Thread: Apple's Frivolous Patent Bullying tactics doing it no favours

It would seem Apple's legal bills keep piling up with its failed attempts to fulfill Steve's dying wish.

Court decisions wrinkle Apple's Android legal battle


By Dan Levine, Reuters June 13, 2012

Apple Inc has spent nearly three years fighting its rivals in a global smartphone patent war. Now, setbacks in two key U.S. court cases are laying bare why a drawn-out battle could be bad news for the iPhone maker.

Last Thursday, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago federal court canceled Apple's long-awaited trial against Google Inc's Motorola Mobility division, which makes devices powered by the Internet search company's Android mobile operating system. The trial had been set to start this week.

Then in an order late on Monday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, effectively dashed Apple's hopes of stopping the launch of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's new Galaxy S III smartphone, which also runs on Android. Koh had said Apple's push to get a court order blocking the June 21 launch would overload her calendar, given Apple's high-stakes trial over other Samsung devices set for July that she is overseeing.

The latest decisions don't doom Apple's courtroom efforts - the company can appeal Posner's ruling, while Koh's directive had nothing to do with the merits of the Samsung case about to go to trial, or the legal arguments for an injunction on the new Samsung smartphone. But delays in moving its cases through the courts is a blow to Apple's efforts to get quick and favorable rulings that it hopes would give it an edge in the marketplace for mobile devices.

Apple has waged the international patent war since 2010, part of its attempt to limit growth of Android, which last year established its dominance as the world's best-selling mobile operating platform. Apple's opponents, meanwhile, say the iPhone maker is trying to use patents to avoid competing solely in the market.

A clear victory in one of the U.S. legal cases could strengthen Apple's hand in negotiating cross-licensing deals outside court, where companies agree to let each other use their patented technologies.

"The stalemate is much more of a victory for the accused infringers than it is for Apple," said Brian Love, a professor at Stanford Law School who studies patent litigation.

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet reiterated a previous statement, saying the blatant copying of its devices was wrong. Google spokesman Jim Prosser said the rise of patent litigation is due to too many vague software patents, and that Google's success makes it an attractive target. A Samsung representative declined to comment.

Apple is not the only smartphone combatant that has faced setbacks in litigation over its technology. Last month, Oracle Corp came up empty in a trial against Google, a case where Oracle's damages estimates ranged up to $6 billion.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco rejected Oracle's copyright claims on parts of the Java programming language. The enterprise software company said it would appeal.

LAND GRAB

Apple is in a pitched battle with its competitors over who can develop the most innovative smartphone features. In an attempt to help keep Android at bay, the company announced new features for its voice-activated Siri software at its annual developer's conference on Monday.

The company's first lawsuit in its global patent fight was against smaller competitor HTC Corp in a Delaware federal court in March 2010. Apple also filed an action against HTC before a U.S. trade panel, which has forced delays in sales of some HTC smartphones.

Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of Destination Wealth Management, says HTC stock has suffered due to adverse court rulings. But for a larger player like Apple, the patent battle is important but not for its share price. Rather, it is used for a short-term edge in the land grab for smartphone and tablet sales, said Yoshikami, whose fund holds Apple shares.

In a move that was widely seen as a preemptive strike against an imminent Apple lawsuit, Motorola sued Apple in October 2010 in Chicago, and Apple filed its own claims against Motorola the same month. That case landed before Posner, who issued a series of pre-trial rulings that eliminated nearly all of Motorola's patent claims against Apple from the prospective trial, while maintaining more of Apple's claims against Motorola.

That meant Apple had more to gain in the trial, which was set to start on Monday. But in an order last week, Posner scrapped the trial after finding that neither side could prove damages. Apple had sought an injunction barring the sale of Motorola products, but Posner said that would be "contrary to the public interest."

Nick Rodelli, a lawyer and adviser to institutional investors for CFRA Research in Maryland, rated Posner's decision an "incremental negative" for Apple. However, Rodelli doesn't think it will stand up on appeal, saying in part that Posner improperly denied Apple a hearing on its right to an injunction.

Yet Stanford's Professor Love said that Posner's ruling, and the delay it causes in Apple getting the case to trial even if it wins an appeal, will reduce Apple's leverage during any potential licensing talks.

In the Samsung lawsuit, filed last year in California, the iPhone maker says Samsung "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the claims and countersued.

The trial centers around Apple's claims against multiple Samsung phones, as well as a Galaxy tablet. But those products are not the most pressing worry for Apple at the moment: Samsung's Galaxy S III phone is set to launch in the U.S. on June 21, and Apple fears blockbuster sales.

But courts don't move as quickly as new technology. At a court hearing last week, Apple attorney Josh Krevitt complained that Samsung is able to release new phones before the legal system has time to address their patent violations.

"Samsung is always one step ahead, launching another product and another product," Krevitt said.

Koh last week said Apple could ask for a temporary restraining order against the Galaxy S III phone, but that would likely delay the trial over a Galaxy tablet and other smartphones. In her order on Monday, the judge said Apple would have to request a new hearing date if it wanted to stop sales of the Galaxy S III phone. That likely would not take place before the phone's scheduled launch. Apple has not said what its next move will be.

Court-ordered mediation between the CEOs of Apple and Samsung did not produce a settlement in the wide-ranging litigation. Barring a last minute agreement, the trial is slated for July 30.

Apple cannot afford to get bogged down in its global legal campaign against Android, said Paul Berghoff, a Chicago-based patent attorney with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff who is not involved in the litigation.

"If Apple's goal still is the Steve Jobs holy war, then the status quo is not in their benefit," Berghoff said.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

It seems that they didn't cover their intellectual property arse when they lodged their patents hence they have had their claims of infringement thrown of court.

It's mindboggling how many ridiculously vague patents each of the major manufacturers own.

That's why Google bought Motorola.

In fact when Nortel went tits up they sold off their patent portfolio separately.

The only real winners are the lawyers.

I knew an IT dev guy whose only job at some big mega corp was to fulfill application for patents over absolutely nothing, even 3 lines of codes doing something completely generic. He was paid per application processed and made more than 150k per year over that job. All he had to do was to make simple functions or tasks sounds complicated and IP for the application to be accepted.

Apple's secret weapon

(CNN) -- It's hard to believe, but there was a time when Apple's computers were accused of being strictly last generation.

Their computers were made with clunky Power PC processors, and Windows PC owners smirked at the wheezing Mac platform. Michael Dell even famously said the whole company was so behind the times that if it were up to him, he'd euthanize it.

How things change.

While the rest of the industry was counting Apple out, a Steve Jobs newly returned to Apple spent the early part of the last decade quietly assembling a time machine. Following the iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air before it, the retina-display MacBook Pro announced Monday at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco is just the latest time traveler Apple has sent back to us from the future.

It's a machine so shiny, so shimmering, so futuristic, so unlike anything else out there that it will take the PC-making competition at least a year to release a truly competing product. How did this even happen? How did Apple assemble its time machine, and why can't the likes of Sony, HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo seem to catch up?

Apple announces high-res laptops

There's no flux capacitor involved, and although Apple's design team, led by Jony Ive, is truly visionary, there are lots of companies with revolutionary visions of the future of computing. The difference between Apple and other computer makers is that Apple can actually build the revolutionary, magical machines it dreams up.

That's Apple's real mojo. They can actualize. Apple can say to themselves that they are going to revolutionize the professional laptop, or the smartphone, or the tablet, and then not only follow through with an enviable purity of design, source all of the parts and manufacture their product in utter secrecy, then ship the resulting en masse and sell them at unheard of profit margins. No one else can.

It's all in Apple's mastery of the supply chain, which is Tim Cook's particular genius. His strategy is simple: When Apple decides to go ahead and make a revolutionary new product, it buys up literally almost all of the world's stock of the components that define the gadget. This not only gives Apple massive discounts in component prices, because they are buying in extreme bulk, but it also prevents the competition from quickly releasing clones of Apple's iconic machines, or matching Apple in price without cutting corners.

It happens time and time again. When Apple first released the iPhone, it took the smartphone industry a year to release a phone that was even competitive, spec-for-spec, by which time Apple had already unveiled the iPhone 3GS.

Hardware manufacturers trying to compete with Apple constantly discover that they can only build competing devices off of Apple's rejected parts, or else build new factories from the ground up to manufacture the parts they need.

Look at the iPad. It has no competition, 2½ years in. Last quarter, Apple sold almost 12 million iPads. Comparatively, Apple's biggest competitor -- Samsung -- sold 1.1 million tablets. Why? Companies simply can't build products as good, or Apple's stranglehold on the manufacturing supply chain prevents them from doing so.

Then there's a MacBook Air. We're starting to see competitive ultrabooks a year and a half after Apple unveiled the second-gen Air, but that's only after Intel reportedly set up a massive $500 million subsidy fund to help PC makers build a MacBook Air clone.

The new retina-display MacBook Pro is another such product. It's a beast of a machine all around, but its defining feature is a high-resolution display with 220 pixels per inch, each smaller than the acuity of the human eye. It's far and away the best display of any notebook or even desktop on the market, and you can bet that Apple is in control of most of the world's supply of the panels necessary to make a machine that even comes close to competing.

There's a famous Ray Bradbury story called "A Sound of Thunder" in which a man travels into the prehistoric past, accidentally squashes an insect underfoot and thus indelibly changes the future forever. Apple is that time traveler. The prehistoric insect is the competition. Apple crushes it underfoot with calculated purpose, and that is how the future of computing is once again forever changed.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

It's a machine so shiny

this sums apple hardware up to a T - retards will preen themselves in the reflective coating of the screen marvelling at how good looking they are - all closet homosexuals

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

When Apple first released the iPhone

the axim x50v had been out for 4 years

Comparison: Apple iPhone 16GB vs. Dell Axim X50v | PDAcomparer | PDAdb.net

Originally Posted by baldrick

the axim x50v had been out for 4 years

... and no one could make phone calls with it.

That's quite a trick for a phone, isn't it?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It's mindboggling how many ridiculously vague patents each of the major manufacturers own.

I would suspect that no patents have been awarded as yet and that is where the problem is.

When you apply for a patent it normally takes around 30 months before a full patent is awarded and that is after careful examination by the patent office examiners (18 months) and the public (12 months).

Before that time you enter the market with a patent pending product which is always a risk.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Originally Posted by baldrick

the axim x50v had been out for 4 years

... and no one could make phone calls with it.

That's quite a trick for a phone, isn't it?

wrong apple tard

I had no problems using a Jabra BT earpiece/mic , wifi and skype to call people

Originally Posted by baldrick

I had no problems using a Jabra BT earpiece/mic , wifi and skype to call people

That's not a phone, then, now is it...?

Of course, hey, what're "facts" good for, except for you to throw them out.

Seriously, you are an incredibly dumb, unintelligent, and dense troll. Fascinating.

Your anger, hate and bitterness are merely fuel to me.

Oh, look, a comment of your's that didn't get deleted.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

That's not a phone, then, now is it...?

because only an iphone is a phone according to apple zealots

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Oh, look, a comment of your's that didn't get deleted.

it only last until you complain about it because it makes you look like a sad excuse for a rational adult

Oh dear is the schoolgirl still running to teacher?

What a twat.

the iPhone is simply a PDA with a SIM in it, it's not a phone per design, just an embedded PC with a TAPI interface

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Otherwise I'll claim that this preceded the Dell crap-PDA as a 'phone"

you my dear little applefcuktard claim all sorts of sh1t

how was the newton able to make phone calls ? record a message and throw it to your mum on the other side of the room ?

Easy - dial from the contacts screen with the included PCMCIA modem, and use the headphones/microphone to talk. There you go, a phone (in fact, more of a phone than the Dell CraPad)

Originally Posted by Butterfly

the iPhone is simply a PDA with a SIM in it, it's not a phone per design, just an embedded PC with a TAPI interface

That's fine - no problem with that description. But then one should at least compare Apples to Apples, i.e. another embedded PC with a SIM, to compare with. Apparently, Baldrick needs some special education to comprehend that.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

included PCMCIA modem

into a landline

For a country with some of the best legislation to prevent cartels and abuse of monopolies in the worlds, its a real shame to see how they have completely and utterly lost the plot when it comes to patents. Its become a back door to legalise abusing monopolies and an extortion racket.... its seriously screwing their economy.


Fundamentally patents are abusive monopolies, they are granted to provide an economic incentive to private companies to invest heavily in R&D that may well have paybacks in excess of 10-20 years. The pharmaceutical industry is a classic example where without monopoly protection they simply could not afford the R&D half billion dollar investments that have created the drugs that make our lives better.

I see few patents coming out of these tech companies that have either required huge finical investments they need to recover over decades and more importantly work which would not have occurred without patent protection.

Which is the reason why Apple (ie Tim Cook) has been vocally outspoken *against* the current patent system, declaring it "broken":

Midsize Insider: Apple CEO Tim Cook Thinks Patent System Is Broken

Specifically, Apple is taking a stance against "Standards-Essential Patents", which is what most of the current quagmire of lawsuits is about (and which Apple refuses to litigate over):

Tim Cook Speaking Against Suing Over Standards-Essential Patents at D10 | PandoDaily

“No one should be able to get an injunction off a standards patent, because the owner is obligated to license it in a fair and reasonable manner. Apple has not sued anyone over standards-essential patents that we own, because we feel it’s fundamentally wrong to do that. The problem in this industry is that if you add up what everyone says their standards-essential patents are worth, no one would be in the phone business.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the D10 conference speaking against suing over standards-essential patents

and in case there are questions what the differences between "Standards-Essential" patents, and "other patents" are:

FOSS Patents: Tim Cook makes clear-cut distinction between standard-essential patents and other patents

(the above is a really good discussion of this subject).

don't be mislead by the astroturfer



Apple's 'slide to unlock' patent

Apple's 'slide to unlock' patent win could halt Android sales in Germany | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Apples complaints patents about the patent systems are obviously not marketing bullocks designed to distract the faithful that apple is as much a patent troll as it is a a r&d company.

Good examples of this are their recent patent on wedge shaped laptops, the result of an R&D effort so expensive it put the companies future on the line, which is why they need the patent to protect apple from cheap knock offs such as this blatant wedge shaped apple air clone from sony

Here's one of the points - *EVERYONE* in the industry smirks at Apple, until they do something different, or succeed at what everyone else failed, and then all those same smirkers quickly copy Apple.

Again, Apple's opposition is to Standards-Essential Patents (SEPs), and not the example listed.

words are cheap, its actions that count. Apple are a very active participant in the abuse of the US patent system. Apple patenting of wedge shaped laptops is a classic example of whats wrong. And what is the issue with sony manufacturing wedge shaped laptops like the one above, which even if it does have similarities with they air... why would it be reasonable for apple to expect protection from such trivial innovations?

Originally Posted by hazz

why would it be reasonable for apple to expect protection from such trivial innovations?

a) because they are innovations, nevertheless, and Apple should be afforded compensations for others riding on their coattails. No one is saying that no one else should build wedge shaped laptops (or use 'slide to unlock') but that they should compensate Apple for copying their work.

b) because if Apple were to do nothing about it, others would be (and are) using equally trivial patents/innovations to go after Apple, in search of cheap thrills.

c) copying each others has been going on for decades, and in most cases, most manufacturers just sat by idly and did nothing about it. Apple takes it seriously, and at least tries to make turn others copying it into an expensive proposition.

As long as others are doing it with impunity, I prefer to see Apple be aggressive and beat the others at their own game, time and time again.