HTC Fires Back At Apple, Patent Nuclear Response Launched

from the and-here-we-go dept

With Apple and Nokia already locked in a patent nuclear war involving lawsuits filed back and forth and back and forth, it looks like the same thing may be happening now in the Apple-HTC dispute. The difference, of course, is that Apple initiated the lawsuit against HTC. But now HTC has responded in kind, claiming that Apple violates a bunch of its patents, while using the ITC loophole to get the iPhone barred from the US.

What we're really seeing is what happens when you get a patent thicket in a highly competitive, dynamic area. Suddenly, rather than focusing on competing in the marketplace, and continually outpacing each other by offering new innovations and benefits to consumers, companies start wasting millions upon millions of dollars trying to block competitors from doing the same thing. It leads to a massive net negative impact on society and consumer benefit. What a shame.

At the very least, it appears that HTC recognizes this:

"As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible."

Either way, it's yet another nuclear war in the patent world, taking money away from actual innovation. What a shame.

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

German Court Says You Must Secure Your WiFi Or You May Get Fined

from the open-wifi-is-illegal? dept

Miranda Neubauer was the first of a few of you to send in the news of a bizarre German court ruling that makes it effectively illegal to offer open WiFi. Seriously:

Germany's top criminal court ruled Wednesday that Internet users need to secure their private wireless connections by password to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data.

Internet users can be fined up to euro100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection to illegally download music or other files, the Karlsruhe-based court said in its verdict.

"Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation," the court said.

This is backwards in so many ways. First, open WiFi is quite useful, and requiring a password can be a huge pain, limiting all sorts of individuals and organizations who have perfectly good reasons for offering free and open WiFi. Second, fining the WiFi hotspot owner for actions of users of the service is highly troubling from a third party liability standpoint. The operator of the WiFi hotspot should not be responsible for the actions of users, and it's troubling that the German court would find otherwise. This is an unfortunate ruling no matter how you look at it.

Filed Under: copyright, germany, passwords, security, third party liability, wifi, wireless