Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android
from the how-does-this-promote-the-progress dept
In one prong of the many-pronged attack that Apple has been making on Android, it's scored a victory at the International Trade Commission, where it's been determined that the idea of making a phone number in an email or on a web-page clickable to dial it is so special and wonderful that only Apple could possibly come have up with it. It's rulings like this that make anyone with a modicum of technology smarts shake their heads and wonder why we let clearly non-technical people make decisions like this. Patents are supposed to protect inventions that are non-obvious to those skilled in the space. If you put a 100 groups of five engineers in rooms, asking them to design various smartphone features and interfaces around things like this, I'd bet 99 would come up with a similar feature. It's just natural.In the meantime, Apple's statements about the ruling are equally ridiculous, given Apple's history of copying others (including Android):
"We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."Copying an idea and building on it is not "stealing." And if Apple had to build its devices without building on the ideas of others, it wouldn't have very much today. This whole thing is a joke, and it's rulings like this that make engineers have even less respect for the patent system.
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Filed Under: android, features, itc, obviousness, patents
Companies: apple, google, htc
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How does Apple think this is original?
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Apple has a new patent...
They have a patent now on using an app while on the phone.
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/21/apple-patents-using-apps-during-phone-calls/
They now have a patent on multitasking in addition to their patent on pattern matching.
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Re: Apple has a new patent...
If your underlying software techniques are post-1970ish, it's not even obvious, it literally requires no thought.
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Re: Apple has a new patent...
Who are these people at the patent office, and how much money do they receive from Apple?
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Re:
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Prior Art
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Re: Prior Art
I wish you an XOR cursor Christmas.
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Re: Re: Prior Art
XOR cursor
If anyone wants the code it has been around since the commodore 64.
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Disingenuous on Apple's part.
So: non-obvious? Clearly not. Novel? No, programmers have been finding the boundaries of numbers in text for ages.
How on earth did Apple get this ruling?
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I don't...
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Re:
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Next Phase?
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I bet they have removed that feature.
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Re:
Due to Apple being a bunch of unmitigated dicks, you'll have to dial the phone number on your own instead of us implementing an obvious idea. So sorry - call Apple to complain.
/Won't happen, but fun to imagine
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Re:
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What I want.
Maybe then with the threat of being (Real life) Trout Slapped, these companies will stop litigating and start innovating.
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The courts and legal system always seems to have a double standard on anything involving Apple. It's just fine when Apple steals someone else's stuff, but if Samsung steals it from Apple then quick pull Samsung off the shelfs! If Android steals it from Apple quick demand Android remove the offending features!
The day Apple goes out of business will be a good day for us all.
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A rotten Apple
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Skype?
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Apple
Bottom line: too much credit attributed to Apple
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The Apple is Rotten
Apple, you guys suck!
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Re: The Apple is Rotten
This one is going to be a little harder to unwind than when I stopped bringing Sony shit into my home. My brother in law works there, and their products are things that my wife really likes, as a non-techie.
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I think this particular patent is ridiculous and never should have been issued. I applaud your definition of "not stealing", the problem comes in determining what level of "building on it" must be done. Under your definition taking someones idea and simply implementing that idea in a new product is "stealing". Who determines what constitutes innovation - the judges, committee members, expert witnesses?
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Re:
In other words, if you were being honest, you're glad he's dead.
(Let's face reality, if he wasn't dead of cancer he would not be gone now.)
Just hope that people who know you are not as insensitive as you are now, when you are the one dying of cancer.
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Re: Re:
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Re: Dying Of Cancer
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Now if they could just...
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This is technology?
"We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
Technology is knowing how to build high temperature jet engine turbine blades. Putting a switch on the airplane's control panel that says "on/off" is a feature, not technology.
Lawyers like to puff up the importance of features by calling them technology, but it ain't so, no matter how many times they say it.
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apple to die
It's now a drain on the economy and is maliciously stifling innovation and progress.
The sooner this company crashes and burns the better for the planet.
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Copying and Building
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The Patent in Question
The patented invention was invented at least as early as the filing date in 1996 and possibly up to several years earlier. Lots of prior patents and journal articles were considered before issuing the patent and these are listed on the first page of the patent. If HTC thought they had better prior art than that already had been considered by the patent office, thy could easily have asked the patent office to reconsider the patent in a proceeding called a re-examination.
Compare also that a copyright filed in 1996 is good at least until 2096, possibly longer.
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Re:
Before the iPhone in 2007, there was Symbian, Blackberry and WinMob 6. After 2007, every mobile OS started to look like it in terms of multi-touch icon based displays. Were would you be if Apple hadn't created it first...
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Re: Re:
I just want to let you know that it is a common programming practice (among non lazy programmers) to set up parsing code to categorize things and improve functionality. This is literally the most basic of habits to learn. Apple did not invent it, they just got a patent on it. As a whole the people in the computer industry are extremely frustrated with the way software patents are set up and enforced (we are even lectured on the abusive process and how to try and protect ourselves in just 200 level classes). With the growing resentment towards the big patent bullies and the mafia style methods used to shut down new competitors and innovators I would not be surprised to see a revision of the terms and time limits in the next ten years.
Think about how cars would work if one company owned the wheel, not a specific wheel design, but the entire concept of round objects used to move things...does that start to sound like it stifles innovation and promotes abusive practice? This is how the software patents are set up right now.
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Good
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