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Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

my.opera.com

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Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#51

Post by Tloewald »

bradleyland wrote: post #32
ajross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. " Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? Using questionable patents to prevent straightforward interoperability requirements (i.e. make a web app to act like a native app) is, to me and I suspect lots of others, a fundamentally evil act. It's all well and good to Love you some Apple. But when they sta…

My opinion is that Apple's patents on touch interactive are bad for consumers and bad for progress. Imagine if Xerox had patented the mouse, and never licensed it to other computer makers on the terms they did. How long would UI design have stagnated on text interfaces? Would something else more/less useful arisen to work around the patent? I don't know exactly how to express this, but maybe it's best to say that I'm…

> Imagine if xerox had invented the mouse.

Indeed. It was invented by Douglas Englebart at UC Berkeley in the 60s.

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#52

Post by mbrubeck »

GHFigs wrote: post #6

Alternate title:"Apple disclosing patents ahead of deadline in accordance with W3C patent policy, again." The sense of malice seems to be inferred from Apple not disclosing these sooner, but I question what the point is of having a deadline if disclosures a month prior to it are going to be considered disruptive. If this was going undermine the process, shouldn't the deadline have been sooner?

I think Haavard's feelings about Apple deliberately causing delays are mostly based on the previous cases he wrote about, like the one where Apple submitted their disclosure on day 149 of the 150-day exclusion period, and then caused further delays by failing to respond to questions from the Patent Advisory Group. And after this huge waste of time, the PAG ultimately determined that Apple's patents didn't even apply to the spec in question:

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2009/10/30/apple-w3c-patent...

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#53

Post by echaozh »

tensor wrote: post #27
dextorious wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""Even beyond plainly bad logic (you patent every "obvious" idea you have?!)""" If it's a multi-million making idea, why wouldn't I? (In my case, though, a little Googling reveals that someone else has thought of it first.) You know of many people coming up with ideas like pinch-to-zoom and just throwing them away? ""it's contradicted by a continuous stream of "bad patent with prior art" stories on this site and a h…

You know of many people coming up with ideas like pinch-to-zoom and just throwing them away? As a matter of fact, I do. Let me present to you a very popular example, pinch to zoom: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html I'm sure you are confused, because Apple has a patent on this because they invented it, right? Not quite. Apple has a very narrow patent on it for using it in conjunction with a particular…

I don't know if it counts as invention, but surely we've seen such technologies in science fiction movies like the Minority Report. The idea must have existed before.

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#54

Post by whyenot »

Tloewald wrote: post #51
bradleyland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that Apple's patents on touch interactive are bad for consumers and bad for progress. Imagine if Xerox had patented the mouse, and never licensed it to other computer makers on the terms they did. How long would UI design have stagnated on text interfaces? Would something else more/less useful arisen to work around the patent? I don't know exactly how to express this, but maybe it's best to say that I'm…

> Imagine if xerox had invented the mouse. Indeed. It was invented by Douglas Englebart at UC Berkeley in the 60s.

He invented it at SRI, not Berkeley

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#55

Post by Tloewald »

whyenot wrote: post #54
Tloewald wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if xerox had invented the mouse. Indeed. It was invented by Douglas Englebart at UC Berkeley in the 60s.

He invented it at SRI, not Berkeley

Thanks for the correction; I've had that wrong in my brain for decades. And, incidentally, he patented it. Interestingly it looks like xerox parc's mice were not much different – apple's design was a considerable improvement.

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#56

Post by nextparadigms »

bradleyland wrote: post #2

The author's framing of Apple's patent applications isn't congruent with the way Apple views touch. The W3C, and standards advocates, view touch events in the same way they do mouse clicks. They're interactions that should be standardized and incorporated in to an event model for use in web applications. Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. Their already granted pinch to zoom pate…

Just imagine what would've happened to the Web if everyone ever making a technology for the Web would've thought like Apple.

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#57

Post by buster »

notatoad wrote: post #37
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.

i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.

Which probably (and hopefully) won't happen with Firefox.

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#58

Post by nl »

Tloewald wrote: post #51
bradleyland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that Apple's patents on touch interactive are bad for consumers and bad for progress. Imagine if Xerox had patented the mouse, and never licensed it to other computer makers on the terms they did. How long would UI design have stagnated on text interfaces? Would something else more/less useful arisen to work around the patent? I don't know exactly how to express this, but maybe it's best to say that I'm…

> Imagine if xerox had invented the mouse. Indeed. It was invented by Douglas Englebart at UC Berkeley in the 60s.

And he patented it, and SRI licensed it to Apple.

During an interview, he says "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

(I agree with the princple of what the GP post is saying though)

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#59

Post by Create »

Tloewald wrote: post #51
bradleyland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that Apple's patents on touch interactive are bad for consumers and bad for progress. Imagine if Xerox had patented the mouse, and never licensed it to other computer makers on the terms they did. How long would UI design have stagnated on text interfaces? Would something else more/less useful arisen to work around the patent? I don't know exactly how to express this, but maybe it's best to say that I'm…

> Imagine if xerox had invented the mouse. Indeed. It was invented by Douglas Englebart at UC Berkeley in the 60s.

He just took it from the radar people.

http://ieee.ca/millennium/fp6000/fp6000_datar.html

Re: Apple using patents to undermine open standards again

#60

Post by glassx »

notatoad wrote: post #37
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.

i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.

I don't know... Charging royalties would be a PR disaster that would cost much more than the licensing in the long term, and if the incentive for charging isn't financial, then it means don't really want other browsers to have Safari-compatible touch events... that, or they're just trying to delay their adoption as much as they can.
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