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Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

arstechnica.com

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Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#31

Post by praptak »

flatline3 wrote: post #17
creamyhorror wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a whole HN thread throwing up prior art about the linkification patent (and also on Reddit). Linkification was being done in the '80s, based on one of the programs that someone managed to scrounge up in the thread, and the '90s as well. No patents issued - people just did it. The fact that these programs were written tells us that software writers innovate regardless of whether patents are issued for their…

Thanks. I have my own negative opinions about software patent novelty, I just wanted to point out that it was somewhat unique on smart phones.

Suffixing an old idea with "on smart phones" is not innovation, even if you do it first.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#32

Post by flatline3 »

flatline3 wrote: post #12
thechut wrote: post #6

These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enacted in this way. I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.

First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas.…

Would people mind not downvoting a cogent devil's argument into oblivion just because they disagree with software patents?

I think this stuff is largely obvious too, but my devil's argument is predicated around the notion that it might still come out to consumer's benefit anyway.

It's not as if the mobile market was particularly on fire before Apple got involved and completely changed the game, if you can remember back 3-4 years.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#33

Post by flatline3 »

iamumassthrower wrote: post #29
flatline3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas.…

So apple should be off the hook for innovation once it's released a product and gained a "market position"? I'm sorry but I'm always going to have trouble with the idea of a company resting on its laurels, yet bringing continual revenue in year after year after year because a piece of government paper says that no one else is allowed to do anything remotely resembling what that company is doing since they got there f…

> So apple should be off the hook for innovation once it's released a product and gained a "market position"?

I don't see evidence that Apple is resting on their laurels, but I do remember what happened with Mac OS and Windows back in the 80s/early 90s.

> "A means of searching multiple databases and sources for data." Last I checked federated search has had a wikipedia article since 2005. Hardly seems like innovation pioneered by Apple and stolen by evil Google.

It's a one-line description of a patent. I have no idea what it actually covers, do you? It might be as obvious as slide-to-unlock, but I have no idea.

> Slide to unlock... have you used an airplane bathroom?

An airplane bathroom isn't solving the problem of how to prevent accidental unlock in your pocket without making unlocking unduly difficult.

I think slide-to-unlock is pretty obvious once you go down the road of touch interfaces, but it's worth remembering why we're down that road at all now.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#34

Post by flatline3 »

praptak wrote: post #31
flatline3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I have my own negative opinions about software patent novelty, I just wanted to point out that it was somewhat unique on smart phones.

Suffixing an old idea with "on smart phones" is not innovation, even if you do it first.

I see your point. My counter-argument would be that it solved a unique touch-screen problem of a lack of keyboard/mouse and a lack of an easy way to highlight text.

I think the thing I'm hung up on is that Apple stormed into the phone market and did a whole bunch of smart things that nobody had thought of, but are obvious in retrospect.

I don't agree with software patents, but I can't help but hesitate before agreeing that it's beneficial to the industry to let Apple's competitors wholesale copy their work (even the small things).

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#35

Post by cmelbye »

pook1e wrote: post #11
Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, forcing other company's to innovate could be a Good thing. Is a rectangle with rounded edges the one and only perfect tablet shape? I don't know, but if everyone just copy's the iPad it's going to take a even longer to find out. The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.

Are you suggesting Apple was the first company to create a rectangular tablet with rounded edges?

C'mon.

http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-befor...

We can argue whether or not it's right for Apple to fight to protect this design, but let's not pretend that these tablets were developed completely independent of the iPad's design.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#36

Post by creamyhorror »

flatline3 wrote: post #12
thechut wrote: post #6

These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enacted in this way. I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.

First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas.…

> Apple has undeniably pushed the entire cell phone industry forward, and in the process had a tremendous impact on the software, entertainment, and game industries.

Here's what I wrote a couple weeks back on the topic:

-----

"...Apple won the smartphone market, and certainly raised overall ease-of-use standards in the market, but that doesn't mean that smartphones would have been objectively worse otherwise - just different, possibly better or worse. We would possibly have much more freedom in terms of app stores.

The fact that Apple stamped its mark on the global phone market and is making huge profits is absolutely not an inherent reason to be thankful for them. They won most of the market and now enjoy a massive network effect advantage (larger market => more developers developing for iOS => improved and cheaper app offerings => larger market); why respect them for doing the equivalent of what Facebook did in the social networking arena (make the most popular UX in the market)?

To be sure, a few companies deserve actual respect - for me, those are the companies that treat their customers well, are highly socially responsible, encourage openness, and play fair with all. Even better if they go beyond immediate profit goals to genuinely drive innovation. Most companies just want to make a buck by winning the market - nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't inherently deserve respect.

-----

Ultimately, the innovative value of the patents in this case is very little, and people were doing similar things before the patents were granted. Apple's "impact" and massive success and dominance are not things I think we should be thankful for.

What disproves your argument that "all we get are clones" is that all manner of tech startups are clearly innovating all the time despite not receiving patents for their ideas. The market is simply too rich, and the network effect too rewarding, for developers to give up innovation simply because they can't patent ideas.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#38

Post by davidw »

flatline3 wrote: post #12
thechut wrote: post #6

These patent wars don't help anyone but Apple, and directly hurts consumers. I don't think this is what anyone wants. It actually sickens me to see the law enacted in this way. I really hope this comes back to bit Apple in the ass. It seems there has been a story about Apple doing something shitty everyday for the past few days, and the taste it leaves in my mouth is just getting worse and worse.

First, I'd like to note that the article provides a very poor summary of the patents. That said, I'd like to throw this devil's argument out there as to why these patent wars help consumers: These patent wars might help consumers by allowing Apple to leverage the money they spend on R&D, giving them the traction necessary to invest further R&D, and pushing Apple's competitors to come up with new and different ideas.…

+1 for arguing the other side clearly and with an absence of fanboyism, but I don't think it holds up in the software field:

* Apple would be where they are with or without these patents - copyright would probably be sufficient.

* They are holding back innovation by attempting to win via legal means what they should be winning by marketing better products.

* These patent wars exclude companies which do not have the deep pockets to fight with the 'big boys', who can and do use patents as a club to snuff out upstarts.

Re: Judge grants Apple an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus

#40

Post by [deleted] »

moultano wrote: post #22

When you work for a company that does this, you owe it to your integrity to resign. The government is too incompetent to fix this mess, and market pressure isn't going to do it either. That leaves us, the actual engineers. It's our job to tell the companies we work for that litigating instead of competing isn't acceptable.

[deleted]
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