Several days ago when Apple hinted at legal action against Palm, we held our breath to see just what would happen. Now Palm has stepped up to the plate boldly and hinted that they'd fight whatever legal action is thrown at them.
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Member since:2005-07-06
its not a popular view on this site, as a portion of my negative marks will profess, but I believe apple to be perfectly within their rights to try and defend what they feel they invented
Apple doubtless spent a great deal of development money and they should have the right to defend that invention
If you want to see how a economic system works without patent/ip protections of the Anglo/Saxon economies then China is a perfect example (pre joining the wto, they have since started to embrace ipr in certain sectors).
Member since:2008-03-17
I guess many of the negative comments here stem from the fact that none of us really see what patents of apple's palm is infringing.
And if palm is in fact infringing on an apple patent, that patent is probably horribly vague and generally harmful to the industry and not just protective of apple ip.
Member since:2005-11-14
"Invented", eh? Even the user interface domain is stuffed full of prior art.
Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame to last forever, but you actually need to keep up the hard work for that to happen.
If you're referring to the production of fake goods, there are a range of instruments other than patents which would deal with that problem adequately. And by using "ip" you're deliberately blurring the issues. Many people who advocate the abolition of patents in various fields don't advocate the abolition of copyright because copyright not only functions adequately as a "protection", but it's also completely clear when someone has infringed copyright: they've either acquired (and probably massaged) the work or they haven't. With patents, you can rediscover some technique and do all the hard work yourself and then be sued for treading on someone's turf.
And now that China's bureaucrats have discovered the easy money in "intellectual property", what has happened? A deluge of junk patents which will ultimately be used to stifle competition. In fact, they've even "innovated" in making new categories of junk patents. Welcome to the club, eh?
Member since:2008-10-23
I believe it is not about Anglo/Saxon vs China. If you go that way, you have to look at the whole story. China didn't invade tibet because they didn't have software patents. Look, Hitler was vegetarian, do you see what you will become if you are vegetarian? China's economy and Anglo/Saxon economies are more complex than that.
Just pointing out that China didn't do software patents and failed doesn't mean removing software patents will make you fail.
Edited 2009-01-25 21:35 UTC
Member since:2007-09-06
Nice of you to through China in there. That should get the US folks good and riled.. well.. with the number of replies here already.. it did.
I agree that Apple or any other company has a right to protect there patents but no one outside Apple and Palm's legal teams know how valid those patents really are. It could even be simple scare tactics to scare sales away from the competition or simply posturing to keep the shareholder's happy.
But in reply to your point about looking east for how a market with no patent or copywrite laws functions; I think patent and copywrite law need to be reformed not removed. Patents on software is an obsurdity:
- software is a complicated math formula; math formulas are not patentable
- software is the written form of business processes; business processes are not patentable
- software patents are more often used to limit the evolution of computing which does not in any way help the "little guy" or end user
- software is easily duplicated at minimal cost unlike the physical goods that patents where intended to cover; sharing your (if license allows) shoftware with a second party does not deprive you of the software
- we already have something that protects written and other forms of art; copywrite
What was once created to protect independent inventors from having there creations stollen by big business has evolved into an arms race between big businesses and barrier to competition through chilling effects.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2007-09-06
I wouldn't hold that against Palm. They are still a young company. The use of patents by big business was well established by the time they turned up.
That's not to say that patent law is not a mess corrupted from it's original intent; only that Palm is responding to a previously established legal environment.
Now, if Palm as actively attacking other companies through patent litigation then that's something to condemn.