

Why Apple’s ITC patent victory over HTC Android phones is scary - tomh-
http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/15/why-apples-itc-patent-victory-over-htc-android-phones-is-scary/

======
raganwald
There are three salient questions: First, is Apple a troll seeking rents or a
functioning entity that invests in research and seeks to make money from
products? Second, are the patents valid given the current patent system and
laws (prior art, obviousness, &c) or not. And third, is the current system
broken?

I think there's room to debate the second and third points. But with respect
to the first point, Apple is using the patent system exactly as it was
intended. Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded,
and invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable
products. If Apple isn't entitled to patent protection for it's discoveries,
I'd argue nobody is.

Which is a fine argument to make, but we should leave Apple out of it and say
that _even when a company uses the system as it was intended to be used, the
system is broken_. If Apple's victory over HTC is scary, the real conclusion
is that all patents are scary, even those that protect companies doing actual
research and who sell actual products.

Meanwhile, I think that Google are the actual villains. Do they spend billions
dismantling the patent system? No. Do they spend billions protecting their
partners from lawsuits? No. What they do is aid and abet other companies to
violate patents, and then they shrug their shoulders and sell a few more text
ads for Viagra or ambulance chasing lawyers.

~~~
adbge
_> Apple has been researching personal computing since it was founded, and
invests heavily in figuring out exactly what works to make viable products._

Apple actually does comparatively little spending on R&D when contrasted with
the likes of Microsoft or even Google. [1] When it comes to design, it's well
known that Apple is of the mentality that good design is something
recognizable and, that being the case, they don't invest in human-computer
interaction research. [2]

[1] [http://b2bspecialist.posterous.com/chart-randd-spending-
comp...](http://b2bspecialist.posterous.com/chart-randd-spending-comparson-
msoft-ibm-cisc)

[2] [http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/97958-why-is-great-
desig...](http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/97958-why-is-great-design-so-
hard-part-two/comments)

~~~
protomyth
As the government has found out, R&D dollars spent is not the best way to rate
the output. To put in programmer terms, we have all seen projects that spent a
lot of money on developers and shown no more than a 5 person team would have
had. The companies process (and desire) in patent making is an important item
also.

------
flocial
These patent stories get more and more ridiculous by the day. We need a major
software patent amnesty event to just wipe the slate clean. Patents were
originally for protecting tinkerers and original thinkers from getting their
ideas ripped off by some corporation. I love myself too much to read through
the meat of the patents but it sure sounds so vague and general to software in
general. Any idiot who took CS101 could dream up a parser that auto-recognizes
a phone number and make it clickable. I mean scrolling, like really? Do I need
written permission from Steve Jobs to implement it on a touch device? So now
we wait until year 2050 before we see it on anything other than a iPhone? I
wonder who will be winning then, oh right probably Apple because now they
cornered all the hologram related patents with their trademark "no touch"
interface in iOS 21 and OSX Sea Lion while the rest of the companies were busy
getting sued.

We need to rethink software patents. Anything that hampers the next wave of
innovation is pure evil. Software, especially UI innovation with all the
metaphors drawn from the physical world is nothing like inventing the cotton
gin. Sure we need to reward the the innovators but Apple engineers, brilliant
though they may be, are intellectual slaves who don't own their own thoughts.
Whoever actually came up with these things for Apple isn't retiring early
that's for sure.

All this is great but smart companies are going to flock to countries where
saner laws prevail or even the wild wild east like China where nothing is safe
but at least they can focus on innovation and not second guess the ideas
coming from their own engineers brains.

~~~
Terretta
> _Anything that hampers the next wave of innovation is pure evil._

You were on a roll, saying people shouldn't have to innovate, then suddenly
you worry about hampering innovation.

Which is it? You want to be able to copy freely instead of innovating, or you
want innovation to be protected?

Many comments in these threads seem to think Apple woke up one day in 2007
with the completely obvious idea of an iPhone. That's not how it happened.

Apple had been researching hand held computing since the 80's, bringing the
most advanced handheld anyone had ever seen to the market, and iterating the
ideas of how the software should work and the usability of that software, in
directions quite different from those pursued by others such as Palm or
PocketPC focused on limited capabilities more in line with what that era's
hardware could actually pull off.

The market wasn't ready for Newton then, but its ideas seeped into engineering
consciousness, making its innovations seem "obvious" later. Eventually,
physical technology caught up with Apple's ideas, enabling the iPhone and iPod
touch.

The Johnny-come-lately copycats are close enough already without their copies
having to be "slavish". Whining about this or that feature they can't copy
isn't becoming. If inventing's so easy, invent something better that everyone
else will complain, after they see it, is obvious.

Or, have the foresight or folly to go spend nearly two decades pouring money
and hard work into a product the market isn't ready for, build a huge
portfolio of research-driven ideas supporting making the product, finally
bring a product to market that for the first time just "feels" to everyman it
works exactly the way such a product _should_ work, and then see how you feel
about that twenty years of investment being protected.

Arguably, making something feel obvious is an art. What's not obvious is that
obviousness can take so much work.

~~~
cageface
And Apple was in a position to make those investments in the first place
because they profited handsomely from copying wholesale the fundamental ideas
of the Mac UI. Now that the tables are turned they want to change the rules of
the game.

Android brings more than enough innovation to the table to justify its
existence. If anything Apple is borrowing more from Google now than vice-
versa.

~~~
rbarooah
This argument is based on repeating an easily debunked falsehood.

Apple did not 'copy wholesale the fundamental ideas of the Mac UI'. They paid
Xerox for a license to commercialize the technology via a stock deal, and then
they spent significant effort refining it to make a consumer product.

So Apple really just wants other people to play by the _same_ rules they do.

~~~
sorbus
> They paid Xerox for a license to commercialize the technology via a stock
> deal, and then they spent significant effort refining it to make a consumer
> product.

You are the first person I've _ever_ heard make that claim. The only support
I've found for that statement is a throw-away sentence in Wikipedia's article
about a lawsuit between Apple and Microsoft, which does not appear to be
supported by the document cited. So, do you have a citation for that?

~~~
protomyth
The New Yorker[1] has one of many references on the internet, but the price
was 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock at $10 per share. The visit happened
(over the protests of some at PARC). There are some side comments about the
visit in "Triumph of the Nerds“.

1)
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell)

~~~
sorbus
Well then, you were entirely correct. I suppose that my search was both fairly
cursory and didn't include all of the right search terms. I find it very
surprising that this is the first I've heard of it, though; the "apple stole
from xerox" meme is really entrenched, to the point that I never really
doubted its truth.

~~~
rbarooah
I think it's fair to say that Xerox seriously undervalued their IP, but that
was a well documented failing of their management who didn't see the potential
that Jobs did in personal computing.

Arguably we're fortunate that he struck this deal and brought these ideas into
production much more effectively than Xerox was doing.

~~~
protomyth
On the same note, look at the differences in the actual manipulation of the UI
elements between the Macintosh and the Xerox workstations. The differences are
very interesting.

------
llambda
"The ruling is scary for competition because it could ultimately lead to the
ban of all HTC Android devices and, to take things to the extreme, the ban of
all Google Android phones and tablets."

 _Yawn_ Sensationalist, at best. The article goes on to quote everyone's
favorite authority on the matter, Florian Mueller. Have we had enough of this
tripe yet?

~~~
danieldk
As much as one can dislike the guy's drivel. There is some truth to his
statements as well. It does not bear repeating that so many patents describe
mathematical truths, trivialities, and common sense, that it is hard to make a
product that does not violate a patent. Also, banning a product is one of the
possible outcomes of a patent violation (besides working around the patent, or
settling).

Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price? Also, in
a market that moves this quickly, doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a
time-advantage already?

If the patent madness continues, let's hope the outcome is MAD, which would be
better than a handful giants and trolls collecting 'taxes' on everything.

Edit: nice downvoting. Do we downvote for disagreeing these days?

~~~
Terretta
I've lived in countries where copyright and patents were not enforced. One
country didn't even have a copyright law until this century. I've seen the
results of your theory, and it's not pretty.

> _Wouldn't it be nicer if everyone just competes on quality and price?_

No.

To be _worth while_ , investment in R&D needs to be recouped. If cloning
finished products is legal, the clone makers don't need to recoup R&D, so can
undercut the price of the inventor while (since it's a clone, perhaps even
produced by the same factory) matching quality.

Also bad, such as with electronics, the consumer sometimes can't tell if the
clone is the same quality or not until months later when inferior parts begin
to fail (especially low quality capacitors in electronics, which have a
tendency to look exactly the same right up until they burst). Sometimes, as
happened to Akai in the country where I lived, the brand takes the reputation
hit for the problems from the copyists who were selling the copies at a price
so close to the original the buyer couldn't tell whether they got an original
or copy.

(A countermeasure to this is an invention so ahead of the market the
production process is unique, and the inventor somehow manages to lock up 100%
of manufacturing capability and capacity itself. Such inventions are
relatively rare.)

> _doesn't 'discovery' of some technique give a time-advantage already?_

No. With JIT manufacturing, clones hit the streets sometimes before the
original. Not to mention, in your world, the incentive to steal product
prototypes would go through the roof, letting the lesser priced clones hit the
streets during the original marketing push.

~~~
gvb
"Copyright" and "patent" are different concepts and saying the two together,
e.g. "copyright and patent", is wrong. People that write "copyright and
patent" are almost invariably defending patents by arguing copyrights are
important.

Cloning products is primarily copyright and trademark infringement. The
companies that are victims of cloning fight back with trademark and copyright
laws, typically not with patent laws.

Copyright is primarily for preventing others from directly copying a specific
implementation (source code, MP3 player look & feel, etc.). Patents cover an
invention, a conceptual thing. An invention doesn't need to have a physical
implementation to be patentable.

For instance, LAME[1] is copyrighted itself and does not violate anyone else's
copyrights, but anybody that does _any_ MP3 encoding[2] without having an
appropriate license to the underlying MP3 patents is infringing patents.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME>

[2] In a country that the MP3 encoding patents are registered, of course.

------
dataminer
HTC has bought S3 graphics, which has successfully gone after Apple at ITC.
ITC has found Apple infringing on two S3 graphics patents (final verdict in
November). Now, HTC has been found infringing on two Apple patents (final
verdict in December), will it force the two companies into cross licensing.

~~~
patrickaljord
This is probably the most relevant comment of this thread, I hope it gets on
top.

------
ajays
17 year software patents make absolutely no sense. The computer world changes
fast (insert Moore's Law, etc.). 17 years ago, the Web was tiny. Most people
didn't have cellphones. "Broadband" was a 19.2kbaud modem.

If we're going to have software patents, there should be a separate category
for them; and they should be limited to, say, 5 years tops.

------
asknemo
This will serve nothing but encourage patent trolls and big corporations to
invest more and more in ridiculously broad patents. Apple sues others, patent
troll sues Apple and others, some other competitors dig out obscure patents
and start sueing; someone gonna benefit from this, but definitely not
entrepreneurs or customers.

------
rickdale
I really think Apple needs to take a page from Google's book here and adopt
the 'don't be evil' philosophy.

This is very disappointing to me because I see Apple like a tennis player who
can tell you where he is going to hit the ball, yet still beat you there every
time. I think they should welcome the competition and view copycats with
pride. You don't get it right all the time.

~~~
podperson
I'm sure it was nice viewing Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 with pride. It was
probably wonderful being proud of Bill Gates trademarking the term "PDA" after
hearing John Sculley use it in a talk. It's probably pretty flattering to see
Google switching from designing Android as a blackberry clone to designing it
as an iPhone clone.

To paraphrase a joke from the last depression: $5 and some pride gets you a
nice cup of coffee at starbucks.

~~~
georgemcbay
I'm sure it was nice viewing MacOS v1.0 with pride (if you worked at Xeroc
PARC).

It's kleptomaniac turtles all the way down!

~~~
podperson
Ah, this tired old chestnut.

If you actually ever used a Xerox desktop of the era you'll see that Mac OS
was markedly simpler to use than Xerox's UI, and had all kinds of improvements
over it (overlapping windows, drag and drop, a menubar than benefited from
Fitt's Law).

Everyone steals ideas, but simply coping is pathetic.

------
fauigerzigerk
_The first patent is described as a "system and method for performing an
action on a structure in computer-generated data," which Apple says applies,
for example, to tapping a phone number and being prompted options to call or
look it up on the web._

So they have basically patented the context menu. How broken can a patent
system possibly become before it crashes an entire economy?

~~~
garbowza
You must examine a patent based on the specific claims, not the title. Many
people make this mistake and assume the patent is much broader than it
actually is.

~~~
cema
Every patent is different, but the patent system is broken all the same.

Does not mean no patents make sense (although I have yet to see one in
software in algorithms; but meaningful hardware patents are not unusual). The
_system_ needs to be completely rethought. As of now, the software patent
system is not only easily abused, but itself is an abuse of common sense.

[/opinion]

------
markokocic
US patents can't be enforced outside of the USA. Why not just ignore US market
and go on with the product in the rest of the world?

~~~
kiiski
US market is kinda big.

~~~
markokocic
Not only big, the biggest one. But given increase in costs (MS tax, now Apple
tax, tomorrow who knows) at some point it could be more cost effective for HTC
to stop paying anyone and just not sell in the states. WO patents are much
harder to get and very expensive to keep, so no big problem there.

~~~
piotrSikora
_> Not only big, the biggest one._

Statistics
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use))
would disagree with you.

~~~
mbreese
I'd argue that you're using the wrong statistics. You should also take into
account the average cost per mobile phone when determining the size of a
market.

If the US market is 3X smaller than China's (by volume), but spends 3X more
for each phone, then the markets are roughly equivalent in the terms that a
company would care about: profits.

~~~
piotrSikora
Yes, I totally agree with you... But do you have access to such data?

------
cageface
We've all seen this but people seem to forget:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

Steve himself: "We have been _shameless_ about stealing great ideas". It's sad
to see him now, reduced to these tactics.

~~~
mamp
I think Steve is particularly pissed about Android. Consider that Eric Schmidt
stayed in the board of Apple during the development of the iPhone without
declaring a conflict of interest while Google were secretly developing
Android. I imagine that apple vs android is personal. Basically google had a
head start because of this inside information.

------
nextparadigms
Someone mentioned that the patents are from 1994 and 1996. So Apple is winning
this battle in the smartphone industry, with something they had way, way
before iPhone. How is that fair?

~~~
Terretta
"Development of the Apple Newton platform started in 1987 and officially ended
on February 27, 1998."[1] "HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and
Peter Chou."[2]

Apple's been investing in mobile usability (e.g., recognizing and acting on
structured data with a tap) for a very long time. That an iPhone has a phone
attached to it is arguably a secondary characteristic.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC>

------
StavrosK
How this is fair, I fail to comprehend. When laws allow things like this,
maybe it's time for laws to change?

------
meow
I don't get it, isn't licensing the whole point of software patents.. sharing
IP with the world and receiving royalties in return ? So how can Apple refuse
to license the patent to HTC ?

~~~
semanticist
The purpose of patents is to share the IP with the world, in return for a
period of exclusivity. The decision to licence the technology in return for
money is entirely down to the patent holder.

~~~
prodigal_erik
In particular there is no requirement that patents be licensable on reasonable
and non-discriminatory terms, nor that what society at large pays for access
to the invention is less than it would have cost to have each competitor
independently recreate it. Terms this generous should only be offered for
inventions we're confident wouldn't have existed otherwise for any price. We
shouldn't be enabling massive rent-seeking for straightforward improvements.

------
rufugee
Why do we not see video game patents? Why don't we see, for example, Rockstar
patenting "a mechanism for allowing a character to navigate a three
dimensional space" and then suing the hell out of everyone else?

~~~
astrange
Namco owns a patent on minigames during loading screens.

------
patentavenger
One of the patents is for registering regular expressions to extract telephone
numbers and contact information out of documents. This is a stupid patent for
several reasons:

#1 It's bloody obvious. Pretty much everyone reinvents it (Microsoft Smart
Links anyone?) SMS->Extract Phone number, etc

#2 It's so bloody obvious that there is prior open-source applications prior
to 1996 that have this feature (turning phone numbers in web documents into
clickable action links/context actions) I will say no more, but I have one in
my possession.

#3 It's bloody LAME! Really Apple, you want consumers to not be able to use
ANY Android device based on the ability to turn text links into actions that
was originally issues for the NeXT Desktop? Is that really the competitive
advantage between the iPhone and other devices, that it has phone number
detection in text documents!?!?

Apple has proven with this that they are a patent troll. Are they suing over
iPhone exclusive inventions, like multitouch, proximity sensor, using
accelerometers to detect orientation, the "Swipe to Unlock" stuff and all of
the things we saw in the original Jesus Phone presentation?

No.

They are trying to hurt competition over something developed for the desktop
in 1996.

Total losers.

~~~
abecedarius
Multitouch was not an iPhone invention, though I'd believe details of how they
did it were. (Or anyway inventions of the company they bought before starting
the project.) And using accelerometers to infer orientation -- wasn't that
what accelerometers were invented for in the first place? (With other
applications like triggering airbags coming later? I'm not sure but that's the
impression I'm under.)

------
alain94040
I read patent 5,946,647. It's actually a smart patent. It was written in 1996,
and it basically describes what the Mail app on my Mac does when it sees a
phone number or a date in an email: it automatically detects it and gives me
contextual choices, such as move the phone number into my address book
(automatically extracting the sender's name), or create an appointement based
on a piece of text that says "let's talk tomorrow at 3pm".

I'd say it's pretty smart. I can't guarantee it had never been done before
1996, but if I had come up with that at the time, I would have felt happy to
file a patent for it.

That being said, that patent is not critical to Android. Worst case, you can't
auto-extract phone numbers and emails from random text. Big deal.

~~~
ww520
I seem to remember Lotus Agenda did that long time ago back in the PC era.
Should that be a prior art?

~~~
alain94040
Good catch. Per Wikipedia:

    
    
      Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be
      structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as
      "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing.
    
    

Since that software is from 1992, it would definitely be prior art.

------
jlampart
I say this will spell the end of the US patent system before it spells the end
of HTC or Android.

~~~
soulinafishbowl
It has got to come to an end soon. Too much time and energy is being spent on
these ridiculous legal issues and not enough on moving forward.

------
shareme
Lets shed some light...

1\. HTC and Moto were both sued by Apple concerning same two patents. Hence
alleged infringement in OS.

2\. If alleged infringement is in OS than Google might have a way in to the
proceedings to invalidate patents on OHA members behalf..ie not what Apple
wants to face.

3\. HP by its purchase of Palm has similar patents, hence why Apple never went
after Palm or HP.

Considering the way Google is currently shredding Oracle patents in the
invalidation processes I have a feeling that Apple may be in for a surprise.
why? Why do you think MS has been so careful not provoke any OEM to challenge
them to a lawsuit? Its called do not expose patents to the opportunity to have
them invalidated or narrowed in claims.

~~~
raganwald
MS is currently extorting $15 per handset from Samsung for patent licenses, so
perhaps they haven't provoked an OEM or challenged them to a lawsuit, but then
again, perhaps they have.

------
RyanKearney
Just in case anyone forgot, Steve Jobs once said:

"We have always been shameless of stealing great ideas"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

~~~
jdq
Windows Phone 7 is 'stealing' the idea [of a touch-screen smart phone]. That
is very different than just copying. Ex:

[http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-
vs-...](http://www.cultofmac.com/side-by-side-comparison-samsung-vs-ios-
homescreen-icons/91126)

------
soulinafishbowl
Apple and Lodsys are in the same category.

~~~
rbarooah
Right because Lodsys also transformed the landscape of the mobile industry by
selling a revolutionary new device that everyone else is competing with.

~~~
soulinafishbowl
Ah, I sense sarcasm. I suppose without explanation, my comment is too harsh,
and I come off as an Apple hater.

Quite the opposite, I love my MacBook Pro and iPad, and I think Apple's
products are great. But that is exactly why I am so disappointed to hear that
they are now exhibiting the same behavior as Lodsys, which we have come to
hate.

In the spirit of transforming the landscape and creating revolutionary
devices, attacking HTC and Android is a great disappointment to me. I am very
regretful that our generation's best and brightest people and corporations are
caught up in these legal and corporate squabbles. Their energy could be better
spent on innovation or solving real problems.

~~~
rbarooah
Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained
what you were thinking.

I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in
general inhibiting smaller players.

On the other hand, I think there's a genuine case to be made that knockoff
products undermine the value of expensive and risky R&D projects that have led
to very real and significant innovations.

Consider the iPad - even after it was announced, commentators _and executives_
in the industry were dismissing it. Only once it started selling in volume did
the competitors suddenly jump into action.

The implication is that the rest of the industry simply didn't have the
imagination or risk-tolerance to do the R&D. I would like to see more
incentives for other players in the industry to do the kind of innovating that
Apple has done - not less.

Sure you can argue that minor spec tweaks and UI variants are 'innovation',
and I'd agree that this kind of competition is actually keeping Apple on its
toes. There's certainly a place for a leader and followers both to provide
value.

But a balance has to be struck. If it really is ok for any product to just be
cloned as closely as possible, I think there will be less R&D done, not more.

------
kleptco
These mostly absurd laws are intended to protect consumers not corps. Feeling
protected yet? And why is the ITC deciding what devices we can use? Who are
these people accountable too?

------
photon_off
I dislike pretty much everything about Apple except the MacBook Pro.

~~~
scrrr
May be so. But how does this comment help to create an interesting discussion?
Don't take it personally, please. But HN has always been great because of good
comments. I'm not saying I've always contributed well, but let's try. :)

