The five patents are, in plain language:
• U.S. Patent No. 6,999,800: Relating to a method of managing power — on, sleep, off — in a smartphone that includes both a phone system and a PDA.
• U.S. Patent No. 5,541,988: Relating to a telephone dialer that can store and access information in a telephone directory.
• U.S. Patent No. 6,058,183: Another telephone directory patent, this one covering a method of selecting one page from a plurality of pages.
• U.S. Patent No. 6,320,957: Still another telephone directory patent, this one specifying a way to actually make a call once the number has been located.
• U.S. Patent No. 7,716,505: A second power-management patent, this one covering a method for transferring data from volatile memory to non-volatile memory when a device enters sleep mode.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, HTC, thanks for the laugh – again.
Please see: The specific Apple patents over which Apple is suing HTC – March 02, 2010
…two power management and three telephone directory patents?
That’s it?
Wow…
HTC are toast.
They’re kidding right? Come on…this is the best they can throw at Apple? Sheessshh! I can’t wait for the countersuit.
Sooo, in other words, five “patents” that every smartphone has violated since the beginning of smartphones. What the hell is wrong with our patent system?
I think the next 5 years are going to be very interesting for patent disputes. There are so many patents which discuss such a broad and all-encompassing range of activity that the number of overlaps are astounding. This will all shake out somehow, and I think it will come down to the patents which well define what they do and don’t try to be all things, such as someone trying to patent “a phone which has no wires to connect it to the ground” or something silly like that.
The next Gold Rush: Patents and licensing.
HTC is SOOOOO going to be the next Palm over this.
ha. ha-ha..ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…..this is THE BEST both HTC and MS (with their patent licensing agreements), plus what Google could to do support them – could muster?
Like MDN always says: Bloodbath.
Can’t happen soon enough to a nicer bunch of fscking idiots.
I remember the day when Apple sued any third-party that made desktop computers that looked like an iMac, with translucent colors, egg shape, etc. just for looking too much like an Apple product, even though they ran Windows. They protected their ideas and identity in the market a lot better than they’re doing now.
What about all those patents Apple supposedly was granted for multi-touch, gestures, etc. and now it seems Android is a blatant rip-off of the GUI, and HTC is a blatant rip-off of the iPhone look/style. Is Apple sitting on it’s ass just because things move too fast, and they don’t feel they can protect their innovations in the courst? For every legitimate complaint Apple could throw out there about copycats in design and concept, the copycats throw out their own lawsuits about phone directories…??? Is that how this plays out?
There are visual patents and method patents. Then there are those vague concept patents. HTC is describing a method and Apple uses a different method to do the same thing.
Correct me if I am wrong, patent experts.
Regardless, HTC, u suk.
HTC r APPL fodder
Mark My Words,
“HTC Will be found Guilty of Infringing on Apple’s Patents”
And they will be forced to Settle.
I get it, HTC hired the same law firm as PSYSTAR used in the legal fiasco against Apple.
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“this one covering a method for transferring data from volatile memory to non-volatile memory when a device enters sleep mode.”
– Sounds a lot like virtual memory to me, which I’m fairly certain the iPhone does not use.
My unique farts and poops has a better chance with the patent office than HTCs. Ahahahaha
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yeah 5 Patents against 20 patents from Apple…
yes I now you’re laughing about the 5 patent from HTC
which 2 of them are in actual hardware and 3 of them in the actual OS software system before Google come up with Android.
Apple sued them for apps that re-arrange themselves when one is deleted. Apple sued them for “Object Oriented Graphics System.” “Object Oriented Operating System.” “Object Oriented Multitasking System.” “Automated Response to and Sensing of User Activity in Portable Devices.”
left right swipe to unluck
come on, these patents are pathetic
and you all are biased apple fanbois
I like mine better http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25211/
If enough people see these shenanigans, will we finally be able to reform patents, copyrights, and torts? Not likely given the corporate influence (read hat as “unfettered donations”) in legislation at all levels. Sigh.
@ pdxflint
Did you miss the news that Apple is suing HTC for patent infringement for exactly the items for which you say Apple is sitting on their asses?
You Are So WONG!! oh “WRONG” !!!
Why do uneducated teenagers without a sense of knowledge and even lacking an argument have to use the “biased apple fanbois” Moniker?
Oh and by the way it’s is “FanBoys”, No i in there Einstein, oh and yea I get it “i” for Apples “i” products.
Fail, and very miserably I may add.
Stick and Stones Wong you are so Wrong Wong.
Wrong Wong, i kinda like that it just rolls out.
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Read all 5 and Apple has no worries here. Not of these stand a chance in court as Apple doesn’t even infringe any of them. Added to that they are incredibly weak patents to begin with. My assumption is that these are for PR or to keep Apple busy.
“The five patents are, in plain language:”
1) Prior art: invalid
2) Prior art: invalid
3) Prior art: invalid
4) Prior art: invalid
5) Prior art: invalid
Steve Gibson, of the ‘Security Now’ podcast and GRC.com said it best this past week:
http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-247.txt
STEVE GIBSON: … It’s really frustrating. I mean, the problem is, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is now giving patents out with reckless abandon.
LEO LAPORTE: And for trivial applications, or even applications with prior art, frankly.
STEVE GIBSON: Yes. And so what’s happening is the consumer is now losing because no one manufacturer is able to take a bunch of good ideas and put them together in one platform. . . . And it really is the case that this is no longer benefiting us. And, I mean, for 17 years, we have to wait for 17 years for these patents to expire, and then these ideas go into the public domain.
LEO LAPORTE: I agree. It’s a real problem. And originally the idea of the patent system was to encourage innovation, to reward innovators. At this point it’s the exact opposite.
STEVE GIBSON: Yup, exactly. And it’s basically just giving people a license to sue each other is what it boils down to.
-> My IOW: Blame the ridiculous US Patent Office and similarly techTardy patent offices around the world. If the patent offices cannot comprehend the technology, they have no right giving out the patents. Fire the ignorant staff and get competent staff!!!
… Or my other usual IOW:
If you can’t innovate, LITIGATE.
It’s the new Spirit Of The Age. Pathetic.
I think you guys are missing the point… as a multiple patent holder myself, what HTC did is no different than what Apple, or quite frankly any other company does….
You file to patent the ‘Method & Apparatus’ for a ‘novel’ idea. Many patents are actually quite mundane, however they may also be ‘essential’ for making something work (i.e. difficult to work around)
I disagree w/ the previous comments about the patent system. It is what gives small & large companies leverage to then negotiate private cross-licensing deals…
W/o it, many once small start-ups would never become the industry behemoths that they are. Qualcomm used to be a tiny upstart. They came up with a much more efficient & secure wireless technology called CDMA. Filed multiple patents, many seemed quite mundane at the time….
When the GSM crowd in Europe started to become threatened by the efficiency of CDMA, vs. creaky old GSM, they tried to repackage it as W-CDMA, (aka UMTS). Then they tried to claim, quite comically, that Qualcomm had NO intellectual property on the UMTS standard…
Well, we all know how that turned out! Qualcomm is now one of the biggest IP licensors as well as the largest 3G chipset maker across both CDMA2000 & UMTS… (and soon TD-SCDMA)
They would have been squashed like a bug had it not been for the patent system (and multiple, high-profile law suits to boot!)