So, the new HTC phones are facing delays in the US, and they now ship with a slightly modified US-specific Android build which removes data tapping and sports an altered app associations screen to avoid Apple’s patents. This is step one. Step two is companies avoiding the litigious and anti-consumer messes that are the US and German markets altogether. Clearly, IP laws are working to the benefit of the consumer and the market as a whole. Great work guys.
Doing what they should have been doing in the first place, shipping products that don’t infringe on someone else’s patents without first licensing those patents. What a concept! Good for them.
The problem is that the things in question shouldn’t be patented at all.
A hardware patent is a kind of source code – more of pseudocode, as you have to implement the details yourself, but still… (I’d actually like to see hardware patents go into more detail, though, on things like that.) It’s an interesting idea, in that it gives how to make a novel thing to the public domain, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on that thing.
Software patents can’t really be called pseudocode at all, though. They tend to patent the concept of something, not an implementation.
This “data tapping” patent, for instance, is an example of a simple concept being implemented. They hook a parser up to a menu of actions. They do explain the basic structure of their concept, but they don’t demonstrate specific methods for implementing their concept.
Really, on software patents, the patent application should include source code.
I agree. If I had the money I would sue Apple to disclose the source code for everything they are suing people over. Patents are for the promotion of the progress of useful arts. It is so the public can know how your invention works. If you don’t disclose how your invention works (source code) you are not promoting the progress of useful arts.
FUCK you. If it was up to you and Apple only Apple would be allowed to write any code. The fact that you cannot sit down in front of your computer and write popular useful system code without Apple suing the shit out of you over dubious software patents that did not exist when Apple was a growing company is asinine. Patents should not exist on software. So u think apple created the idea of hyperlinking a phone # to an application? This is madness. And the fact that you advocate for this crap leaves me wondering what the fuck are you doing on a forum about operating systems. You don’t give a damn about tech.
FTFY. And tone it down a bit.
Wow, did I say all of that? LOL Whether software patents are legal, necessary, or proper, or should be thrown out wholesale is a whole other topic. And for the record, I AGREE that software patents are stupid, but they exist, so until someone changes the associated laws, both people and companies must abide by those laws.
So, the fact remains, that a court found that HTC’s phones infringe some of Apple’s copyrights, and they should have licensed them before shipping phones to this country. That’s pretty simple. They might even also infringe on other companies’ patents as well, but those have not been adjudicated. Therefore, HTC could have avoided this situation by licensing the patents from anyone involved, but they decided not to and just go ahead and ship their phones, and got caught at it. I suppose if you think that banks are unethical institutions, then that makes it OK to go rob a bank instead of going into the bank and applying for a loan if you want money?
Edited 2012-05-18 11:00 UTC
So you think it a simple matter to figure what your widget might have infringed given the state of patent and copyright law.
It’s protection racket in which you have to assume every Corp gets it’s cut, with or without any merit whatsoever, and that only if the ‘Law’ is not being used to keep your widget out of the market altogether.
You’re free to travel from Apple Land to Sony Land to HTC Land, etc. Visas aren’t that hard to come by you know. Clearly this helps us consumers by ……. making ….us visit more places on this planet and thus gain … cultural experiences.
Yeah, because paying hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars in airfare in order to buy a different kind of phone is the rational and affordable thing to do.
should I have added a </sarcasm> tag at the end of my comment??
Oops, seems my sarcasm detector was malfunctioning.
🙂
This is not a new idea to any person who knows Apple’s contracts or agreements. They have been at this sort of business plan for decades. Yes, they had to buy companies instead of licensing. Yes, they set strict rules on how their software and hardware could be used. It is clear that the massive adoption of it’s mobile products prove that the people like it.
I can’t figure out why this patent deal is so strange to anyone. The inventor of the rim fire cartridge had a poor agreement with the gunmaker it selected. The gunmaker only agreed to pay a royalty if the inventor fought off patent claims. The inventor died penniless. You may have a great idea but you have to defend it.
“Step two is companies avoiding the litigious and anti-consumer messes that are the US and German markets altogether.”
Right. Companies will give up on selling to 300 million Americans and 80 million Germans, and maybe the EU as well, and satisfy themselves with the available market in Norway?
The patent situation is a disaster, but at this point, it’s much more profitable to figure out workarounds and pay extortionate fees for licenses than to abandon whole markets.
Keep in mind that there’s Asia, too.
They’ll give up being sued, or having to fork over $5 each, for that number of produced units, I’m sure.
For now yes, but the economics of scale says that at some point it won’t be and then it will be more profitable to focus on the much larger Asian and European (minus Germany) markets.
(1) Seriously, they are dicks.
(2) iOS is *worse* than Android 4.0 in every single way except iOS does have more and *sometimes* better 3rd party apps. Stock apps for Android are *way* better for people who use the Google ecosystem in particular. Maps, email, IM, calendar: apps are way better than with iOS and integration is like 1000X better.
I had never owned an iOS device until a few months ago when I was forced to buy an iPad2 and an iPhone for work. I honestly came into it expecting the usability of iOS and the overall experience to be much better. I assumed it was true. I was honestly shocked to find how bad iOS was. I think it is still riding the rep it captured when it was first released and it was like 100 years better than Windows Mobile and Android was still very crappy.
Where iOS *is* much better is when you compare the usability to vendor versions of Android which are bewildering and ugly. I do concede that. But iOS loses hard compared to stock from google Android 4.0.
Anyway, this is just a rant (I know offtopic) because Apple is pissing me off this morning
This case shows so well, what kind of impact the US patent system has. Because of it, foreign companies have to pay for getting to the US markets, make their products less attractive or just keep away from there. Who knows, if this semi-protectionist impact is the only reason, why the government doesn’t wan’t to reform the system.
Edited 2012-05-18 06:58 UTC
Many of us would like to see patents go.
Unfortunately the probability of this happening is very low as it is a very complex matter.
The complexity of the whole system though doesn’t guarantee that a world without patents will be inherently better.
There’s probably just too much mana on all sides now, to get rid of them …I suspect that, for example, Google wouldn’t really push for abolishment – now that they spent billions on Motorola essentially only for patents.
I see Microsoft just sought and got a ban on imports of certain Motorola smartphones, so where is the outrage article about Microsoft, hmmmm? Double standard here?
Did you submit that news piece?