“It was January 2007 when Apple went to war,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“The original iPhone wasn’t just the world’s first thin client Mac, it was then the company began to define the future of mass market mobile computing,” Evans writes. “It was when it swore to fight tooth and claw to dominate the vision.”
Advertisement: Students, parents and Faculty save up to $200 on a new Mac.
Evans writes, “Today, you have Apple involved in an increasingly bitter global dispute with Samsung, litigation against HTC and Motorola, Kodak, the lousy Lodsys lawsuit and more. Apple is also taking on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) over essential patents for apps.”
“Apple is prepared to litigate to defend its position,” Evans writes. “That’s in addition to its other battlefronts, for example: user interface excellence, world-class design, simplicity and self-expression.”
Read more in the full article here.
It’s a shame so much time, energy and resources have to be spent on and against scumbag lawyers.
It’s how we do business in the good ol’ USA.
Lawyers and litigation may not be pretty, but it’s more civilized than shooting each other with machine guns.
like
Why not? It is efficient.
And it has nothing to do with who’s right.
Wasn’t the right guy always prevail at the end?
English learn you haven’t muchly?
And it is possible to be civilized with a lot less lawyers than in the USA: more than two thirds of the world’s lawyers are in the USA, but I don’t think Europe is any less civilized.
Lawyers are hired guns.
Lawyers, Guns & Money.
“And boy have we patented it!”
I remember this quote in 2007 and wondering why it’s taken so long to enforce. When I saw the first HTC touch products I assumed they’d be off the market within the year. Why has Apple taken 4 years to allow companies like HTC to gain traction?
Market share and profitability often takes care of the wannabes. One of Horace Dediu’s posts at asymco.com demonstrated the falling profits of some of the biggest phone vendors:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/16/iphone-share-of-phone-market-in-q1/
You don’t fully understand about defending your property and property rights until you have been personally involved ……
I have been involved in a property rights lawsuit and I can tell you we threw everything thing and weapon at our disposal to prevail and we did ….. It was then I got the appreciation for the Hatfields and McCoys over their gun battles over dirt, I get it …..
Its about damn time!!!!!!
1
Patents are designed to protect the investment and intellectual property rights company’s expend and develop to reap profits. When someone else comes along and violates these protections, it’s literally like taking money way or stealing from the rightful owner.
Also, remember some patents do expire. This is also designed to not stagnate or block the potential for further innovations or advancements.
People/companies that innovate to be justly and fairly rewarded for their efforts and contributions without seeing their intellectual property diluted or stolen.
“Also, remember some patents do expire.”
?? Enlighten me. What patents do NOT expire? I thought that a primary point of the system is to give ideas that might otherwise remain trade secrets some limited-time exclusivity, then move them into the public domain.
e.g. Sony Trinitron (one gun design), expired after 25 yrs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron (2nd paragraph)
+1
Sadly, the patent system is broken, when the system allows a “first to file” approach that totally disregards prior art.
Say I create something, it’s on the market for six months, but I’m a small company that doesn’t have time to file to protect parts of it that consider a trivial and obvious “invention.”
Then megacorp comes along, sees my product, sees that no patent has been filed for it, and applies for a patent on MY invention, but the patent office is too swamped and my product still not big enough for them to see it as prior art. Hell, I don’t even know about it until 3 years later, when they hit me with a patent lawsuit.
At this point I’m forced to either pay expensive lawyers for months of useless legal wranglings to prove my product was out first (and there’s no assurance of a win even with all the evidence), or buckle and pay to license something I created!
This doesn’t even consider the stupidity of some patents, like the “transfer playlists” garbage that was ruled against Apple the other day.
You might argue, don’t nix software patents because they do some good, like protect Apple against Android, or whatever.
No. Kill them first to shock the system into fixing itself.
First reduce software patent terms from 20 to 5 or even fewer years; get enough trained examiners to reject garbage patents; fine the patent office each time a patent is later ruled invalid, etc…
mossman
I agree. I also recognize that technology moves so fast that the bureaucrats in the patent office more often than not can’t even understand the bleeding edge that necessarily comes with the patent applications for which they are purportedly trying to offer protections.
If a gunfight were to be set up in the OK Corral today do you think it’ll still be confined to Colts and Winchester rifles or might we see RPG7’s, Claymore mines, M4’s, rocket launchers and all manner of weaponry?
Thus, with advancing technology and all manner of breaches we’re essentially still falling back on a system that was designed to litigate horse theft in the 19th century which has moved forward by inches to partially accommodate technological revolutions that are measured in cycles of months, much shorter than the years a court case will take to resolve.
Perhaps we should resort to handing out Colts to the opposing legal teams, point them in the direction of the OK Corral and let them shoot bullets at each other. Case resolved in 5 minutes.
This shall be done. Let’s each company send out a rep (CEO? Chairman? EVP? SVP?) to OK Corral and due it out.
-1
Now we see the wisdom of Apple’s ‘war-chest’. I wonder how much of their 60B cash reserves will get spent on legal services in the 2010 to 2011 decade.
Never expected dividends anyways, but this should quiet some of the people demanding them. Apple’s future value and success will depend on successful defense of IP, and that’s harder and harder to do in this era.
The 2010 to 2011 decade?
A lot of SW Patents are bullsh*t.
Example:
Microsoft patented the Right Mouse Click.
You are probably scratching your head and saying WTF?
Exactly.
That could explain Apple’s one button mouse for all those years.
Now if Apple can patent gestures with more then one finger…
Doug Engelbart’s mouse from the 1960’s had right-click.
Ha ha, oh Microsoft. You and your hilarious plagiarism.
Here’s an idea: if prior art can be demonstrated for an invention, and nobody patented it then, there should be a rule that says nobody can patent it ever. Though I’m sure that wouldn’t have stopped MS from trying.
Only one problem with this (even though I LOVE the idea).
It would invalidate a good 80% of the software patents out there.
Really the machines have gotten faster but fundamentally the core concepts and processes have remained largely unchanged since the 1970s when it comes to software.
We just keep tying different protocols and systems together, most it in very obvious ways and then someone patents the whole thing as some new concept. Most of it is not new, its just the same stuff with different window dressing.
The system is utterly broken at this point. It does not protect inventors (not many inventors can afford a patent let alone the cost to defend it). Its becoming another tool for extending corporate reach and power, and as a tool for extorting money from competitors.
Been watching and playing the game since 1992 and it gets more ridiculous with every passing year. Sure there is some real innovative technology that gets patented but overall the system is top heavy with sh*t and need to be dumped out.
Never again the sugar-water salesman giving away the store to his criminal buddies.
Demons run, when a good man goes to war. 😉
I love the reference! Go Doctor!