Guest post by 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.
In the infamous words of Lynn Fox, a Palm spokesperson, in response to Apple’s barred teeth:
Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio, and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.
In a previous article on OSNews concerning Apple’s veiled threats, Thom mentioned that “Palm better not infringe on any iPhone patents when Palm launches the Pre, because Apple is ready and willing to take such a case to courts.” It’s sounding as if Palm isn’t backing down in fear as Apple hoped, but quite the contrary. Could a vicious legal battle ensue when the Pre is released? It’s looking like a possibility.
“look, we’re sorry. Honestly, no idea it looked similar. Cor, lawyers eh? They never said nothing to us. We’ll just throw it away shall we?”
I simply love the way patent system works nowdays (or not). They are filling patents *only* to defend themselves from other companies – not to protect inventions like it was intended by creators of patent system. One more argument against patenting software – or maybe even more – against patent system at all?
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.
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).
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.
And you know this because…?
…we’ve rarely seen a patent by any computer/software company that was NOT vague and harmful to the industry?
Edited 2009-01-25 20:24 UTC
Who is “we”?
What does “harmful” mean?
Does it mean to you that a company invents something unique and then profits from their invention, so that other companies are forced to find other ideas of their own?
I find that to be a good thing, not a bad thing. That’s one of the points to patents. It forces others to come up with more ideas, rather than all using one idea and not advancing.
Software patents are no different from others. You can be sure that if computers were around during the time our country was formed (and all others as well), patents would have also covered software.
The only problem is that the software industry moves faster than others, and so software patents are too long. As I’ve mentioned, it should likely be for 7 years, as that seems to be about the time the industry gets turned upside down.
Edited 2009-01-25 20:33 UTC
Harmful means that by being far too vague, most patents in the computer/software industry tend to stifle smaller companies that come up with different solutions that look alike.
As far as I’m concerned, a patent should only be granted if the applicant can show a working example of the idea he’s trying to patent. That prototype must be delivered alongside the patent. The patent is only applicable to the specific implementation employed by the prototype.
Tying a patent to a prototype this way makes patents much more specific, and less harmful because competing companies would have a much better idea of what the patent covers, and what not.
Patents are not harmful. Intentionally vague patents without working prototypes are.
Edited 2009-01-25 21:13 UTC
This is rubbish, books were around when the patent system was invented and patents on books were/are not allowed, for good reason, they are protected by copyright, same as software. Somebody who says we should allow patents on software or business concepts should also say we should allow patents on books, storylines, because it’s exactly the same thing. Today’s world would be a pretty sad place if that would’ve been allowed to happen.
That is why patents must be enforced via the courts.
A court will decide if the patent was indeed an invention which deserves protection or a waste of paper and the courts time.
Out of hand assuming the particular patent is ‘vague’ is a dis-service to what may me a highly technical and specific invention developed by apple staff
highly technical? How did apple engineers get their hands on a pre so that they could determine any infringement?
Apple is just talking crap in order to intimidate. I would be willing to accept if it was a blatant copy (ie the meizu m8 or whatever). However, apple has seemingly left them (meizu) alone and are only going against palm because they have created a product that potentially can usurp the iphone’s crown.
Edited 2009-01-25 23:13 UTC
you are undoubtedly correct
If palm released something that would not sell then im sure apple would not be interested.
it is not for me (nor you) to speculate how apple got hold of a pre to make the decision. Neither of us know and it wont further the argument of either of us.
What I don’t understand is all those here at OS news insisting patents should not be used. If, as seems to be a common claim, the patents are unenforceable let it go to court. The US legal system generally is held in quite high regard. The decision on a case such as this (which I understand to be GUI related) would establish once and for all the status of patents in software and in particular software interfaces
“The US legal system generally is held in quite high regard”
The existence and success of patent trolls in the us says otherwise to me…
come on now
you cant dismiss an entire legal system because you happen to dislike patents!
The concepts like innocent until proven guilty and the concept of prison being for rehabilitaion and not punishments are great things
To dismiss an institution such as the US legal system in such a complacent manner has, to me, completly undermined any credibility in you or the argument you put forward.
I will happily continue to debate patents but I no longer belive it to be appropriate to do so with yourself
p.s I am not American
They have been complacent or patent trolls wouldn’t get away with what they are doing.
Even if it is legal (and it is) this does not mean that the patent system is deeply flawed. Patents should cover products and physical implementations and not ideas.
Frankly it is almost as stupid as patenting sections of the human genome (which some pharmaceutical companies have done).
I agree that patents should exist, but not in the current form. A lot of the trouble would be prevented if the patent office wouldn’t grant patents so complacently.
Who cares whether you’re american or not?
What the hell does prison have to do with patent law?
Especially a society as litigious as the US, you think cramming courts with the task of reviewing junk patents that could have easily been disqualified by the patent office is a good idea. We should have non-technical judges presiding over detailed technological debates? How has that worked out so far?
“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?
[quote]”Invented”, eh? Even the user interface domain is stuffed full of prior art.[/quote]
You’re just making statements that have no validity, as you’re just guessing.
Patents are a very important component in enforcement of the right to retain IP. Your denial of that doesn’t negate the fact of it.
You apparently don’t know the difference between a copyright and a patent. Look it up and then come back here.
Edited 2009-01-25 20:26 UTC
Unfortunately, many interface patents are hideously vague. One of my faves is this one:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5-AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,181,690
Horribly out of date, but with which the company (a bunch of dinosaurs) are going to use as a hammer against anyone remotely touching similar aspects.
What is IP?
It is a artificial term which sums up things like trademarks, patents, copyrights, creator’s rights, … .
And it is a murky territory nowadays.
Whereas patents are necessary for pharmaceutic innovation (long development times, long testing times, high development costs), patents in areas like mechanical engineering are less useful as a tool to foster innovation.
For software, ideas are vast, the development costs are close to zero, obtaining a software patent costs as much as the person who does the PTO paperwork costs. Consequently, software patents are not worth protecting. Nobody would protect a single one dollar bill, whereas Fort Knox with all it’s gold is heavily guarded.
Patents are a tool to make people and companies innovate, despite high costs of innovation. if innovation does not cost much, patents are not needed, quite the contrary, they are a hindrance to innovation.
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
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.
Not that I agree with software patents (I don’t) but who else would someone be protecting innovations from other then other companies?
I think he’s referring to defensive patents, that is patents that you don’t actually intend to take sue over unless someone sues you.
Patent law, even for software (why is that any different than for mechanical systems and processes?) is required.
To think otherwise is to not understand the way things work.
Why invest time and money into something if others will copy it right away, and very possibly deprive you of the income you rightfully deserve for coming up with it in the first place? That makes no sense!
The requirement that all the details of a patent be published and easily accessible, is also important, as it gives others the ability to study them, and if possible, find out even more innovative ways of doing the same thing.
Patents don’t last forever. Unlike with copyrights, there has been no movement to extend those protections past 20 years.
Perhaps software patents should last for a shorter time, say 7 years. That would better track the way progress is made in this industry.
Patents are dumb!
It used to be patents were given to truly unique ideas. Ideas that made you say, “now that is cool…”
These days you get a patent for whatever comes out of your mind.
Patents have the requirement to be unique and non-intuitive. Gee if they actually applied that about 90% of the patents would fall away.
That is why the patent system is broke! It has become a domain of lawyers, for lawyers…
Software is already protected by copyright law. And it doesn’t represent an invention, since it is by nature built upon existing constructs. Put another way, should an author be able to patent their style of writing to ensure that other authors don’t try to emulate it? Do we want to see books, televisions shows or movies covered by patents?
Patents were created to protect physical inventions, not abstract concepts or ideas. Copyright law is sufficient for protecting IP.
Riiiiight….
Getting back to my original example, why do authors or writers or artists bother creating original works if others can copy them at will for free? Oh, wait, they can’t. Copyright law.
There are no unique concepts in software design. There is nothing in any software application that is so revolutionary or groundbreaking that it deserves some special recognition that prevents anybody else from trying something similar.
You’re arguing that IBM should own privilege over word processors, or that Apple should own privilege over GUIs (because they negotiated the right to use Xerox’s original work), and that nobody else should extend those concepts because of the investment those companies made. Do you really want to live in a world where companies can stake their ground and prohibit competition just by becoming the first to come up with an idea for software? Would we be better served if all home users were forced to use Mac OS 1.0 or massive monochrome DisplayWriters in business, if those were patented?
And how does that change things? You just said that companies should have the right to protect their innovations, and now you’re saying that others should have the right to see detailed access of those innovations and then find a different way of implementing them.
How do you protect code in a patent?
Software patents shouldn’t exist. Ideas were never intended to be patented. Concepts were never meant to be patented. The ability to patent abstract thought is the antithesis to innovation. Patents should protect physical inventions, period. Copyright law protects software to the best benefit for authors and users alike.
Software is a written work so copywrite would be more applicable to protect it.
It’s also a complicated math formula at it’s most basic level; math is not petentable (yet software is?)
It’s also documented business processes and policies; these are also not patentable.. unless you call it “software”
I don’t think the Palm Pre is an iPhone rip off, it looks actually much cooler and simpler to use, a modern PDA. What would be the ripped off iPhone technology? Moultituch display? please
That’s the beauty of aesthetic appeal. You see a Perfect 10 and I see a 7 pretending to be a 10 by wearing a cheap knockoff.
I know “There’s no arguing taste” as Romans already noticed, no doubt after years of useless discussions
(De gustibus non est disputandum).
Still if we can try to get concrete, yes moving stuff around screen is similar(push and slide, genius), as on all new multitouch devices, but using it, applicatons, and switching between them (card like approach) is very much different.
Can you try to elaborate your standing point? Ripoff is what?
Soooo…. remind me, are we talking about computing devices or fashion accessories?
Maybe it’s the “mouse gestures”, which is totally different to mouse gestures from Opera!
It is disappointing (though, of course, expected) that although we’ve very recently witnessed the damaging consequences of people making nebulous statements with no real meat to them (regarding CEO privacy issues etc.), people still continue to do so. I wish they’d stop posturing and get on with the business at hand, which ought to be competing on product quality, reliability and features. (As Apple apparently “started it” my “they” above applies to that company too, but really this happens with many tech companies and I just wish they’d grow up!)
Total agreement with others about how rubbish the patent system is nowadays to allow such nonsense. Luckily in the EU we don’t have software patents (yet) but I fear it’s only a matter of time. (I’m not saying this is a software-patents issue; I don’t think anyone knows what the actual issue is here, as so far nobody has admitted there is one.)
Slightly tangential but I’m also worried that the status quo in the EU regarding SMEs providing most of the wealth will be drastically altered by the current economic crisis. I can imagine a lot of them going bust, to have their market share replaced by the potentially a-lot-less-ethical, yet stronger, multinationals (and we all know how much they love patents and would like the EU to be more friendly to them…)
Apple didn’t “start” it. They responded to a question in the way they had to.
Did you expect them to brush off the question? Of course not.
Besides, Apple isn’t interested in most of the GUI Palm is using. But there are parts of it that could violate some of Apple’s IP.
I just wish people would actually understand what a patent is all about, and not make silly statements.
A silly statement is that Apple isn’t the first to use gestures. Well, it doesn’t matter!
A patent isn’t about ideas. This has been stated over and again, and most people still don’t understand it. It’s about process. That means that the WAY an idea is implemented is what the patent is all about.
If Palm implemented their finger swipes and such, in the same way internally as Apple has done, then Apple SHOULD sue. It’s Apple’s technology.
But, if they found a different way to do so, then Apple CAN’T sue, as it’s Palm’s technology.
This is a pretty simple principal, and people should understand it.
If a third company does the same thing, both Palm AND Apple might be able to sue, or either, or neither. It all depends on HOW this is being done. What is the code doing? How is it doing it? How is the touchscreen responding? Etc.
The result is the gesture. The gesture is likely not patentable, but how they get there is.
I’m sorry, but what you are saying, although in theory true, never works out that way.
Software patents, unlike physical patents, patent a concept. The idea is that if I describe what my software does, be that in a precise or more often than not vague manner, I can then patent that idea; thereby protecting something I may not even have created.
A physical patent provides me with a limited monopoly on technology actually invented, thereby rendering physical patents infinity more useful to industry and innovation by not only protecting an individual’s or company’s investment but also by encouraging those same people to continue innovating in the knowledge that any investment they make will be protected. Physical patents protect small and large entities alike without favoritism, either inadvertently or otherwise.
Software patents, on the other hand, encourage companies to amass large portfolios of them just to protect themselves from predatory patent trolls and competitors. It forces companies to come to patent deals and favors large companies who can afford large portfolios. Small time software houses have to be very careful when treading the legal minefield that is the modern patent system.
How can software patents possibly be a good thing when it stifles innovation, especially from smaller software houses, thereby achieving exactly the opposite of what patents where designed to do in the first place?
Copyright has been more than enough to protect other forms of creative works. Why would software need two?
perhaps If apple sued palm about patents then palm sued apple about any other patent than palm owns and the iphone infringes (it´idiot to think that palm not owns a lot of patents of mobile tecnology as it was a leader and pioner in the PDA camp).And then the pandora box will be opened for all companies fighting to any other comapanies for patent suing
Edited 2009-01-25 15:26 UTC
Palm followed quite a way behind the Newton – which was produced by whom?
Maybe if Palm is feeling particularly benevolent, they’ll offer to show Apple how to implement advanced functionality (like copy-paste) in a handheld OS.
The Newton, the grand-daddy of the PDA world, had copy-paste, and a lot of other “advanced functionality” that others (*cough* Palm) have copied over time. Because the iPhone doesn’t have it we should make no assumption that Apple don’t know how to do it, or in fact don’t already have it implemented very nicely, along with many of the other advanced functions that the market place has been asking for.
Whether we like it or not – and in this case I don’t particularly like what companies do – holding back features that aren’t a major stumbling point as determined by the market research prior to release of that product, in order to offer those features as an upgrade or in a future release, is the methodology employed by every single major company in any field you care to name. We don’t have to like it, but we either accept that’s the way the world works, or we whinge about it.
As for patents, if Palm is infringing on an of Apple’s patents I hope Apple do sue them, just like if Apple infringed on any of Palm’s patents Palm would be within their rights to sue Apple.
Why would any company continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D if anyone could then just take what they had developed, rip it off, make a copy and price it based on manufacturing costs alone without the need to recoup any of the R&D money, and therefore outsell the company who originally developed the concept purely on the price of the product? Nobody with a brain cell to bless themselves with would do that or support that concept. It is not workable, certainly not viable from a business perspective, and is a sure way to totally stifle technological advancement.
yet precisely this is what prevents someone coming up with the next greatest thing (or evolution) from their garage.
The would be sued to hell if they tried to sell any product like this (even if they didn’t copy/reverse engineer an existing product) due to the fact that many patents in actuality cover methods and not products. The patent system is such a minefield that you need an army of lawyers to help you navigate it.
I suspect, if the rumors running through the web hold water, that apple is feeling like a sheep raising a wolf.
They took kthml and developed webkit, now looks like palm is using it to develop Palm Pre. See:
“http://blogs.windriver.com/wind_river_blog/2009/01/palm-pre-and-web…
If true, this is a wonderful example of why GPL works so nicely (in this case, LGPL) and, perhaps, could explain Apple angry.
There are still not a lot of trustful info around the web (at least, I could not find one), but if the information I found is any true, it will be a wonderful device to develop to (hey, I like real keyboards).
Apple WANTS other companies to use Webkit. That’s why they released their own code for it. They want all other companies to use web standards, and wipe IE and its proprietary junk off the map. Firefox is doing well without Webkit, of course, but we are seeing more browsers using Webkit as time goes on.
If Apple succeeds in making Webkit the standard for mobile devices, as it looks like is happening, they they will have gone a long way in moving IE off the scene. There are even rumors going around that MS is experimenting with Webkit!
If Webkit succeeds, then this will benefit Apple directly, because all of those sites that don’t work with web standards, but with IE ones, will move to the open standards, which will open up financial and other sites to those using OS X where now they don’t work with it, because those companies complain that it’s too small a market for them.
Get it?
Err…that doesn’t sound quite right. Wiki:
KHTML and KJS were adopted by Apple in 2002 for use in the Safari web browser. Apple publishes the source code for their fork of the KHTML engine, called WebKit, as required by the LGPL.
Not quite ‘out of the goodness of their hearts’ like you make it sound…but still, nice of them to go with KHTML in the first place
whats’ so nice of them? Khtml was there and could cut down dev time and costs, there is no “niceness” behind their reasons for using it.
‘Nice of them’ with respect to them knowing that they’d be contributing their own code to the community from the get-go. They could have chosen a proprietary path (Opera’s Presto for example) and contributed nothing.
Nice, like their contribution of the mach kernel. Apple provides sources of their underlying bsd system, but they don’t seem to do so happily.
Only recently has webkit been easily accessible (due to complaints). Before people had to jump through hoops in order to contribute to webkit.
There is nothing wrong with using open source to reduce product development time or cost, but don’t mistake it for niceness. Apple to me seems even more incompatible with open source than microsoft, with all their innate desire for secrecy despite the fact that they employ open source tech extensively.
Edited 2009-01-26 17:49 UTC
Well, bad excuse really…been reading on OSnews for years (Many, many years
)…pretty much every article
I just haven’t felt like I’ve had much to say.
Anyway..
If Palm ripped off Apple…who did apple rip off?
Am I the only one that finds similarities with the iphone layout and with the nokia phones?
What about Sony Ericcsons?
I’m talking about the menu system
I might be wrong, I might be right
Either way
Greetings from Norway
If you go back to when phones were just phones these companies had no “Menu System”, that didn’t appear in phones until after the appearance of the first PDAs. The Menu system used in most phones was fairly much a rip off of Palm’s original OSes, who in turn did a pretty good job of ripping off the Newton, which was developed by whom?
Erm. I’ve had more phones than I can remember, and even the most basic ones of them back in the day had a perfectly working menu implementation.
Then friend I may just have a few more rings around the trunk than you, because my first “mobile” phone was a brick that had a bag and a battery that you needed a trolly to drag around (ok, slight exaggeration) and an oh so impressive LED display, and I can assure you that neither it nor the first handheld Motorola jobs that I had were blessed with any menu system at all, they were purely phones, you typed in the number and hit dial. To save numbers in the address book you used key combinations. The first menu systems were text based menus similar in function to the original iPod.
Graphical menu systems on phones did not come into being until around 1995/6, well after PDAs.
Watching this back and forth between Apple and Palm is like watching a Chihuahua try to intimidate a Great Dane. The message it sends is that Palm simply doesn’t have to resort to aggressive, thinly-veiled threats – because it’s obvious who actually has the bigger teeth.
Edited 2009-01-25 17:40 UTC
I think the real issue is regarding trade secrets from Rubenstein (ex Apple hardware VP that designed the iPod) and their recent hirings of Apple engineers.
The patent most likely in contention is the one which is casually called “Stacks”.
Coverflow used in iTunes and on iPods and iPhone is one realisation of that and the cards interface is so close that it could be considered infringing.
Some of the gestures apparently are similar, but I think Apple should leave those alone. We’re better off to have the same gestures for devices, no matter who makes them. Then again, Creative filed suit against Apple over the iPod menu system and won.
Do right and wrong have real meaning in court any longer?
Isn’t this just a case of the blogosphere gone wild?
I don’t recollect Apple’s COO mentioning Palm directly or indirectly.
This is the transcript:
Question: “Now a number of competitors coming for iPhone. Their own variance on customer experience, Palm Pre, Android, Windows. How do you think about sustaining your leadership in sector?â€
Cook: “I would say, first of all, it’s difficult to judge products that are not yet in the market. The iPhone has sold over 17 million units thus far. It’s received the highest overall customer satisfaction from many different surveys. And we’ve said since the beginning software’s the key ingredient, and we believe we’re still years ahead on software. I would include with software the Applications Store ad you’ve seen the explosion with half a billion downloads.
â€When you think of having multiple variations of displays, of resolutions and input methods, and of hardware, it’s a big challenge to a software developer and it’s not very enticing to build a different app for every one of these things. But we’ll see what people will do. We approached this business as a software platform business, so we’ve approached it fundamentally different than those who approached it only from a hardware point of view.
“We are confident with where we are competitively. We’re watching the landscape, we like competition. As long as they don’t rip off our IP, and if they do, we’ll go after anybody that does. I thought that might be your next question, so that’s why I wanted to get that out.â€
Question: “Are you referring to Palm when you say ripping off IP?â€
Cook: “I’m not talking about any specific company. I’m just making a general statement. We think competition is good, it makes us better. But we will not stand to have our IP ripped off. We will go after them with every weapon at our disposal. I don’t think I can be more clear than that.â€
Looks like the media hyped the hell out of a general quote.
In other words, business as usual.
Imagine if the following interface ideas were patented.
– double click
– right click menu
– window
– taskbar
Now imagine that they were all patented by different companies so that they could never be used together. Welcome to the brave new world of touchscreen interfaces if Apple’s multitouch gesture patents are found valid.
The difficulty is that companies now patent designs rather than inventions. The bar has been set so low for “obviousness” that even wholely derivative products claim many patents and new inventions will doubtless infringe on hundreds of existing, overly-broad, patents.