Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “In March 2010, after filing an ITC complaint and a federal lawsuit against HTC, Apple released an official statement with the following quote from Steve Jobs: ‘We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it… We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.'”
“That is still the only Apple comment on the HTC dispute. In fact, even after the ruling on Monday, a spokeswoman for Apple reiterated that position,” Mueller reports. “Not only does nothing in that statement suggest that a workaround is a negative outcome but the second part even suggests that ‘competitors should create their own original technology.’ That’s exactly what a workaround, or designaround, comes down to.”
Mueller reports, “His official biography states that shortly after he brought litigation against HTC, Steve Jobs met with then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and said: ‘I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.’ Again, that’s what HTC is now going to do with respect to the “data tapping” patent. What HTC calls a workaround sounds more like a throwout — a complete removal of the feature rather than an alternative implementation — but either way it’s just what Steve Jobs wanted. He wanted this with a view to far more patents than one, but Apple can now try to make his vision materialize one patent at a time. Its litigation has already resulted in several modifications of competing products, particularly on Samsung’s part.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
Apple might have had an insurmountable lead in smartphones had Eric T. Mole not been on the Apple board and gotten a huge head start with redesigning Android away from the super-awful Windows Mobile and more like the phones we know today. I find it hard to believe privileged board members of another company can steal others ideas in secret without some very punitive legal action discouraging it.
Yes. Eric T Mole had to have signed a NDA to serve on Apple’s board.
Andy Rubin head of Android also used to work for apple.
from one of Apple’s legal briefs:
“Android and Mr. Rubin’s relevant background does not start, as HTC would like the Commission to believe, with his work at General Magic or Danger in the mid-1990s. In reality, as the evidence revealed at the hearing, Mr. Rubin began his career at Apple in the early 1990s and worked as a low-level engineer specifically reporting to the inventors of the ‘263 [realtime API] patent at the exact time their invention was being conceived and developed”
I posted a few articles back that the goal was one small step at a time with regards to patent litigation… Seems I am not the only one this thousand cut policy will eventually prove victorious. And it hurts more too… No instant death to put them out of their misery…. Steve wanted to make the theives suffer….he did not say so outright… But a read of his bio paints a picture that indicates vindictiveness was not beyond him.
“Workarounds” are innovation in their own right when creatively done.
That is what building on the past does is expand technology.
It is what any new company has to do to gain traction.
The phone wars are really the exhalation of all the angst left over from the PC wars. While AAPL wasn’t able to defend against those, it intends to vigorously defend against these, if only for the satisfaction of history. Well, that and competitive edge.
I wouldn’t be surprised if AAPL were reviewing BRED patents even more carefully because of Schmidt as a latter day Gates. Don’t think AAPL wants to see a repeat of the same PEAR patterns that occured following the Windowsification of its original GUI.
Google, Schmidt = Low life scum bags. Stabbed Steve Jobs, Apple and their users in the back. Sat at the board absorbing information privy to those member, only to turn around and use it for Android.
I share everyone’s disdain for Schmidt. There’s no question that Google took advantage of his position on the Apple board, as well as the opportunity to work on early software for the first iPhone (Google maps).
But don’t also discount the timetable Apple had to follow for announcing the iPhone and then actually offering it for sale. Due to FCC filings and that whole approval process (in which images of the device could have been public record prior to an official unveiling by the company), Apple had to show everyone the phone in January and not release it until June.
That gave Google, Microsoft, RIM and Nokia a six month period where they could face reality, scrap their ancient designs and feverishly try to catch up. They are all lucky to have had that half a year.
That six months was nowhere near enough time for Google (let alone the others) to turn the Android phone from what it was to what it became.
Google clearly had to have advanced intel… and that intel clearly had to have come via Schmidt. Look at the distance between where Android is at and the others. Some of that could be attributed to Google having better a development team, but MS has a team as good or better than Google and look at where they are.
I will not be surprised if Apple is slowly, methodically building up evidence to go after The Mole & Company. Secretly gathering facts, evidence, crossing their T’s dotting their i’s! When Apple is ready its going thermonuclear on their asses!