Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android

[WildcatRudy]

If apple started building cars, they'd find some obscure patent regarding "a transportation device with four moving wheels" and sue GM, Ford, Toyota, etc....

Patent trolls are ugly.

 

[johnomaz]

All is fair in love and patent wars!

But seriously guys, the stuff won't be removed from android. It'll just be licensed from Apple in similar fashion to other technologies. This is the reason for the Moto purchase, Google needed patents that it didn't have.

I thought Apple was licensing it from another company. I swear I read that, but can't remember where.

 

[OneTenderRebel]

I thought Apple was licensing it from another company. I swear I read that, but can't remember where.

no they own the patent but I do not believe they were the original inventors. Someone posted a link to the actual patent called into question here and Apple has owned it since 1996.

 

[SquireSCA]

no they own the patent but I do not believe they were the original inventors. Someone posted a link to the actual patent called into question here and Apple has owned it since 1996.

I would love to see someone compile a list of things that Apple has patented, that they didn't actually invent and have the list show who actually invented it, and when they first used it before Apple patented it.

I think that Apple has invented very little. They take someone else's work and add their skin to it, or take it and add something to it, or they just see something and look to see if it has a patent and if not, steal it and patent it themselves.

But a list showing all those patents and who actually invented the item and used it first, I think would be a real eye opener to a lot of people, and maybe these judges themselves should consider this when awarding Apple these bogus cases...

 

[OneTenderRebel]

I would love to see someone compile a list of things that Apple has patented, that they didn't actually invent and have the list show who actually invented it, and when they first used it before Apple patented it.

I think that Apple has invented very little. They take someone else's work and add their skin to it, or take it and add something to it, or they just see something and look to see if it has a patent and if not, steal it and patent it themselves.

But a list showing all those patents and who actually invented the item and used it first, I think would be a real eye opener to a lot of people, and maybe these judges themselves should consider this when awarding Apple these bogus cases...

I don't necessarily agree with everything you said but I do agree that some of the patents are so broad that the judges should take that into consideration. Which they are doing with the Apple vs Samsung stuff and the same will probably end up happening here, IMO.

 

[JHOOPS2]

This was one of the primary reasons why I opted out of my 4 year affair with Apple and switched the the Razr.

 

[SquireSCA]

I don't necessarily agree with everything you said but I do agree that some of the patents are so broad that the judges should take that into consideration. Which they are doing with the Apple vs Samsung stuff and the same will probably end up happening here, IMO.

Apple was awarded a patent for "slide to unlock", even though there was a Nokia smartphone out the year before that was using that function, prior to the iPhone and prior to Apple even applying for the patent. And that is not the only example of Apple taking something that another company invented, looking to see if there was a patent for it, and if not, applying for one and presenting it as their own.

That in and of itself should be illegal. You are claiming rights to something that you didn't invent, and I think that we need a patent law that says that if you apply for a patent that you knowingly didn't invent, that you should be guilty of "attempted IP theft" or something like that. It is almost like insurance fraud, where you try to put in a claim on a car or property that is not registered to you...

Apple is using this and bordering on what I consider definitely unethical, and possibly illegal, in an attempt to succeed where they are otherwise failing in the market place. They no longer have what it takes to make a better product, so they are using legal loopholes and abusing the court system, at taxpayer's expense no less, to try and win there.

It's an abuse and it should be illegal.

 

[poolshark333]

I just was on the US patent website. And according to it a "design" patent only last 14 years. And what I read earlier in this post was theat Apple recieved this patent in 1996. Unless that is not correct, I'm pretty sure that it is over the 14 year limit.

 

[OneTenderRebel]

Apple was awarded a patent for "slide to unlock", even though there was a Nokia smartphone out the year before that was using that function, prior to the iPhone and prior to Apple even applying for the patent. And that is not the only example of Apple taking something that another company invented, looking to see if there was a patent for it, and if not, applying for one and presenting it as their own.

That in and of itself should be illegal. You are claiming rights to something that you didn't invent, and I think that we need a patent law that says that if you apply for a patent that you knowingly didn't invent, that you should be guilty of "attempted IP theft" or something like that. It is almost like insurance fraud, where you try to put in a claim on a car or property that is not registered to you...

Apple is using this and bordering on what I consider definitely unethical, and possibly illegal, in an attempt to succeed where they are otherwise failing in the market place. They no longer have what it takes to make a better product, so they are using legal loopholes and abusing the court system, at taxpayer's expense no less, to try and win there.

It's an abuse and it should be illegal.

Who's to say the inventors didn't give the patent to Apple? I honestly don't know how they got it, I wasn't there haha but maybe it was given to them.

 

[SquireSCA]

Who's to say the inventors didn't give the patent to Apple? I honestly don't know how they got it, I wasn't there haha but maybe it was given to them.

I don't know that patents should cover features, but rather "mechanisms"...

Meaning that having a slide to unlock is just a feature, as is "app switching when a call comes in"... Now, you may have a more efficient code to do it, and so you want your code protected and anyone that wants the same feature should have to come up with their own way to do it.

Like a car having independent suspension. You cannot tell other car makers that they must use rear axles and such, but you can patent your suspension and how you went about achieving it.

Or maybe a gun. You cannot patent "having semi-automatic firing capabilities" so that everyone else must use a revolver or bolt action method, but if you are Justin Moone at Kahr Arms, you can devise a patent for an offset feed ramp and magazine design that let's your semi-auto pistol have a narrower profile, thereby making your guns thinner and more concealable than the competition... So the feature is a thinner gun and that is a selling point, but the patent is not for being semi-auto... just in how you went about doing it if it is different than how other companies do...

You patent the METHOD, not the feature itself. Else I could just patent any gun that is less than a certain thickness, and it wouldn't matter how people accommodated or implemented it, only I can have a "super thin and narrow" pistol. That would be BS, and so nobody would do that...

I don't see why smart phones and Apple are given special treatment.

 

[IIGood]

I seriously want to just go start a picket line in front of the local Apple store over their stupid patent-whoring/trolling BS.

 

[illmatic636]

I think people are taking this patent situation to heart. In the world of business, what Apple is doing is just making profitable business decisions. If they are spending $$ to patent such things, shame on you for not doing it first.
Coca-cola patents it's ingredients in what they produce, and for good reason. If the patent is absurd, then that should be noted at the time they are getting the patent. If the courts rule them legitimate patents, I don't know what you guys want!

One thing I know for a fact, is that more bashing of Apple happens here on Droidforums. I'm on both sites, and they have hardly any if none saying a single negative thing about any android device.

But hey, I've always been a person who roots for the underdog.


On that note, the comment about airplanes flying into Apple headquarters instead of the World Trade Center was absolutely uncalled for. And Mods should pick up on this. The person who wrote it knows who he/she is, and for lack of a better term, your a moron.

Yeah, I ha a iPhone 4s, but booya, I also rock the D1. Verizon's original developer phone!
And I love Android with all my heart, but the one release after another after another after another......
Enough is enough!!

 

[kptphalkon]

tell that to phone manufaturers, not the android OS and google. Google clearly develops one phone a year to be released as what they consider the android experience.

and yeah haha....Occupy Cupertino anyone?

 

[SquireSCA]

I think people are taking this patent situation to heart. In the world of business, what Apple is doing is just making profitable business decisions. If they are spending $$ to patent such things, shame on you for not doing it first.
Coca-cola patents it's ingredients in what they produce, and for good reason. If the patent is absurd, then that should be noted at the time they are getting the patent. If the courts rule them legitimate patents, I don't know what you guys want!

One thing I know for a fact, is that more bashing of Apple happens here on Droidforums. I'm on both sites, and they have hardly any if none saying a single negative thing about any android device.

But hey, I've always been a person who roots for the underdog.


On that note, the comment about airplanes flying into Apple headquarters instead of the World Trade Center was absolutely uncalled for. And Mods should pick up on this. The person who wrote it knows who he/she is, and for lack of a better term, your a moron.

Yeah, I ha a iPhone 4s, but booya, I also rock the D1. Verizon's original developer phone!
And I love Android with all my heart, but the one release after another after another after another......
Enough is enough!!

Coca Cola can patent the FORMULA for their soda, they cannot patent soda itself, or even the taste.

If you make a soda that tastes exactly the same, so long as you did not use their formula, but rather arrived at it by your own different formula, you have no case.

Harley Davidson tried this with Honda, tried to sue them over the "sound" that some of the Honda cruisers made. But so long as Honda didn't copy any of HD's engine designs(And who would, Harley uses 40 year old engine technology...), the Honda's could sound like whatever they wanted. They could patent the motor design, the cam design, all sorts of mechanical things, but what they could not patent was the finished product of the sound that it made. They tried, and the courts shot them down.

So Apple trying to patent clicking on a phone number, or unlocking a phone, or multi-tasking is absolutely absurd. It wastes the court's time, our tax dollars and it stifles innovation and what is delivered to us, the customers paying the bills.

That's why we take it personally.

 

[kptphalkon]

And Apple can sue everyone for anything all they want to, it will not change the facts. Just as Microsoft released their OS to manufacturers instead of keeping it solely proprietary, Google will always have the edge on mass consumer outreach. This, and this alone, is the real reason they have instigated these ridiculous patent wars.

As someone else mentioned, aside from SJ's unhealthy obsession with destroying android (good luck Apple, you would never have done it even if he were still with us), Apple is tired of being the number 2 for nigh-20 years.