

Software patch to avoid Galaxy Nexus ban coming soon - eplanit
http://asia.cnet.com/software-patch-to-avoid-galaxy-nexus-ban-coming-soon-62217445.htm

======
ghshephard
I'm of two minds about this - on the one hand, I'm disheartened at the
continuing saga of a patent system that allows such ludicrous ideas as "swipe
to lock" to be patented. If there was ever "system or process" that didn't
need patenting to have it's "methods" revealed to the public to promote the
"Progress of Science and useful arts" - "Swipe to Lock" would be it.

On the other hand, actually, no, I'm just of one mind on this one.

~~~
myko
The craziest thing about this injunction is it isn't even about 'swipe to
unlock' which is pretty ridiculous, but it is about unified search (the search
bar on Android phones searches the device /and/ the web - Apple has a patent
on that, Google does not.)

~~~
fpgeek
Personally, I don't know why Apple's just going after small potatoes.

Given their patents, they clearly own Google Instant and Google's standard
multi-source (Web/Images/News/...) search plus a bunch of other things
(thoughts about how many Apple patents Chrome must infringe?).

Why waste time on Android phones? Win an aggressive enough lawsuit and they'd
own Google. Even if Apple just got an injunction, that would be enough to
cripple Google (to the point where Google would agree to extortionate
licensing terms, I'd bet).

~~~
taligent
Because the patent doesn't seem to apply to servers i.e. it specifically
refers to client devices attributes.

The original use case for the Apple patent was the Sherlock search feature
back in OS 8.5 (1998) which utilised a plugin system. IIRC it was a unique
feature as not even search engines e.g. Altavista were doing multi source
search at that time.

I can't imagine it would be hard to find prior art for it though.

~~~
kalleboo
I remember Sherlock being widely derided as a ripoff of the shareware app
"Watson". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson>

~~~
taligent
I remember that time. The newer version of Sherlock was but they still had the
core plugin based search approach in place before that.

------
cargo8
The patent they are getting caught up with is for the Universal Search. I read
that the patch will dumb down the voice + google search bar to only perform
google searches and not search through apps, contacts, etc... Supposedly the
suit does/will not affect Google Now, though.

Just another example of how terrible it is that patents are stifling progress.
Also hilarious since Google's core is basically universal search.

------
azza-bazoo
I agree with the last paragraph in the article -- it's pretty crazy to see
Google anointing this software update as special and rushing it out so much
faster than normal Android updates.

I mean, I get it, this is a headline-grabbing issue and they need to act to
keep a flagship phone on the market, and it's Google writing this patch rather
than the phone manufacturer. But if it's okay to fast-track and skip some of
the process for this patch, why not others?

~~~
lomegor
There are two possible reasons for this. This most probably is a small patch.
just disabling a feature and not removing it completely from the phone; as
such, it would not affect drivers and such like other Android updates. The
second reason is that it may be just an app update for Search if they have
that well separated from the OS, which would mean that it would not change any
of the bloatware carries and hardware makers put in.

------
idspispopd
My hope is that the patch doesn't just replace the feature with an arbitrary
and unpleasant equivalent.

Rather I'd prefer if they took their time and presented a solution that beats
'swipe to unlock'. Making it a real lemons to lemonade scenario.

Unfortunately if they repeat the past the financial pressure of getting to
market tends to prefer the first option over the second.

------
SkyMarshal
Good artists copy, great artists steal ... or sue.

~~~
tensor
In this case Apple both copied, stole, and sued. There is plenty of prior art
on multi-database search. That it is on a phone is not an innovation.

~~~
taligent
Except that this patent has nothing to do with multi-database searching.

Did you even read the patent ?

