of funny, really.

Figerworks patents: 1999 to 2005. Keep citing MS Surface like it's relevant.

Multitouch has been around long before 1999.

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

Re: When patents attack Android

#226

Post by hn_decay »

panacea wrote: post #210
hn_decay wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you always such a boring fanboy? THAT is the Apple multitouch patent that the industry holds as fearsome. No one gives a shit about the Fingertouch patents.

hn_decay... Regardless of the validity of your comments, you just played the "fanboy"/'Godwin' card. That's a virtual mutually assured destruction move. You won and lost and the debate is now a fallout zone.

Perhaps, but it is entirely pertinent. Many of these pro-patent positions, I suspect, are entirely rooted in the feeling of belonging to a certain community. See Gruber's bizarrely hypocritical piece which mirrors that public sentiment.

I believe that software patents are overwhelmingly farce, whether they support Microsoft in attacking Apple, Apple against Samsung, Samsung against Apple, or any of various IP ventures against App Store developers. It is not a position that varies based upon the actors.

The pro-Apple lobby, however, has a position that essentially holds Apple's patents as legitimate and righteous to enforce, but everyone else's as illegitimate for various reasons. It is farce to criticize lodsys and others for entirely legal IP protections -- as the system supposedly encourages -- while supporting Apple and their like behaviors. Whether a company is open to counter-attacks is irrelevant to the legitimacy of patents.

Virtually everyone who interacts with HN relies upon Linux (for instance as the foundation of their startup). Linux infrgines on countless Microsoft patents. Thus far Microsoft has treaded lightly, but I don't think it's tough to imagine how sentiments would change if they started laying the hammer down, shutting down every cloud host, etc. The simple love of a gadget has many supporting an incredibly dangerous position.

But sentiments are changing. I argue for the exercise of it, but there is no doubt that dramatic software patent changes are coming due.

Re: When patents attack Android

#227

Post by hn_decay »

Steko wrote: post #222
hn_decay wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe go look at the actual patent lawsuits against HTC, Samsung et al., they aren't hard to find. You say so much while saying so little. Apple's assault on HTC is a perfect demonstration of the failure of the patent system. Dozens of trivial, laughable patents such as "recognize an email address in a string of text", patented decades after such techniques were commonplace. Do you want to show one with actual value…

Any patent can be made to look obvious by quoting half a sentence. Clearly you have no idea what that patent covers, I've only skimmed over it but iirc it was recognizing certain things then giving you a pop up list of choices based on what to do with them. There may have been more to it. And that patent may in fact be stupid and obvious, or it may not, IANA patent attorney. And you clearly aren't either, even though…

>Any patent can be made to look obvious by quoting half a sentence

Apple themselves distilled their own patent into the specific infringement. Their reading was identical to mine.

>the HMS Zealotry

You are in the wrong place. Every one of your tactics is bog standard on borefests like Engadget comments.

Re: When patents attack Android

#228

Post by davorak »

nitrogen wrote: post #202
econgeeker wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time." This is exactly as true as the claim that all scientists support AGW theory. Reality-- most scientists don't support that theory. But proponents of the theory say that they all do, all over the place. And since there is nobody who actually speaks for all scientists, there's nobody to pro…

"Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time." This is exactly as true as the claim that all scientists support AGW theory. Reality-- most scientists don't support that theory. But proponents of the theory say that they all do, all over the place. And since there is nobody who actually speaks for all scientists, there's nobody to pro…

For what it is worth I read your pervious comment as you intended and good job in your response.

Re: When patents attack Android

#229

Post by patrickaljord »

danilocampos wrote: post #203
patrickaljord wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They acquired Novel and others long before Nortel.

You're doing an admirable tap-dance to preserve your Google partisanship here. Apple may have acquired patents before this but I'm having a hard time finding support for your assertion that they're trolling with those alone. Or even applying them at all as part of their patent litigation, as raganwald has pointed out elsewhere. Consider these patents cited in Apple's HTC complaint: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/02/th…

Who's doing the tap-dance? First I said that this was patent trolling:

> Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;

You disagreed, then I demonstrated that it was patent trolling. So, doing you little tap-dance, you're now saying that Apple never did that. Funny huh? As for the patents that Apple is suing HTC over, they are ridiculous just like any software patent as explained by many people (including Bill Gates and Larry Ellison) and others who pioneered modern computer science:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Bradley_Kuhn_on_software_patents

Regardless, Apple and Microsoft have been attacking other companies by using their patents, some which were bought and that, my friend, is patent trolling.

Re: When patents attack Android

#230

Post by azakai »

AllenKids wrote: post #165
azakai wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think software engineers should absolutely be involved, but more like "expert witnesses". The judgement is better left in the hands of law people with common sense. I can't disagree more. Should common sense be how we decide what medical option to pursue? Or whether a mathematical proof is valid? Or even whether a legal argument is allowed - in the US judges determine that in many case, not juries? What possible…

Because there is no truth in "trivial" and "obvious", there is only value, as in "guilty" and "good".

There is also no objective truth in medicine. But we still let doctors decide what procedures to do, not random people with 'common sense'.
Post reply on HN