04.14.12
Posted in Apple, Google, Oracle, Patents at 4:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A quick roundup of legal news about the market leaders in mobile and tablets
Pamela Jones is back to tracking the SCOracle case on a more permanent basis (when she does not help Apple against Psystar and patent trolls). Jones is rightly concerned that copyright law may be putting programming languages in danger, so it’s not just a matter of patents anymore. Both Android and iOS are impacted by the patent troll she’s tracking and yet another patent troll is harming both sides:
PATENT TROLL Touchscreen Gestures has claimed that Apple’s Iphone and Ipad infringe its touchscreen patents.
Touchscreen Gestures seems to be nothing more than a shell company that has ownership of a number of patents that cover screen tapping and dragging gestures. The firm has also claimed that Samsung and Research in Motion (RIM) infringe its patents with their respective tablets.
In other news, Apple gets a taste of its own medicine in Europe. As one reporter puts it:
German Court Upheld Ban On iCloud, MobileMe
Apple needed to get a taste of its own medicine. The Wall Street Journal reports that a regional court in Mannheim (Germany) has upheld its ruling to ban Apple’s iCloud and MobileMe services. Motorola had accused Apple of infringing upon its patent EP0847654. The ban was enforced after the February ruling. Apple had appealed the courts decision challenging the validity of Motorola patent.
Apple and Android don’t get along because the spiritual leader of Apple declared war, but both share some similar problems. They really should work together against software patenting. What we meanwhile are left with is a system which is unfriendly to competition and innovation. Intellectual monopolies are of no benefit to society. They help some of the biggest corporations gain more power over society. █
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04.12.12
Posted in Apple, Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents at 3:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
3-way attack on Android domination
Summary: Updates on litigation and deterrence tactics against the fastest-spreading Linux distribution
THE NEW YORK press published a widely-cited article titled “German Courts at Epicenter of Global Patent Battles Among Tech Rivals” (paywall-crippled, workaround here). We wrote about this recently. Microsoft was trying to get away from Germany while using German lobbying to deceive on the patent debate.
As an increasingly obsolete company, Microsoft relies more than ever before on patents. Apple also relies on being able to block competitors (running Linux) from the market. As one article puts it, however, “Apple May Lose Legal Battle Against Samsung In US” and this is merely part of the general trend. Apple gets sued in response and this whole embargo scheme is proving to be distracting, a waste of time even to Apple.
Let’s go back to Microsoft’s own war on Android. Recently, Microsoft acquired yet more Google-hostile patents (from AOL) and as my co-host Tim puts it:
What do you do when you have products which people are not buying? What do you do when you produce a product that fails to grasp the interest of the consumer in the same way as your competitor?
Do you make your products desirable? – No need. In todays modern world you don’t have to develop anything, you can merely stock up on patents, stuff your portfolio full and then go out on an expedition of legal challenges, NDA’s and take a little of the cream from your competition! What a wonderful fair world we live in.
This is what Microsoft is exploiting at the moment and Glyn Moody’s analysis says that with Netscape patents at stake “[t]his latest turn of events emphasises once more why it is absolutely critical for open standards to require RF licensing of any patents, as the W3C patent policy now rightly requires. If not, then major parts of the computing world can be held to ransom by owners of crucial patents that can’t be coded around.”
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reckons it is indeed a move against Google. He writes: “Microsoft didn’t just buy AOL’s patents, they bought what was left of its one time fierce Web browser rival Netscape’s intellectual property to use in attacking Google’s Android and Chrome.”
Vaughan-Nichols had more to say about it later.
Muktware says “Microsoft Buys Netscape Patents, May Start Abusing Soon” (i.e. destroy the market with otherwise-harmless patents).
Another CPTN member, Oracle, has its case against Android tracked over at Groklaw [1, 2, 3] and the latest update says:
A judge has finally told Oracle’s lawyers that the relief they were asking for in a motion signed by a Boies Schiller lawyer would be unfair, excessive, and prejudicial to Google.
Separately, Moody talked about “[w]hat one line of code can teach us”, noting quite accurately that the nuisance to eliminate is software patents, rather than go one-by-one after companies that abuse them. He writes:
Glyn Moody looks at an example of how a patent on one line of code can inhibit innovation for a generation and how that lesson should not be forgotten when the government is asking what an open standard is.
With proper regulations and laws, Linux will thrive, Right now the law is being manipulated so as to put the best operating system at a position of disadvantage. The quickest fix to all this is to end software patents. █
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04.02.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Oracle, Patents at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News updates on the patent cases against Android, the platform which quickly conquers the mobile phones and tablets space
PATENTS are a thorn on the side of Android’s success. Now that Android and Linux are more tightly joined by the hip, defending one helps defend the other.
Not so long ago, Oracle and Google were urged to negotiate, resulting in a proposition that failed. This continues to be reported on [1, 2].
All those patent fights are proving to be costly and as one article put it last month: “Two upcoming cases in the United States – one against Motorola and the other against Samsung – have the potential to strike deeper blows on either side. The trials involve the legal rights to the core technology behind smartphones and tablet computers and whoever loses could face large damages and increased costs. That could raise prices for consumers.”
Of course, as always, it is good for lawyers, for billionaires who run giant corporations, and it all comes at the expense of everyone else.
Around the same day Reuters published an article on a similar subject and fortunately enough Apple is not getting its way. While it accumulates more controversial patents it is failing to stop Android using them. The Indian press takes the side of Android, To quote this new article titled “touch is forbidden”:
Many are trying, thanks to software patents. Patents have become a bane to the very essence of innovation. They are arsenals, ostensibly meant to defend but more often used to offend. Yahoo’s lawsuit against Facebook over 10 patents further proves that weaponizing software patents is the last gasp of a dying business.
Which brings me to the news that Twitter is trying to patent one of the most instinctive gestures on the iPhone, what they call User Interface Mechanics. Anyone who has used a Twitter client on their phone knows to refresh the page: You “pull” it down and release. Others use this as well, like Google’s Gmail mobile site.
But as Techcrunch noticed, this functionality isn’t built into every core app on the iPhone (like the Mail app), and the reason is probably because it’s potential lawsuit bait.
The Oracle case carries on and Groklaw keeps track of everything. Professor Webbink writes:
Not a lot of activity in the case yesterday. Only a couple of administrative filings. In the first (841 [PDF; Text]) the Court addresses what it expects to be somewhat crowded conditions in the public seating area of the courtroom at the beginning of the trial. In part this is due to the large size of the jury pool. So the Court has asked the respective parties to limit the size of their entourages.
Pamela Jones later adds:
Remember when there were all those scary headlines about Oracle suing Google for $6 billion for alleged patent infringement? Did that preposterous fantasy come true?
Instead, Google, without even any counterclaims of patent infringement to fire back, got almost all of Oracle’s asserted patents tossed out as invalid by the USPTO in reexaminations. There’s one left standing and another that might be valid if Oracle can successfully appeal a preliminary finding of invalidity by the USPTO, with a grand total of damages estimates from the court’s independent adviser being less than a million, after adjustments, if Oracle can prove infringement, a very, very big IF.
Congratulations, Oracle, for shooting yourself in the foot.
Now there are some new scary headlines, like this one, “Why Google Might Be Going to $0″ this morning about how much money Google will have to pay because Google is being sued by Vringo, Vringo calling itself I/P Engine in the litigation, with predictions that Google will surely settle to avoid being valued at zero by the time Vringo is done with it.
The dispute is likely to continue for a while because neither side is backing off:
In the papers, Google argued that the trial could be shortened from its currently scheduled duration of eight weeks and sought to appear before US District Judge William Alsup instead of a jury. Oracle doesn’t believe the trial schedule should be revised nor is it willing to waive its right to a jury trial.
Google estimates it will have to pay about $2.8 million if it’s determined that Android infringes on two Java patents that are being reviewed in the case. The company, which is based in Mountain View, California, told Alsup that it’s also prepared to pay 0.5 percent of Android’s future revenue for one Java patent expiring at the end of this year and 0.015 percent of Android’s future revenue for the other patent, which expires in April 2018.
The court papers don’t explain how Android’s revenue would be calculated. Google doesn’t charge for Android, but makes some money from mobile advertising occurring on the software and third-party applications sold to run on the operating systems.
It is important to keep Android tax-free. When Free software is subjected to patent tax everything gets very tricky; primarily, redistribution is restricted. █
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03.31.12
Posted in Apple, Oracle at 7:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this” –Steve Jobs
“Steve Jobs is my best friend, and I love him dearly” –Larry Ellison
Jobs image licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (version 1.2 or any later versions); Ellison patch By Thomas Hawk
Summary: Several new articles of interest about the lawsuit over Android
THE case of Oracle versus Google proceeds without settling. As one article from ZDNet puts it:
Oracle reportedly refused the offer on the basis that it was too low. The company had previously been claiming infringement across seven different patents, but was told by Judge William Alsup to slim down the claims.
If a settlement cannot be reached, the trial is scheduled to begin on 16 April.
Oracle declined to provide comment in response to a ZDNet UK request. Google had not responded at the time of writing.
Pogson says that Oracle’s position is worse than he thought, having followed this legal battle through well-researched articles from Groklaw. The H concurs with ZDNet:
After Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal had ordered Oracle and Google to hold another round of talks before the start of their trial, Google has now offered settlement terms that were promptly rejected by Oracle. The company is suing Google for allegedly violating some of its Java-related patents and copyrights on the Java API in the Dalvik virtual machine that is part of Android.
Google had offered Oracle 0.5% of Android revenues until the end of 2012 – at which point Oracle’s patent RE38104 expires – and going forward 0.015% of revenues until April of 2018 (based on patent 6,061,520). This deal would have been subject to the fact that Oracle could actually prove violations of these two patents. Oracle, however, turned the offer down as too low.
The latest from Groklaw says this:
The parties have responded to the Court’s request for supplemental briefs on certain copyright issues. The Google brief addresses the issue of whether Apache Harmony, and its incorporated APIs, are subject to a field-of-use restriction imposed by Sun. (831 [PDF; Text]) Oracle’s brief addresses the applicability of Baker v. Selden. (833 [PDF; Text])
Google asserts that Sun’s field-of-use restriction only arose if you licensed the Java technology development kit (TDK) to assure compatibility between your version of Java and the standard version produced by Sun, and if you took that license and assured compatibility, you were then licensed to use Sun’s Java trademark to reference your compatible version. The Apache Foundation was never willing to license the TDK under those conditions, never did so, and refrained from calling or referencing Harmony as Java. As a consequence, Harmony has never been subject to the TDK field-of-use restrictions, and Sun never attempted to enforce those restrictions against Apache. Assuming the API implementations used by Google are those found in Apache, and given that Google does not refer to Android as Java or Java-compatible, this would appear to be a compelling argument.
Oracle, a GNU/Linux user, has oddly enough been trashing its reputation with this case. Who benefits? Apple. █
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03.26.12
Posted in Google, Oracle, Patents at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Patent news of interest to the FOSS community
AN article in Groklaw reveals that the case which challenges software patents in the United States (albeit indirectly) leads to response from the USPTO. As another site (run by our reader Wayne Borean) puts it:
American Patent law is a mess. When a small section of law ends up being appealed to the United States Supreme Court so often, it is an indication that:
1. The law is badly written
2. Powerful interest groups are trying to bend the law
3. There is a lot of money at stake
This is the seventeenth patent case the court has ruled on since 2005. The Supreme Court has broad powers to choose which cases that it takes. It selects cases that it believes will have a significant impact on the law in the United States. That it has taken so many patent cases implies that the Supreme Court sees problems with the Patent System.
Thus far, the Supreme Court has failed to fix the system and it already harms Android, which relates closely to Linux. Pogson says that:
The issue of patents is similarly embarrasing as the abundance of patents in suit and claims of violation has withered to a couple of items of tiny value if anything. Is it worth 8 weeks of trial to calculate whether zero times a bunch of factors amounts to anything? The Court is thinking ~$100 million tops, with all factors being 1. The result will almost certainly be much less if greater than zero. Oracle might save money by dropping all claims and firing the people who got them into this mess.
Those costs are of course to be passes to buyers. The patent system is a real sham that harms the public and does not stimulate innovation. To strike the problem at the root we must eliminate software patents in the US. █
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03.24.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, KDE, Microsoft, Oracle, Patents at 7:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original by Swampyank, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
Summary: News about the mobile market, and about Android
THE DAYS of Microsoft moles like Belluzo are long gone, but this doesn’t mean that new moles no longer emerge from the ground. One of several new examples is the current CEO of Nokia, whose job seems to be to jab. Microsoft’s machinations are not victimless because a lot of people lose their job and innovation is held back. One of our readers remarked on the effect on Qt, which is crucial for KDE:
One reason I had for awhile considered cmake so strongly in GNU Telephony is that I choose to experiment with using Qt to build applications, and at the time I thought it rather difficult to build QT applications under autconf/automake. A week ago I revisited this question on my own, and found I was actually wrong about this.
My interest in using Qt actually was from the period immediately prior to when Elop joined Nokia as CEO and then, much like Belluzo did to SGI, proceeded defraud the shareholders, employees, and customers of Nokia for the exclusive benefit of Microsoft and one presumes for his own personal gain. However, whatever his personal, and what I do happen to believe as being purely sociopathic, motives may be, it is very clear that Qt itself, with the help of the KDE foundation, and even MeeGO which I am less interested in, but even that, with the help of many others, would and do continue to survive and even thrive, and it matters not whether Nokia continues as part of that process or not in the future. This is just one real tangible benefit of freedom, that tools which you learn and use cannot be then taken away by either arbitrary or criminal actions. There are of course many other benefits to true software freedom as well.
There is actually quite a big debate right now about the future of KDE, in part due to Canonical’s decision to no longer pay some KDE developers like those who worked on Kubuntu (disclosure: my main workstations run Kubuntu, secondary run Debian). In Nokia’s case, similar question were raised with regards to Qt, which I worked with as a developer. Through Nokia, Microsoft not only gets a marketing/delivery arm; it also gets a patent troll-feeding operation (see MOSAID) and a vector through which to harm GNU/Linux, especially MeeGo and KDE.
As we showed some days ago, Nokia is descending into obscurity along with Microsoft. It didn’t have to go down this way; Nokia could choose another path, but its CEO is a mole. The decisions are ideaological, not technical. It’s a bit like Apple. It is worth mentioning that Apple annoys Motorola, Nokia, and RIM right now because it ignores standards again. This time it’s SIM:
Giesecke & Devrient’s nano-SIM design is fueling quite the standards battle over in Europe, with Apple sitting in one corner, and the troika of Motorola, Nokia and RIM looming in the other. That’s according to the Financial Times, which reports today that Cupertino is leading a charge to push its own nano-SIM proposal through Europe’s standards body, ETSI, much to the chagrin of its competitors. According to FT’s sources,
Apple is trying to distinguish itself because having copied ideas from many companies, all it has is an overpriced version of what’s already out there with Android. Apple counts on companies like Oracle making Android expensive, but it has not worked so far. Here is SJVN’s good breakdown of Oracle’s case (or lack thereof):
Instead of extracting billions from Google for violating its Java software patents in Android, Oracle will be lucky to get over a $100-million from its intellectual property (IP) lawsuit. That’s chump change by mega-company standards. Taking into consideration the legal costs, Oracle could have made more money if it had just offered Google an open-ended Java license in the first place. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s God-King and CEO, will have to wait another year before buying the sharks with lasers on their heads to guard his mega-yacht.
Remember that Steve Jobs was Ellison’s best friend. We said this right after the lawsuit was oddly enough announced, shocking a lot of people. Now we know that Jobs wanted a "thermonuclear" war on Android.
The embargoland of Apple is hoping that Android will just vanish, but it’s not going to happen. Apple finds that the law is not on its side after all:
In a ruling yesterday, US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner ordered that Apple should not be allowed to see the papers it had requested.
“The motion is vague and overbroad and Motorola’s objections are persuasive,” Bloomberg quoted Posner as stating. The mobile phone maker’s opposition to Apple’s March 16 demand was filed under seal.
As new polls show, half the people prefer an Android tablet, people who “buy everything Apple makes” are in the single-digit (percentage-wise) region, and many people choose to just joke about Apple. My father too is sick of Apple. He calls it a “new religion”.
In the device space, Linux is king. Nokia too is coming back to Linux, having realised that Microsoft is “death”:
A former Nokia executive is calling the Finnish cell phone maker’s Windows Phone strategy “a certain road to death,” according to his analysis of 18 months of UK market share data.
Tomi Ahonen, a very prominent voice in the mobile ecosystem, and former Segmentation Manager with Nokia, posted a scathing article decrying the Nokia and Microsoft partnership falling far short of expectations.
Eventually, open, Linux-based platforms are likely to command the lion’s share of this market. █
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03.19.12
Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Oracle at 10:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look at some news about Android, in particular the Oracle vs. Google case
THE MORE time goes on, the more we see Android becoming a front runner for Linux, irrespective of whether it is good or not (e.g. for Linux adoption, software freedom, GNU adoption). Even Ubuntu (GNU/Linux) is trying to latch onto Android now. This is why we need to defend Android from patent lawsuits.
Professor Webbink continues tracking Oracle’s case against Google. To quote:
Google lead counsel, Robert Van Nest, has requested the court’s leave to file a motion for a continuance of the trial to avoid conflicts in his trial schedule. (792 [PDF; Text]) The court has agreed Google can file the motion but told Van Nest not to hold his breath. (794 [PDF; Text])
Van Nest has two conflicting trials. The first is scheduled to end no later than April 20 (four days after the commence of this trial) and the second is to commence on June 29, which is about 10 days after this trial should end. Van Nest has asked, in the alternative, either a delay in the start of this trial to April 30 (which would push the end date of this trial beyond the start of his June 29 trial) or a delay until the September-December time frame Judge Alsup asked the parties to reserve.
The Court has responded that Van Nest can go forward with his motion, but the Court has also made clear the motion is not likely to go anywhere. Apparently Judge Alsup contacted the Texas court, and they have advanced the date of that trial to avoid a conflict. Once that conflict has been avoided, there is not likely to be a conflict on the back end, although Judge Alsup indicates his colleague, Judge Koh, would likely accommodate any spillover by delaying the start of the June 29 trial.
You certainly have to wonder whether this motion was not prompted, at least in part, by a desire by Google to get the reexamination of the ’104 patent to a final action, but that’s just speculation. What is clear is that Mr. Van Nest is going to disappoint his family by having to cancel their scheduled May vacation overseas.
“This trial will be very interesting. Oracle has lost almost all its patent claims and almost all of its copyright claims as I see them. There may be little left to do once the trial starts,” Pogson wrote. Later Groklaw added this bad news for Oracle:
Specifically, the Court has rejected:
* Dr. Cox’ calculation of damages for coyright disgorgement and copyright lost profit set forth in the supplemental report;
* Dr. Leonard’s statement that”[i]t is the value that Google was expecting to receive that matters for the reasonable royalty analysis;” and
* Dr. Leonard’s forward-citation ranking of the ’104 patent.
The press coverage suggests a request from Google for delay:
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Google has received permission to request a delay in its trial with Oracle over allegations of Java patent and copyright infringement.
Google will request the continuance because its lead counsel’s diary is rather full. In addition the Court has asked Oracle to explain why the Java language is free for anyone to use but using its Java APIs infringes its copyrights.
We are going to keep an eye on this case, but never to the same level of detail as Groklaw. There is a lot of disinformation arriving as well, usually from lobbyists who deceive for profit. █
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03.10.12
Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Oracle, Patents at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Recent steps from Oracle and the OIN indicate a weakening of the case against Dalvik
ORACLE has been trying to tax Android using software patents, but Groklaw thinks that “Oracle Must be Nervous” because the case sinks yet lower with the latest events taking place in the courtroom:
Oracle’s Case Against Google Sinks Lower
[...]
Ouch! Judge Alsup seems to be on his game. Neither the lawyers nor the judge could get the maths right on the potential damages in the case. Rather than $billions, they seem to be headed towards a few tens of millions, provided no more patents are thrown out and Google is found to violate copyright. Google is arguing that Java APIs are not copyright protectable and Oracle is holding that they are. Damages, if any could be very small in any case compared to the worth of the two companies.
Oracle is now asking for a fast trial (it began in 2010) and the OIN, which Oracle is a member of, is stepping up to defend some Java-like software (this was understated in the news, even our own coverage). If Oracle retreats from the patent case, will we see a lot of it ending like the SCO case, except for the bankruptcy? █
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