“In attempting to fend off Apple and Microsoft’s suits against Motorola Mobility and advancing its own patent litigation against both companies, Google, which is facing a lot of regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad over what some allege is abuse of SEPs [standards-essential patents], has been arguing that proprietary non-standardized technologies that become ubiquitous due to their popularity with consumers should be considered de facto standards,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD.
“Google’s view is that just as there are patents that are standards essential, there are also patents that are commercially essential — patents that cover features that are so popular as to have become ubiquitous. The latter are just as ripe for abuse as the former, and withholding them is just as harmful to consumers and the competitive marketplace. Viewed through that lens, multitouch technology or slide-to-unlock might be treated the same way as an industry standard patent on, say, a smartphone radio,” Paczkowski reports. “This argument, of course, has massive implications for Apple, which has developed a treasure trove of what might be considered by some as commercially essential IP around the iPhone and iPad. And the company was quick to take severe exception to it. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell rebutted Walker’s argument. ‘That a proprietary technology becomes quite popular does not transform it into a ‘standard’ subject to the same legal constraints as true standards,’ he wrote.”
Paczkowski reports, “Apple’s point is that if you remove the IP distinctions between the two, you remove a key incentive for innovators to innovate. Apple spent billions in research and development to create the iPhone. It didn’t spend that money to create the iPhone’s competition. And this is a point Apple and CEO Tim Cook have hammered home again and again, since the smartphone IP Hundred Years War began.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
(photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
MacDailyNews Take: You know, Google’s search algorithmns have proven to be quite popular. If Google really believes their bullshit, they should welcome Yahoo’s immediate implementation of those search algorithmns at the hands of new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who, as a former Googler (employee #20), must be quite familiar with the tech.
After all, Google’s search algorithmns seem to be commercially essential and withholding them is harmful to the competitive marketplace. Bing should be able to use them, too. Excite, even.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Wow. I think Google Search is so great that advertising should be free…..See?
Google should release all of its patented technology freely as open source projects that anyone can freely use, worldwide, with no restrictions.
I agree, but I think someone like Apple should “take” googles search algorithms and offer them in an add free, secure, search service that collects no personal information on the searcher. They could sell a subscription to the service. I would be very interested in buying this essential service, based on essential ip that Google must agree has become an industry standard, based on its popularity given Googles market share of search.
Yes, lead by example!
… referenced only requires that the technology in question be made available at a “reasonable cost”, not hardly for nothing.
That said, I can understand why Apple would NOT want to share its tech at ANY cost … and I expect Google feels the same about ITS tech.
Yeah, right! Google have given away SO much of Apple’s patented IP that now it’s so popular everyone should have it for nothing! F*cking scumbags…
I think Apple should give it away.
After Google pays them 150 billion for it.
The shamelessness and audacity is staggering.
Google is the scariest kind of evil.
…Next to the government
lol, amen.
… were saying when Pres. Bush was trashing the economy? Or sending the children of “the other 99%” off to die in the Middle East? Or trashing the civil rights of poor people … e.g.: likely “Liberals”? No. You were standing back saying “he was the lesser of two evils”. Like so many are saying today about Obama.
Ignorant KochSucker.
This is a semi-valid argument about things like long-standing trademarks, e.g. cellophane, kleenex, but totally irrelevant to industrial IP. More judges should simply dismiss this sort of puerile crap immediately.
Maybe Google can persuade Pfeiffer that Viagra has become so popular and ubiquitous that any pharmacutical company should now be able to make it ? I thought not.
Any pharmaceutical company will tell you that the profits made from exploiting one successful drug provide the funds to research subsequent drugs. The same applies with IP in general.
Apple spent a great deal of time, money and effort in order to get things just right in the iPhone. It’s fundamentally wrong that Google simply ripped off those ideas and used them in competition against Apple.
I think you mean Pfizer.
If you have Michelle Pheiffer, no Viagra required….;-)
…or Marissa Mayer! Wow she is yum ha ha.
Yes of course I mean Pfizer. What I clearly need is Viagra for the brain so that I can think harder 🙂
+1
“so that I can think harder”
But then you might pull an even bigger boner…:-)
If you think for more than 4 hours, call your doctor.
Pure gold 🙂
According to all the emails I receive from all kinds of friends I never knew I had, Viagra is indeed hugely popular and necessary for life itself.
Do know evil.
Do vile on.
+1
Don Olive says, “Novo lied!”
Odin Love says, “I’d love no!”
Live wonk od.
Bend it vole!
Bent evil do!
…would be particularly apt…and more accurate.
The only reason the IP has become ubiquitous is that everyone is shamelessly and illegally copying it.
Google: “don’t do evil” – (unless there is a bunch of money to be stolen)
Not everyone. Google. They then released their “stolen product” so that anyone could use it. Anyone who likes multiple, massive, worldwide lawsuits, that is.
Here’s hoping Apple melts Google’s gigantic brass balls down to nothing.
I hope that Google is wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, and that the CEOs and founders have to wear studded dog collars attached to metal chains and crawl around on all fours.
There isn’t a comment I can make other than “stupid.”
Talk about a dead end self-serving disingenuous evil argument! Wow. For them not to see through the holes in that statement before issuing it indicates a cluelessness in general. Or a hope no one will catch on. I hope someone counters them with some of the statements here letting their own proprietary popular tech be used everywhere as a standard. If its good for the goose it’s GREAT for the gander. After all great ideas should be SHARED, right Google? Google? Google? Bueller?
This is the same idiotic that that horrible bastard asshole judge Posner is advocating. Fuck him, fuck his ideas, fuck his empty vacuous head, fuck his legal opinions, and lets get some people on this case that actually care about the future of America, and allowing our company’s here to innovate without being ripped off by Foreign companies (Samsung), and assisted by traitor companies (Google).
Why so timid, tell how you really feel.
“Google’s view is that just as there are patents that are standards essential, there are also patents that are commercially essential — patents that cover features that are so popular as to have become ubiquitous.”
The thing is, thats not Google’s decision to make, though they seem to think it is. Throughout history there have been those who have decided that the ends justify the means, we’ve called most of those people evil.
This from the same company that cried foul when Bing was using Google’s search results. What a complete load of human jackassery. What a jerk of a treacherous, back stabbing, vile, evil, and traitorous country that wants to sell out their own fellow American companies and give their IP to Korea and China.
Oh. And don’t forget to make Microsoft Word and other files open source. Aren’t they a de facto standard too like searching on Google?
The intent of the patent system was to give companies and individuals reason to innovate and it propelled the US to leadership in a wide range of industries. Without it, we would likely be more of a farming nation, shipping foods to the rest of the world, ala Egypt in the Pharaoh’s days.
Why doesn’t Google get down to real innovation. Web work is going to tablets, so what is next?
I’m still waiting for cell phone innovation that makes it so small I don’t have to find a whole pocket to carry it in, while still giving me the ability send and receive notes/text. Even if a flexible rollout/flipout screen is small, it would be better than a cellphone that takes up a huge amount of room.
Google has zero respect for intellectual property; they don’t think it should exist. When you’re a company that makes all of its money pilfering personal information – the comprehensiveness of which only Google knows for certain – you don’t think there should be any rules.
Kent Walker must think the Senate Judiciary Committee members are idiots for him to put that shit in writing.
http://themacadvocate.com/2012/07/20/googles-kent-walker-considers-a-career-in-comedy/
Google very much cares about patents and patented technology. Their own search engine algorithms.
They are just 2 faced hypocrites about it.
Typical socialist atitude.
Absolutely spot on, Mark!
Ohhhh — just fuck off with the mindless, knee-jerk remarks. It has NOTHING to do with socialism – either real socialism, or the fantasy picture with very few facts that you lot have spun in your “minds”.
If you add “socialist” to any comment here on MDN, a republican will agree with you. They can’t help it.
Socialism has become the new catch-all scare word, like Communism was in the 50s. It’s pathetic to see it tossed around the way it is.
Arguably one of the tenants of Karl Marx manifesto is the abolishment of inheritance and private ownership of land, factories, and other properties.
This “give personal property to the common good” is very much in line with communism and socialism.
Sorry but you are just wrong.
“give personal property to the common good”… Sorry but you are just wrong.
Well, I would be IF Google were proposing giving Apple property to the common good. Good laugh! That is NOT what they are after – to say the least.
Okay so what’s the big distinction? Google steals it, gives it away, calls it part of the common good. That seems an exact replica of a communist revolution minus the mass graves.
For one thing, Socialism and Communism are NOT the same thing. As an obvious political genius, I’m sure you know that. I’m sure you were just confused for a moment. I’m also sure you knew Marx was a Communist, not a Socialist. And that in a Socialist economy, the people are free to make their own money from their own work, unlike in a Communist state, where all outcomes from production (as well as the means of production) are owned by the state and distributed to “each according to their needs.”
I mean, why would you bring Marx up in a discussion about Socialism unless you knew what you were talking about? You’d look like a total fool otherwise. You’d look like just one more clown who takes the word of Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh without an ounce of thought or actual critical study.
And you’re better than that…right?
It’s a tenet of Communism, not Socialism. Sorry, but you are just wrong.
good pt MDN @ goo search – it should be just as standard as all swell apple techs – copiable!
let Goo eat its own mierda – what hypocrites.
anything to be popular or monetize – whores!
some whores are amazing beings, nurturing, smart, purposeful, generous, kind, dignified, and its not our biz to judge them. but Google!? they’re the cheapest whores – useless, since losing their mojo since day one, 1998 Sep 4.
it’s time Google is considered what it is: not goggles worth, but worth goo (mierda, shit, scheisse, chara…)
all these f’g lab experiments by the 1000s – only shit comes out the other end, after 14 years, still only 1 viable business, search. nada has cabronsitos lindos?!
yet it’s considered a brainy company?! hello?! who cares about all these (bought) patents, if you’re braindead when it comes to practical products/services?!
it’s time for change. evolution. revolution. the tech industry, if it weren’t fro Apple, would be dormant – worse than a dormant volcano, squirting eventually, as it would implode, not progress.
the biggest innovation outside Apple: FB! FB?!
wow. human evolution reached social chat!!?! we did that throughout human history, now it’s digital, so it’s cool or hot?! come on humanity please!
the reason we do not see E.T.s fly by again, since what, 1983?, is that they fear our stupidity & unoriginality, would be bored with our race…esp. when we hail or consider Zuckerbergs as geniuses – for what?! maybe he’s a little smarter than the other guy, Billy Gates of Hell, in sucking money out of people for hot air, nothing of any significance or meaning. well, ET shouldn’t bother coming down to earth for that either…
we need help on this earth!
the perfect response, MDN.
Google is a damn lying bastard!
Great take, MDN!
Features like ‘slide-to-unlock’ and multitouch become “ubiquitous” when a patents holder has nearly half market and the nearest competitor gains nearly all the remaining half of the market be redefining “stealing” as “innovation.” Then, yeah, Apple’s stuff becomes ubiquitous.
You know, why don’t I work hard and work smart, bury a million dollar’s-worth of gold in my back yard, and have my neighbor steal a bunch of it and spread it around to the test of the meighborhood? Sure, the gold is “popular” and “ubiquitous.” But try explaining that magical reasoning to the cops Motorola, you sociopathic bastards.
Oops, I meant Google, not Motorola. And all the typos were because I was single-thumbing my first post while I sit & think while I shit & stink, which my iPhone 4S allows me to do. Go copy that Google.
….waayy too much information.
Google should share its search algorithms with the world instead of being monstrous, scumbag hypocrites.
Give it up guys…..google gets what google wants as long as the corrupt system of paying senators is allowed. Corruption in India and China is nothing compared to what google does in washington. Apple needs to “get with it” and do the same. Yes, Apple have started, but they don’t yet have it tuned as well as google. Corruption……if you can’t beat it…join it.
It could be that Google doesn’t pay congressional delegates. Why would they need to when they know every search those folks have every conducted, know every product advertisement they’ve ever clicked on, etc.?
Maybe they should make those patents FRAND. Then Apple can license each patent for 2.5% of revenue. That’s what Motorola deemed fair…
This argument, of course… TOTAL CRAP.
The entire point of patents is to ensure that the inventors are allowed to fully profit from their invention.
Apparently Google only like obscure, redundant patents that don’t become popular. It’s called CONVENIENT INSANITY. This is the most idiotic, disrespectful and self-serving idea I have ever heard spewed out of Google. It must be heat stroke.
Imagine the retribution Google would wreak on anyone who copied their search engine code line for line, specifically because Google Search is popular. Grrrr! 😈
This argument, of course… IS TOTAL CRAP!
The entire point of patents is to ensure that the inventors are allowed to fully profit from their invention.
Apparently Google only like obscure, redundant patents that don’t become popular. It’s called CONVENIENT INSANITY. This is the most idiotic, disrespectful and self-serving idea I have ever heard spewed out of Google. It must be heat stroke.
Imagine the retribution Google would wreak on anyone who copied their search engine code line for line, specifically because Google Search is popular. Grrrr! 😈
It won’t hurt them much but it made me feel better. I just deleted my entire Google account and I will never use any of their products again.
Now I know why Larry Page hasn’t been seen in a while, he has his head too deep up hi ass (or Moleman Schmidt’s).
One of apples legal problems is all the money they’re making. hard to prove they’re being harmed by other people using their ip.
They are having their future market share taken away worth probably several hundred billion dollars. There’s enormous harm.
I use Google as my default seach engine. Tried Bing, but it’s not good enough. Yahoo is spotty at best and produces almost the same results as Bing, not surprising since they share the same search engine. I do use Bing and Yahoo occasionally when Google doesn’t serve up what I need. Google’s search has become quite stale as it serves up almost the same results for the first 5 pages but it gives me more relevant results so I’ve not switched to another search engine. This is probably bad but I put up with it.
I do use YouTube a lot via the iPad app which is very convenient for watching clips.
Apart from that I am an occasional user of Gmail although that has declined in importance since the introduction of iCloud mail. I don’t use it as much as before, in fact I only use it as a junk mail receptacle most of the time.
I think Google has some useful properties. It makes most of its money from search though and if Apple figures out how to crack that nut, then it will deprive Google of a lot of its revenue base. I’m not sure if that’s an area that Apple wants to get into.