stories filed under: "smartphones"

Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

from the sounds-great dept

Mon, Aug 6th 2012 7:04am — Mike Masnick

A few months ago, we noted that Samsung's new phones had rather odd designs... and the theory making the rounds was that, considering the ongoing worldwide fight it was in with Apple, it was trying to go out of its way to make the phones as un-Apple-like as possible. Of course, that resulted in ugly, weirdly shaped phones.

As you may (hopefully?) know, some of the patents in the fight are "design patents" rather than utility patents. When people talk about patents, they usually are referring to utility patents. Design patents are, in many ways, more similar to trademarks than to utility patents. But it creates odd situations where Apple gets to claim "ownership" of the concept of a rectangular device with rounded corners. It's also important to remember that design patents can't be for functional features, but only for design/appearance. That means that Apple has to insist that the basic design of the iPhone and iPad aren't functional at all.

As Matt Schruers highlights, that means that Apple is left in the awkward position of insisting that these basic concepts that are sort of obvious design choices to make such devices functional both aren't functional at all and that there are perfectly reasonable alternatives. For example, Apple's lawyers have suggested some "alternatives" in how Samsung could have designed its devices:

“front surfaces that are not rectangular, not flat, and without rounded corners; display screens that are more square than rectangular or not rectangular at all, display screens that are not centered on the front surface of the phone...”

and

“overall shapes that are not rectangular with four flat sides or that do not have four rounded corners; front surfaces that are not completely flat or clear... and profiles that are not thin”.

So what would that mean? Schruers explains:

Of course. Surely consumers would happily hold a large, thick, bumpy, sharp-edged hexagonal thing up to their head. They’ll no doubt appreciate the different “ornamental” approach while reading through their opaque screen. No functional drawbacks there.

Does that even sound like an object you would willingly put in your pants? Having a device that is not an unwieldy weapon-like object is a functional feature, not an ornamental design choice. One is not going out on a limb in concluding that if the object design increases your likelihood of getting strip-searched at the airport, those are functional drawbacks, and foreclosing functional features is not the purpose of design protection.

Oh yeah, Schruers also includes this bit of prior art to emphasize his point:

Filed Under: design patents, iphone, patents, shape, smartphones
Companies: apple, samsung

105 Comments

UN Wants To Host 'Patent' Summit To Deal With Smartphone Patent Thicket

Patents

from the send-in-peacekeepers? dept

Thu, Jul 12th 2012 4:02pm — Mike Masnick

The UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) -- the same unit looking at very questionable plans concerning taxing the internet -- has apparently decided that it also needs to step in over the massive patent thicket around smartphones. It's convening a summit of many of the players involved in the various patent disputes to see if something can be worked out to settle down all of the patent lawsuits. Of course, from the sound of it, it looks like they're only inviting the big companies who make products, and leaving the many trolls out of it. Also, it's unclear from the description if the ITU really grasps the root causes of the problem: the system itself. Instead, it seems to think that bringing together all of these companies will magically get them to "settle their differences." That seems like wishful thinking.

Filed Under: itu, patent thicket, patent troll, smartphones, united nations

23 Comments

Would We Prefer HTC To Be Making Cool New Products? Or Just Getting More Patents

Patents

from the state-of-the-times dept

Mon, Jun 18th 2012 11:59pm — Mike Masnick

HTC has, quite rightly, decried the insanity of the patent thicket in the smartphone arena. In fact, some clueless analyst had written a note suggesting that HTC was at risk because it didn't have enough patents. The idea that quantity of patents matters is a really scary thought, but with the way the patent system works today, companies who have no desire to own patents are increasingly being pressured into doing so. Thus, HTC has been in the process of getting its hands on as many patents as possible, both by ramping up its own patent application filings, and by buying others patents (such as via the purchase of S3).

As someone who has used a bunch of HTC phones over the years, all of this is pretty depressing. I'd much rather the company focus on doing what it does best: building cool smartphones and devices. While our broken system may be forcing it to invest in patents (and patent litigation), wouldn't we all be better served by letting it (and others) focus on building cool products to compete in the marketplace? Or is that just too old fashioned an idea?

Filed Under: patent thicket, smartphones
Companies: htc

21 Comments

Did Apple's Claims Over Rectangles And Corners Lead To 'The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers'?

Innovation

from the seems-that-way dept

Wed, May 9th 2012 4:01am — Leigh Beadon

Android blogger Ron Amadeo has a great post over at Android Police where he tries to explain the design of the new Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, which many people have deemed pretty hideous. In his opinion, it all comes down to legal tiptoeing.

As you may recall, last year Apple sued Samsung over earlier products in the Galaxy line, claiming infringement of all sorts of different rights, among them some broad trade dress registrations involving basic design choices like black borders and rectangles with rounded corners. Amadeo walks through the many notable aesthetic elements of the S3 (including the stark changes from previous Galaxy phones) and compares them to Apple's list of trade dress claims, noting how several aspects of the phone seem designed to counter specific complaints—and the case he makes is pretty compelling. These are just a few examples (bolded portions are quotes from the Apple trade dress complaint):

A rectangular product shape...
... A rectangle needs to have parallel sides; the GSIII sides aren't straight at all. The outmost part is about 1/3rd of the way down, with serious curves leading to the top and bottom. So it's very much not a rectangle, or a rounded rectangle, or even horizontally symmetrical. It's more of an amorphous blob.

...with all four corners uniformly rounded;
Nope. The top and bottom corners are not the same shape. Observe the outlines of the top-left and bottom-left corners. Note how they are different.

The front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders
Having a giant screen on the front is kind of unavoidable. The only colors available though, are white and dark blue. Neither of those colors are black. The lawyers can sleep easy.

Substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width
Apple's use of "roughly" is really obnoxious, but just in case they get into minutia (lawyers love minutia!), the top and bottom borders are not the same size. These to-scale measurements show the top bezel is about 16% smaller than the bottom. Also, they're not black!

In the past, some people have argued that this sort of thing is an example of intellectual property doing its job and encouraging innovation, because competitors come up with new and different ways of doing things—but, as we have pointed out, the innovation being encouraged is the wrong kind. Instead of letting market demands dictate what engineers and designers spend their time on, their effort is wasted reinventing the wheel over and over again. The result is often an inferior product that lacks overall vision, as some are saying about the S3, at least aesthetically speaking. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, what's a horse designed by a committee of lawyers? Some horrific Darwinian accident from the deep ocean, I'd wager.

Filed Under: design, galaxy, iphone, smartphones, trade dress
Companies: apple, samsung

51 Comments

Just Because Companies Can Design Around Patents Doesn't Mean There's No Impact For Consumers

Patents

from the economic-reality dept

Tue, Mar 20th 2012 2:27pm — Mike Masnick

This one's from a few week's back, but a few people have called it to my attention. Nilay Patel over at The Verge argued that because various companies offering Android phones have been able to design around a couple of Apple patents that have made their way into lawsuits -- #7,469,381 which covers the "scrollback" bounce when you scroll to the end of a page, and #7,657,849, which covers the "slide-to-unlock" concept -- that there's "really no day-to-day impact on the consumer" from the big patent fights going on over smartphones.

That seems like a rather simplistic analysis. Patel is right that many companies are "designing around" these overly broad and somewhat silly patents, and so it doesn't mean that Android phones aren't available. But that doesn't mean that there's no real impact on consumers. While it can't be quantified directly, there are numerous ways in which these patents are likely impacting the results. First, there's a matter of cost. The legal fights over patents are quite expensive, and that's almost certainly keeping prices on these devices somewhat higher than they might otherwise be. Second, the money and time it takes to do that "designing around" potentially slows the development of these phones. Third, those same resources could have been put elsewhere, working on additional innovations that would make the phones better and more valuable. Instead, they're forced to reinvent the wheel without doing the same scrollback or slide to unlock. Finally, while some will claim that forcing these companies to invent around the patents can lead to new innovations, there's little evidence to support this claim. Certainly it might happen accidentally, but letting developers come up with new innovations based on their own experiments and what the market tells them is always going to be more efficient than stumbling on some innovation because you're trying to avoid the artificial monopoly of a patent.

Of course, this is one of the difficult things in discussing the problems of the patent system. People insist they can't be that bad because these devices are still on the market. It's difficult to see or even explain the innovations that we don't have because of this, or even to show how the pace of innovation is almost certainly slower because of this, but that's exactly what plenty of research has shown for years. No one says that innovation stops completely because of patents, but we have significant concerns about how they impact the overall pace of innovation, as well as the specific direction of innovation. While it might not seem to have a "day-to-day impact on the consumer," chances are it's having quite a large one. We just can't see how big.

Filed Under: android, design around, impact, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, google

30 Comments

Patent Aggressor Microsoft Files EU Complaint Against Google/Motorola For Charging Too Much To License Patents

Patents

from the live-by-the-sword dept

Mon, Feb 27th 2012 3:37am — Mike Masnick

It's difficult not to look cynically at Microsoft's latest move to file an antitrust complaint in the EU over Motorola's patent royalty rates, and think about just how obnoxiously hypocritical Microsoft is being as a company on this particular issue. First off, Microsoft has become a pretty significant patent aggressor over the past few years, filing lawsuits and pressuring companies to pay up. It's also been a huge fan of patent FUD -- especially against open source competitors. Most people assume that Microsoft was the main player behind SCO's quixotic (but costly and distracting) legal battle against Linux. Then, of course, every so often Microsoft officials insist that Linux infringes on a bunch of its patents, but it never wants to make clear which ones. More recently, of course, Microsoft has been demanding license fees for its patents from a variety of companies making use of Android -- to the point that some have argued Microsoft makes more off each Android installation than each Microsoft Phone installation.

Of course it was partly Microsoft's aggressive patent position against Android that put Google in the position of feeling compelled to buy Motorola Mobility to get its patent portfolio, mainly for the sake of protecting itself and having a bunch of patents that it could use as a shield against a lawsuit from the likes of Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft was already suing Motorola over the company's use of Android.

A few weeks ago, we discussed the tough spot that Google was in over Motorola's patents. The company has indicated that would keep in place Motorola's current patent licensing strategy. While many of us would prefer that Google make a big statement by freeing or opening up many of these patents, the company is actually in something of a ridiculous position: if it does that... its competitors (mainly Microsoft) will claim anti-trust violations by saying that the company is using its market position to undercut the prices that other charge.

It's other choice? Keep the current rates. And that's what it's indicated it would do... so the second that the EU and the US approved the merger, Microsoft files this antitrust complaint, arguing that the rates Motorola charges for its patents is too high. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't position for Google. Keep the rates as they are, and they're violating antitrust rules by charging too much. Cut the prices or free up some of the patents, and it's an antitrust issue for leveraging their position and "dumping" in the market.

Of course, Microsoft's almost gleeful blog post about its complaint ignores all of this reality and history, and tries to position it as if Motorola and Google are trying to "kill" web and mobile video by charging too high a royalty rate. Frankly, for anyone who knows anything about Microsoft's patent practices over the past few years, they'll see through this and recognize how laughable Microsoft's claims are.

Either way, the situation is ridiculous. Fighting over patents doesn't help bring any new innovations to market. It just diverts money to the lawyers.

Filed Under: android, antitrust, eu, frand, patents, smartphones
Companies: google, microsoft, motorola

68 Comments

Acacia Buys Up More Smartphone Apps Patents: Watch The Patent Thicket Get Worse

Patents

from the putting-the-brakes-on-innovation dept

Thu, Jul 21st 2011 10:53am — Mike Masnick

Last year, I put together a graphic highlighting the ridiculous nature of the smartphone patent thicket:

That graphic is both incomplete and out of date. It's incomplete in that it doesn't even show all of the lawsuits. It also leaves out the licensing deals, which many companies feel pressured to enter into to avoid lawsuits. On top of that, since I made that graphic there have actually been a lot more lawsuits filed. This graphic has received plenty of attention. I get about one request per week these days from some group somewhere in the world asking if they can use that graphic for a report (you don't need to ask permission: feel free). It also showed up in the very high profile Hargreaves Review of intellectual property rules in the UK.

Honestly, I have little interest in updating the graphic, because it was already a lot of work to put together, but it seems likely that rather than getting any better, the situation is only getting worse. We're still waiting to see the fallout from the Nortel patent purchase, but it almost certainly will lead to more lawsuits. Separately, while the actual federal court patent trials have been moving slowly, the parallel track (with different rules!) known as the ITC loophole has been issuing new decisions every few weeks, including a big ruling for Apple saying that HTC infringed on Apple patents.

And it seems like even more patents are about to get tossed into the fray as well. Glyn Moody points us to the news that Acacia just bought "a valuable patent portfolio" relating to mobile applications for use in smartphones and other wireless computing devices. Oddly, Acacia provides no additional details. It doesn't name who the patents came from. It says that the patents are now owned by an Acacia subsidiary, but doesn't name the subsidiary. They're being deliberately slimy.

But, you can rest assured that these patents will show up in litigation pretty damn quickly. There's been a lot of concern about mobile app patents in the last few months thanks to Lodsys and Kootol... and assuming that Acacia didn't buy out one of those two, it seems like there could be even more reasons to fear.

It's incredibly difficult to see how anyone can claim with a straight face that the actions described here help innovation in any way. If you're just an app developer, creating something cool for a smartphone... and you suddenly find yourself smack dab in the middle of this disaster, it's a massive hindrance to innovation and development of useful apps. This isn't just a "mess," it's a disaster for innovation.

Filed Under: apps, patent thicket, patents, smartphones
Companies: acacia

34 Comments

Patents As Theft: How Oracle & Microsoft Seek To Profit From Android Despite Having Nothing To Do With It

Patents

from the shameful dept

Mon, Jul 11th 2011 8:59am — Mike Masnick

People talk about patent laws as if they're about "protecting property." If only that were true. In most cases, they seem to be about the exact opposite. They're about getting paid for things that don't belong to you and which you had absolutely nothing to do with. Take, for example, Google's Android operating system. Microsoft has been using its patents to demand a cut of every Android phone. In fact, people have pointed out that Microsoft is likely going to make more money from Android than it makes from its own competing mobile operating system. Now add to that Oracle's decision to demand $15 to $20 for every Android device, and what you get seems like highway robbery. You have two companies -- Oracle and Microsoft -- who have done absolutely nothing to contribute to Android in any way, but who are both using large questionable patent portfolios to demand a cut. That's not protecting or encouraging innovation. That seems like the exact opposite. It seems to be shaking down people for cash that they have no right to. I'd argue that's much more like "theft" than anyone who infringes on a patent by building something the market wants.

Filed Under: android, licenses, patents, smartphones
Companies: google, microsoft, oracle

54 Comments

Smartphones Make People Ignore Commercials Way More Than DVRs

Studies

from the captive-audience dept

Fri, May 27th 2011 1:01am — Mike Masnick

For years, the TV industry has been at war with the DVR, because of their fear that people would just use DVRs to skip over commercials. And, of course, there were the requisite reports about how DVRs were causing massive totally made up "losses." Except, the reality turned out to be completely different. Various studies found that DVRs changed watching habits in that they actually drove more TV watching, and actually increased retention of what was in the commercials viewers did see. Of course, the "fear" from TV folks was totally misplaced -- and they were going after the symptom, not the actual heart of the issue: which is that people don't want to watch TV commercials because the TV commercials suck.

TV commercials worked because people were a captive audience and had nowhere else to place their attention. Yet, when they have other options for their attention, they tend to take them. In fact, the latest study (sent over by Eric Goldman) shows that DVRs were never really a huge threat in terms of taking people's attention away from ads. Instead, it seems the real threat is that everyone has a smartphone now, and when commercials come on, they turn their attention to their smartphone, check their social network/email/etc.:

It was found that simply turning one's head to ignore video ads had far greater impact than DVR fast-forwarding is assumed to have. Magna Global estimates that 35% of U.S. households have DVRs and 10% of their total TV consumption is time shifted, within which 65% of ads are fast-forwarded, meaning 35% x 10% x 65% = 2% of total TV ad impressions are avoided through fast-forwarding. Our study found that 63% of TV impressions were avoided simply by not paying attention to the screen.

To be honest, that 2% number seems crazy low to me, and I wonder how accurate it really is. However, even if it's noticeably higher, it appears that smartphones and other distractions are definitely taking people's attention away. In fact, even when people do fast-forward ads (as we noted in that study years ago) they still seem to see the ads:

When participants did use the DVR to fast-forward TV ads, nearly half of them paid full attention to the screen during that process. Fast-forwarded ads had 12% more attention levels than non-fast-forwarded ads.

Though, this study contradicts the other one from a few years ago concerning retention: saying people don't retain quite as much from fast-forwarded ads.

Of course, you can debate the statistics all you want, the basics are pretty obvious: if your method of advertising relies on a captive audience, and that audience is no longer captive, then you're going to have problems. TV execs were wrong to worry about DVRs, because they didn't really take people's attention away from the TV, and had the other side effect of making people watch more TV. However, there may actually be an issue with things like smartphones, because if people don't like what's on the TV (i.e., the ads suck) they now have a much more entertaining option right in their pocket. The captive audience is dead. Of course, that doesn't mean that there's nothing the TV guys can do. They could start making the ads more compelling such that people actually want to watch them, but I guess that probably sounds like "work."

Filed Under: captive audience, commercials, dvrs, interruptions, smartphones, tv

52 Comments

ITC Not Impressed With Latest Smartphone Patent Thicket Cases

Patents

from the patent-protectionism dept

Wed, Apr 20th 2011 9:01pm — Mike Masnick

In the past, we've pointed out how many patent holders now get two entirely separate cracks at trying to get those they accuse of patent infringement to pay up. There's the regular court system and there's an entirely separate International Trade Commission (ITC) process, as well. Basically, the ITC can make rulings preventing importing infringing works, totally outside of the court system. And, of course, since so many things are made outside the US these days, this could create an effective injunction against those products in the entire US market. One of the key problems is that the ITC uses different standards than the court system to determine if such an injunction is an appropriate step.

With the massive patent thicket on smartphones, leading to a bunch of lawsuits, many are using both the court system and the ITC to try to force the other side to give in and just pay up. However, so far, it appears that the ITC is not playing along. We recently noted that the ITC indicated it was rejecting Nokia's claims that Apple's iPhone violated some of its patents, and now the ITC has indicated that it won't side with Apple in its claims against HTC and Nokia.

In other words: keep your silly patent pissing fight out of the ITC.

If the ITC keeps rejecting these attempts to stifle competition via the patent system, then hopefully companies will stop using this little loophole to get to extra bites of the (proverbial) apple.

Filed Under: itc, patent thicket, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, htc, nokia

11 Comments

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Apple's Argument: Samsung Could Have Made Its Phone Large, Thick, Bumpy, Sharp-Edged & Hexagonal

from the sounds-great dept

UN Wants To Host 'Patent' Summit To Deal With Smartphone Patent Thicket

from the send-in-peacekeepers? dept

Would We Prefer HTC To Be Making Cool New Products? Or Just Getting More Patents

from the state-of-the-times dept

Did Apple's Claims Over Rectangles And Corners Lead To 'The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers'?

from the seems-that-way dept

Just Because Companies Can Design Around Patents Doesn't Mean There's No Impact For Consumers

from the economic-reality dept

Patent Aggressor Microsoft Files EU Complaint Against Google/Motorola For Charging Too Much To License Patents

from the live-by-the-sword dept

Acacia Buys Up More Smartphone Apps Patents: Watch The Patent Thicket Get Worse

from the putting-the-brakes-on-innovation dept

Patents As Theft: How Oracle & Microsoft Seek To Profit From Android Despite Having Nothing To Do With It

from the shameful dept

Smartphones Make People Ignore Commercials Way More Than DVRs

from the captive-audience dept

ITC Not Impressed With Latest Smartphone Patent Thicket Cases

from the patent-protectionism dept

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