Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 28th Oct 2009 23:20 UTC
As most of you will know, Nokia slapped Apple with a patent lawsuit last week. Nokia claims that Apple's iPhone infringes upon 10 patents related to GSM, UMTS, and WiFi connectivity. In its SEC 10-K annual report filing, Apple made its first cautious response to Nokia's claims.
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Member since:
2007-03-26
I know it's popular to imply that Apple patented multitouch which is something they can't and also shouldn't be allowed to do as they didn't create it. Thankfully for this argument, that's simply not the case anyways.
Apple patented specific hand gestures to use multitouch... something very reasonable in my opinion as it relates to very specific ways of interacting with a device. To steal it is akin to Microsoft stealing Apple's user interface concepts in '83-'84 most of which Apple either invented themselves or purchased from Xerox.
Please don't continue to muddy the understanding of this issue by reinforcing the former way of thinking.
On that note, the "actual technology" you refer to are technologies that should never have been patentable in the first place as they are what we might like to consider open technologies.... hence the reason why Apple is fighting it and if anything a clear reason why we should be siding with Apple on this issue despite your feelings about unrelated lawsuits they were involved in.
[Again] I know it's popular (if only almost exclusively on this site) to find a reason to stand against Apple whenever possible, but I would just ask that you reserve that way of thinking for issues for which the outcome might have some impact on your lives rather than it be a way to simply thumb your nose at the company you try so hard to find a reason to hate.
I see what you're saying, but if Nokia's patents are considered "open technology" then why can't any of the following Apple technologies also be classed as open tech?:
* Multi-touch gesgures when most gesgures are a pretty generic action?
* Or Apples WIMP when using icons as an application identifier is a pretty logical and a standard way of thinking?
(eg companies have "icons" (aka logos) to represent their company, buttons on old devices has "icons" (aka cymbols) to represent their functions, etc)
From where I'm sat, Apple have been very "trigger happy" with their lawyers.
Now whether you agree with Apples individual cases or not, you can't argue that it's OK for Apple to defend Apple's patents but wrong for Nokia to defend their own ones too.