01.04.12
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google at 4:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple alienates Apple fans, gets sued in the process
Apple is being accused of starving French reseller of hot stock, according to The Register. There is even a lawsuit as the “iPhone maker hauled into court over throttled supplies… Apple squeezed supplies to a top reseller and used its own retail stores to gain an unfair competitive advantage, claims a French shop chain that is taking Apple to court in Paris.”
To quote further, “eBizcuss, the largest reseller in France, said that Apple favoured its own stores over theirs when it shipped out new and hotly demanded trendy tech gear.
“A throttling of Apple deliveries, particularly reduced shipments of the iPad 2 and Macbook Air, cost the store a 30 per cent fall in revenue in quarter three this year, eBizcuss CEO Francois Prudent told Le Figaro (English report). Apple’s own retail outlets continued to receive stock. More recently the reseller, which has 16 locations across France, was unable to get any stock of the iPhone 4S.
“This was despite eBizcuss spending $6.5 million bringing its point-of-sale system up to the standard that Apple requested. Apple was also unfairly undercutting their distribution partners on price, alleges Prudent, with Apple offering corporate customers prices lower than they were giving to the reseller shops.” (source)
“As one commenter put it,” says Homer, “they shouldn’t get into bed with a company like Apple then expect not to get shafted. They also shouldn’t put so many of their eggs in one basket, such that when they do get shafted, they don’t have anything to fall back on. A quick look at their Website (iclg.com), suggests they’re pretty much an Apple closed-shop. Idiots. Maybe if they tried something else, like say that line of smartphones that has greater than 50% of the market (what’s it called again?) they wouldn’t have been shafted and/or could’ve told Apple to go screw itself.
“The CEO was probably a dazed Apple fanboy. I bet he isn’t now though.”
In other news, Apple is being sued by users too:
Apple Sued By Users In America
Apple is facing legal trouble at the home turf. Apple users are saying that the company hid the fact that they will be locked into AT&T service and will be blocked access to third-party application downloads.
According to Courthouse News Service, “The four lead plaintiffs say they bought iPhones when they were first released in 2007, but they did not know that Apple had a secret five-year exclusivity agreement with AT&T that would prevent them from switching carriers.”
Maybe they should turn to Android/Linux. █
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12.28.11
Posted in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 4:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The attacks on Android fuel a debate about the role of patents and also suggest that the USPTO fails to fulfil its role
THE US patent system has become the centre of attention for many who are looking to remove FOSS barriers. This system is increasingly perceived as undesirable by the American (as in US) public and we need to constantly show this to spread these realisations.
Google was recently granted a patent on driving, as we mentioned the other day. Here is what Against Monopoly has to say about it:
Matt notes that the world gains from this in terms of safety and efficiency. However he questions the patent grant on the grounds that another monopoly has been established by stealth. Fortunately, the patent will be worthless once the world switches to full time computer control of the car. But in the meantime, we will all pay in higher prices.
On the other hand, Google is mostly a victim of this system because its major operating system, which is based on Linux, came under attacks that Google never provoked for. There is good news on that front though:
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Oracle has been dealt a blow in its ongoing patent infringement case against Google.
Late last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected several of the claims in a patent that Oracle has cited in its infringement case against the search giant. According to Groklaw, which obtained the notice, 17 of the 21 claims in Patent No. 6,192,476 have been rejected by the USPTO, following a re-examination the agency conducted earlier this year.
In addition, there are patent attacks coming from Apple and Microsoft, which just like several other companies keep attacking the Internet with SOPA. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols remarks on “Go Daddy’s SOPA Entanglement” and Muktware takes notice:
Go Daddy took a u-turn from its stand on SOPA as the Internet community started boycotting GoDaddy and companies started transferring domains to non-SOPA supporters. Muktware has also initiated the domian transfer from Godaddy to Gandi.net (Hacksheet has already been transferred).
Following our article calling for a boycott against Apple (it got Slashdotted and made the news) there is also a call from Mukware to boycott Apple and Microsoft for their SOPA support.
To quote the call: “Go Daddy burned their fingers when they decided to sell their soul to the devil. More than 21,0000 conscious users migrated to other services. Go Daddy changed its ‘stand’ the same day, which seems to be nothing more than PR strategy as Go Daddy ‘worked’ on crafting this act. If they oppose the act, they must run a campaign to ensure that SOPA is not passed. That’s what it means by ‘opposing’ the bill and not by secretly supporting it via PIPA and Protect IP. Go Daddy paid heavily as ‘informed’ and concerned Go Daddy users revolted and threatened to switch to other registrars.
“There are two monopolies which are endorsing SOPA, Apple and Microsoft.”
–Muktware“How about the other SOPA supporters? Will you be boycotting them? There are two monopolies which are endorsing SOPA, Apple and Microsoft. Apple has not said anything in support of SOPA. But, the company either way doesn’t care about anything beyond its own profits. Apple itself is a censor police where it runs its own version of SOPA. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been openly supporting such biils.”
Further down it says: “The ‘informed and concerned’ Internet community revolted against Go Daddy and brought it to its knees. Are you ready to boycott Microsoft and Apple?” Well, we at Techrights implicitly suggested this for quite some time. Novell too is in the boycott list. Those companies also spread FUD about Android. Tim Carmody wrote an article titled “There Is No Such Thing as Android, Only Android-Compatible”. In it he rebuts Microsoft talking points from its talking heads (like Bott) by explaining that “fragmentation” is actually compatibility. His conclusions: “Ultimately, though, I can’t decide if this is a real problem for Google and Android or potentially a huge advantage. In the short term, it’s been an advantage; It’s let the operating system, user base and developer community grow in a hurry. In the long term, though, it doesn’t seem like Google can continue to maintain tight control of the source code during development and promoting its latest and greatest developments, and then let just about anything go once it’s released while letting less-favored products drift away.
“Soon, we’ll have to sever those two questions — what’s good for Android, the family of broadly compatible devices, as well their users and developers, is bound to come into conflict with what’s good for Google, the search and software company who continue to develop Android and put it into the world.”
Here is an article on the patent war against Android. It’s from the Boston press and it says:
A patent lawsuit won last week by iPhone maker Apple Inc. represented a single victory in a global legal war, with giant corporations fighting for control of the technologies behind smartphones and computers, potentially resulting in less appealing devices or higher prices for consumers.
Technology firms like Google Inc., Samsung Corp., Microsoft Corp., and especially Apple – which is one of the most active combatants – are embroiled in about 100 patent lawsuits in at least 10 countries. The stakes are high: potential domination of the multibillion-dollar market for smartphones, tablet computers, and the software that runs them. One successful lawsuit could generate millions in patent licensing fees for the victor, or it could force a rival firm to modify the way its devices work – even removing features users treasure.
“Patents=nuclear weapons in arms race. Inhibiting innovation. Tech patents should be abolished-Only make sense in slow-moving industries,” wrote Vivek Wadhwa, an influential writer/academic who occasionally writes on the issue. Hopefully we are aproaching the points where public opinion will have the law overwritten in the US. █
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12.26.11
Posted in America, Google, Patents at 5:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Criticism of the USPTO in light of new examples of patents
PATENT systems that lose sight of their original purpose are doomed to fail.
Earlier this month we discovered that even saving lives can constitute a violation:
The ACLU rarely involves itself with patent cases, so it was surprising when the civil liberties group filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to invalidate a patent in the case of Mayo v. Prometheus. Mainstream press coverage portrayed the dispute between two medical testing labs as a mundane argument over “individualized medicine,” but to the ACLU, what’s at stake is nothing less than the freedom of thought. “What Prometheus seeks to monopolize through its patents,” the group wrote, is the “right to think” about a particular correlation between blood chemistry and the optimal dosage of a drug for treating autoimmune disorders.
The above news has helped discredit the USPTO, which can in due course help end software patents (along with another lot). Mind the latest examples of ‘cloud’ patents (impending, but increasingly a recognised problem), several software patents (impending) like this or this, maybe even this new one or that one, A quick look at those new patents or patent applications is a depressing experience. It’s not even a joke.
There are also patents on data transport and patents on cryptology, such as this new one. Companies emit patents instead of real products and these are being boasted in the news or in press releases as though they are new products. Watch what VirnetX is doing when issuing a whole statement just to brag about declination to reexamine a patent. This is what the news has sunk to. This company is based around trolling, so its statements won’t refer to actual products yet more fuss is going to be made [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] . Here is another new example of software patents from another company and another malicious one from Amazon.
So the news that Amazon has patented a new location-tracking software system isn’t a big deal. Until you notice that it’s also a location-predicting system.
Here is Google’s controversial new US patent:
Google has just been awarded a US patent to switch cars from human-controlled mode into driverless mode, so cars can self-drive. Sergey Brin, otherwise known as the ‘Enlightenment man’, is achieving his driverless car vision.
Here is another report about it. Patents on driving, provided it’s done by a program. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 4:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A few items of interest covering the legal situation Android is in and what led to it
THE news is aflood with patent news because the IT sector is becoming less about products and more about extortion or litigation.
Bloomberg is phasing into the mainstream the “Intellectual Property” nonsense whenever it writes on the subject of patents, even when it covers the SCOracle case that affects Linux and seemingly lasts forever (like the SCO case).
The Microsoft booster Jon Brodkin is trolling Android again, but he points out (by quoting) that “The point of these lawsuits is to raise the price of Android so that it is no longer able to compete…”
This is what Microsoft has been trying to do. We said this back in 2006 (in relation to GNU/Linux).
Another article says:
Drummond adds that Google’s rivals have banded together to acquire patents held by firms like Nortel and Novell “to make sure Google didn’t get them… Our competitors want to impose a ‘tax’ for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation.”
Here is another quote:
The whole “land grab” may have been set off in last year’s fourth quarter when networking pioneer Novell, at one point headed by Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, auctioned itself to Attachmate for $2.2 billion, then sold a batch of 882 patents and other technology IP to Microsoft for $450 million. Attachmate is a vehicle controlled by private equity giants Thoma Bravo and Francisco Partners.
We all have Novell to ‘thank’ for that, don’t we? Microsoft’s legal war on Motorola (see this wiki page and latest post)
is still being covered in the news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and we also have a wiki page about that. On another occasion we will cover the anti-competitive aspect and make further calls to prosecute Microsoft for racketeering, which is what it is. We will leave the “strong” news from another day, not Boxing Day. █
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Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 4:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Apple wants embargo on Linux devices
Summary: A roundup of more news about Apple and why it might be reasonable to pressure the company to drop its lawsuits strategy, e.g. by means of boycott
APPLE continues to trouble the Linux/Android world with lawsuits and false allegations, even doctored ‘evidence’. The cult of Mr. Jobs loves to pretend that it invented the smartphones, CrunchPad-like tablets, and all things shiny.
Apple fan sites celebrate Apple patents, too. To name the new example:
On December 23, 2011, Apple filed for the trademark and icon for “Available on the App Store” under applications 302118690 in China and 010520054 in Europe.
That’s right, Europe as well. Over here, Apple has been working hard to embargo — not just sue — the competition. Apple disregards the notion of fair competition, which takes a lot of nerve for a company that built itself on knockoffs (e.g. Xerox PARC).
Over at NASDAQ.com there is a community post which says: ‘Former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, who died in October, ardently believed Android copied much of Apple’s patented design elements, including multi-touch, swiping and its apps arrangement, according to Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs.” Jobs told Isaacson he would “spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.”‘
“Yet More Patent Idiocy” called it a columnist at Mother Jones, who noted:
Looking for yet more reasons to feel an all-consuming contempt for software patents and the POS companies that try to enforce them? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Apple Computer’s jihad against the rest of the world’s smartphone makers…
Given the latest actions from Apple we cannot help recommending that people buy nothing from Apple. Boycott the company for being a threat to the IT landscape and also to common sense.
Apple used to be a lot more benign and I even used a Mac at work. But when Apple started the legal assaults (starting with HTC) it made it clear that it was a frantic embargo company and not a producer. Based on a very recent ruling, Apple somehow managed to get a ‘victory’ against HTC, but how much of a victory is it when you become reliant on lawsuits? Here is some more coverage of this. The Telegraph uses Christmas Eve to attack Google with Microsoft/Apple accusations and general smear campaign (the Microsoft lobbyist is cheering this on) and to quote the opening part of the aricle with an inflammatory and reckless headline:
Google’s executive chairman should know. Android, his firm’s smartphone operating system, which is up against Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone, is under heavy fire from all sides. The best-selling software – along with the Samsung, HTC and Motorola hardware on which it runs – is accused in courts worldwide of plundering the original ideas of others.
There is also an interesting article in CNN and Edward J. Black writes for the Huff & Puff that “Patent Balance Needed to Help End the Smartphone Patent Wars”. To quote: “Smartphones are at the center of a new series of “patent wars,” in which technology companies are spending billions to stockpile patent arsenals. Consumers are the biggest losers in this war, as tech companies focus on costly litigation strategies instead of innovation. Some are acquiring patents to attack competitors, while others are trying to bolster their defenses.”
“The goal here is to defend, not to offend.”In this age when software patents are under constant legal scrutiny we regret to see Apple using those sorts of patents in anti-competitive ways. Apple does not always get its way and to quote the latest example: ‘Apple loses one in its iPad tablet war On ZDNet, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols gives an update on the company’s battle with Samsung. “All I really know is that while it looks like the idiotic tablet design war may be coming to an end, with patents like the one Apple got, we can count on software patents getting in the way of true programming, design and engineering innovation for decades still to come,” he writes. What’s your opinion?”‘
What are our readers’ opinions? Boycott Apple? Perhaps with an ultimatum tied to litigation? The goal here is to defend, not to offend. █
“FSF did some anti-Apple campaigns too. Personally I worry more about Apple because they have user loyalty; Microsoft doesn’t.”
–Bradley M. Kuhn (SFLC)
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12.23.11
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 4:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Back to the basket for the bullies from Cupertino
Summary: A roundup of news about Apple’s patent wars (against everyone) and a bit of good news, arriving just before Christmas
AS we return to covering the patent issue we regret to say that there is mostly bad news. Being aware of the news, however, is regretfully essential.
The subject we chose to tackle last is Apple. This company is fast becoming just as much of a nuisance as Microsoft has been. The Inquirer (British tech tabloid) has a nice way of covering Apple stories and it is filled with subtle humour that cushions the blow of horrible news. Recently it covered the news about Apple getting sued for caller ID patents. Previously, a caller ID app for Android was killed this way, demonstrating the terrible state of the patent system.
“Apple’s behaviour with patents is not just harming Linux or Android users; it is harming everyone and even Opera is complaining, noting that Apple patents undermine open standards.”Apple the patent bully might learn to dislike software patents if it gets sued by them quite a lot. So in a way the above news can be classified as good news.
Apple’s behaviour with patents is not just harming Linux or Android users; it is harming everyone and even Opera is complaining, noting that Apple patents undermine open standards. Mike Masnick put it like this and “going for leadership in evil” wrote Glyn Moody (via Jérémie Zimmermann).
Let us recall Apple’s support for MPEG-LA. Apple promotes video tax in yet more ways based on this new report which says:
Royalty-free web vid spec sets sail with Apple’s help
A proposed standard to stream video online smoothly, regardless of network conditions, has been pushed forward with some rather unexpected patent-holder help.
MPEG-DASH was approved in a vote by ISO national member bodies as a way to stream media over HTTP. Publication of the standard is expected “shortly”.
MPEG-DASH could supersede a raft of proprietary and royalty-protected technologies, developed by tech companies to stream media to mobile devices in particular – which are at the mercy of varying network speeds and connectivity conditions.
To Hell with Apple for helping those patent trolls. Another person who helps them is Microsoft Florian, who has pushed their agenda since last year. Florian no longer tries to endorse Microsoft in public because people already know that Microsoft pays him. That would further discredit this deceitful lobbyist.
“Florian no longer tries to endorse Microsoft in public because people already know that Microsoft pays him.”Looking at what Apple does to Linux/Android, here we have a report on “Apple’s first major legal win against Android,” which is “no slam dunk” because despite attempts to remove Linux devices from the shelves, Apple is not quite there yet. But to quote Reuters: “Patent firm IPCom said on Tuesday it had asked top German cellphone retailers to stop selling phones of HTC, threatening them with legal action, as HTC has not complied with a court ruling on injunction of its sales.”
FOSS-hostile patent lawyers write about Apple’s embargo attempts in the US and Murdoch’s fake news claims that HTC phones are “banned from store shelves” although it’s not quite true in practice. As the FFII’s president puts it:
Laughing loud on Apple’s patent “tap on a phone number or address contained in an email to immediately call the number”
Due to this kind of stupidity “Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android”. Here are some of the details:
Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android
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Copying an idea and building on it is not “stealing.” And if Apple had to build its devices without building on the ideas of others, it wouldn’t have very much today. This whole thing is a joke, and it’s rulings like this that make engineers have even less respect for the patent system.
Apple brings is bullying to Britain now, i.e. it comes to new countries where software patents are in principle not permitted. Slashdot tells us that “Apple Transfers Patents Through Shell Company To Sue All Phone Makers 422″. We covered this some days ago, but here is the summary which has a huge discussion at the end:
“A patent lawsuit (PDF) by patent licensing firm Digitude Innovations curiously targeted all mobile manufacturers except Apple. A TechCrunch story has revealed that the patents used were transferred from Apple via a shell company to DI, and appear to cover features found in virtually all smartphones. The lawsuit even extends to companies that don’t make Android phones, like Nokia and RIM, and to Android OEMs that Apple have not directly sued yet, like Sony. The business model of DI clearly implies that Apple would benefit financially from the lawsuit as a company that contributed patents to DI’s portfolio.”
Slashdot shows another ridiculous patent from Apple and notes that:
“Apple has had quite a week in patents for the iPhone, and it’s only Tuesday. First was the victory at the International Trade Commission over HTC. And now there’s a shiny new patent on switching to an app during a live phone call (#8,082,523). There may be non-infringing ways of doing something similar, but they probably will be clumsy in comparison.”
Supporters of Apple’s ways should take a moment to objectively assess what Apple is doing here.
Here is how Muktware put it: “In a nutshell its about how you can switch between call and an app. Almost every touch-based phone uses this ‘process’ and potentially infringes upon this patent. It will be a challenge for Apple competitors to find other ways to do the same thing. Yet another example of the software/process patent mess that the flawed US patent system is creating.”
Google has been getting its own share of ridiculous patents, but it has no history of using patents offensively. This ought to invalidate concerns about Google getting more patents. Bloomberg says:
European Union regulators suspended their antitrust review of plans by Google Inc. (GOOG), the biggest maker of smartphone software, to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. after requesting more information about the deal.
The antitrust authority will continue the review after it has obtained “certain documents that are essential to its evaluation of the transaction,” said Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the Brussels-based European Commission. The commission temporarily stopped the review on Dec. 6, according to a filing on the regulator’s website today.
The patent angle need not be of concern because Google is not offensive with patents, contrary to claims from the Microsoft lobbyist (Florian). If anything, it can make Motorola more patents hostile and thus reduce altercations. According to this new article, patents are becoming more and more of an issue to Google because:
• Is the cloud the new front in the tech patent wars? A company headed by the founders of peer-to-peer networks Kazaa and Morpheus have reportedly banded together to sue Google, Amazon.com, VMWare and others, alleging patent infringement on cloud technology. The website of the plaintiff, PersonalWeb, says the company owns 13 “fundamental pending and issued patents,” and that it is “developing ground-breaking technologies and products,” including StudyPods, an online learning platform that’s in beta. But a patent-law specialist quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald points out that PersonalWeb filed the lawsuits in a Texas court that’s the “preferred venue for so-called patent trolls.” The eight patents in question include those related to “content addressable storage and/or distributed search engine technologies,” according to the SMH.
Going back to Apple, the company is trying to restrict designs based on ideas that it never came up with itself. To quote Slashdot:
“In a public legal brief (PDF), Apple offers numerous design alternatives that Samsung could have used for its smartphones and tablets to avoid infringing on Apple’s patents. Basically, as long as competitors’ smartphones and tablets bear no resemblance to smartphones and tablets, everything’s cool.”
To finish this with some good news (for a change), Apple lost a case in Germany and that rectangle with buttons on it will therefore be legitimate for sale, even without an apple-shaped logo:
Apple Lost Germany, Court May Allow Samsung To Sell Galaxy Tab
After Australia Apple has lost another ‘patent’ post, this time its Germany. A German court earlier banned the sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany owing to ‘controversial’ design patents. The same design patents were rejected in a Dutch court. To respect the verdict, Samsung modified the design of its Galaxy Tab (which in fact enhances the user experiences as the speakers now face the user) and called it Galaxy Tab 10.1N.
Or as SJVN put it:
Take a long look at the two versions of Samung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the right. One, says a German court, violated Apple’s iPad intellectual property (IP) design and thus couldn’t be sold in the European Union (EU). The other one is fine and dandy and can be sold. Can you tell the critical IP differences? Try to work it out before this story’s end.
As you may recall, Apple managed this summer to get the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned from being sold in the EU (European Union) because its design looked too much like an iPad. That was a dumb decision. Any tablet has to look pretty much like any other tablet. Now, though, it appears that the tide has turned against Apple. The German court has preliminarily decided that Samsung’s revised design no longer violates Apple’s iPad design.
We are probably going to hear a lot more about it next year. Until then, let us savour the taste of this small victory. █
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12.15.11
Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 7:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Apple’s aggressive moves against Linux-powered phones/tablets end up putting Apple’s business at risk and Apple is seen paying trolls, possibly with ill intent
THE behaviour of Apple has become increasingly relevant to us because Apple attacks Free/Open Source software.
The patent hoarding of Apple is further exacerbated with additions that are later being used to block sales of Android devices. There is reactionary motion to ban Apple devices as means of deterrence and the outcome can be serious for Apple’s business.
Ironically, the fight which was started by Apple does not turn out too well, at least not in the conventional way.
As we showed a couple of days ago, it is now Apple that risks embargo. In an article from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols he labels this “revenge” and notes that:
A German court has just issued a preliminary injunction on Motorola’s behalf that blocks European sales of all Apple’s 3G-enabled devices.
A Microsoft booster helps show that Apple is additionally hurting open standards with its software patents. To quote:
Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that governs and oversees the development of Web standards, requires that every specification it approves be implementable on a royalty-free basis, barring extraordinary circumstances that justify an exception to this rule. The specifications can contain patented technology, as long as royalty-free patent licenses are available.
Nilay Patel, who previously (as in this case) spread anti-Android (and thus Apple-sympathetic) messages through boosters who had helped Microsoft lobbyists, seeds this story, which goes along the lines of “Samsung did not play nice with Apple”. Meanwhile, “Apple appears to have entered an unusual deal with a company commonly referred to as a patent troll.” Ars Technica writes:
Apple may be using patent troll to do its legal dirty work
It appears that Apple has made a deal with patent troll Digitude Innnovations to help the company’s efforts to sue nearly every major mobile device maker. Digitude earlier this month launched one of its first legal attacks against Nokia, RIM, Motorola, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony, and even Amazon, filing a patent infringement claim with the International Trade Commission. Conspicuously absent from that list is iPhone maker Apple, which until late November owned two of the patents being used to target “certain mobile devices” from its competitors.
We have already seen Microsoft using patent trolls as proxies in attacks on Android, so let’s keep an eye on this. Apple is desperate to block Android because its core business may depend on it. Apple previously paid the world’s biggest patent troll. █
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12.12.11
Posted in America, Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 9:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
[written in 05/12/2011]
Summary: A view on the arena where Android is targeted by Apple, Microsoft, and trolls who are associated with them
THE patent situation affects GNU/Linux more than it affects most operating systems because of the cost and distribution aspects. We have stressed this point for years.
Over at Groklaw, an analysis was published this month to keep track of Lodsys, which had sued Android developers among others. It used patents from Microsoft’s patent troll, Intellectual Ventures.
“Things continue to progress slowly on the Lodsys front,” explains Prof. Webbink, “At this time all of the declaratory judgment actions brought in the Northern District of Illnois against Lodsys have been closed, with several of them having transferred to the Eastern District of Wisconsin. In addition, DriveTime has dismissed its declaratory judgment action against Lodsys in Arizona. With those changes all of the pending cases are now in either the Eastern District of Texas (the infringement actions brought by Lodsys) or the Eastern District of Wisconsin (the declaratory judgment actions brought against Lodsys) with the one outlier being the declaratory judgment action brought by ESET against Lodsys in the Southern District of California.”
There have already been stories of companies that pay Lodsys to go away, pretty much as a Microsoft lobbyist foolishly advised. if the patent troll gets fed, it will never go away.
It ought to be noted once again that iOS (Apple) developers are among those which Lodsys was suing. Apple did not explain to those developers that some of the patents came from a troll which Apple had helped fund. Apple does not seem to mind patent trolls and Apple itself “Demands Recognition As A Patent Troll,” to use Pogson’s headline. He showed this article about Apple’s war to embargo Linux/Android devices. To quote: “Some fools still have this delusion that software patent and product design wars have something to do with some mythological real value of intellectual property (IP). While there are indeed cases involving a better mouse-trap, most such cases are about nothing but extorting cash from people who create real products, or, in the case of Apple vs. Samsung, Apple trying to preserve its market share against a would-be competitor.
“Apple makes great products, but you wouldn’t know it from the way it’s attacking Samsung. Rather than let the marketplace decide whose products are better, Apple wants the courts to decide. Specifically, Apple is slugging it out with Samsung in a minimum of 19 lawsuits in 12 courts in nine countries on four continents.
“Let that sink in for a minute. Apple is trying to use intellectual property law as a bludgeon around the world to protect its sales.”
Techrights was never a friend of Apple because nobody ought to be a friend of a company that disrespects fair competition, presents fake ‘evidence’ to the court (in an attempt to block sales of Linux-powered devices), and generally disregards the law whenever something does not comply with its cult doctrine.
Not so long ago we found Apple firing an employee for ‘daring’ not to fancy Apple’s products and in an update on the resultant saga we discover that “Apple has been upheld for sacking one of its employees after he posted negative comments about the firm and its products on Facebook. Apple specialist Samuel Crisp was fired from his job for writing a series of posts on Facebook about the company and its products. An employment tribunal ruled in favour of Apple after Crisp appealed what he alleged was an unfair dismissal.”
What a nice company, eh? But let’s not forget Microsoft, either. Microsoft’s extortion of Android hit the brick wall when B&N fought back. Based on some articles, “Barnes & Noble has hired David Boies to join its legal team in a fight with Microsoft at the US International Trade Commission over alleged Android patent infringements.
“Boies, chairman of the Boies, Schiller & Flexner law firm, represented the US Department of Justice back at the turn of the millennium in its successful antitrust case against Microsoft, and his sustained questioning of senior executives such as Bill Gates was regarded by many as significantly damaging to Redmond’s cause.”
Gates was bobbing back and forth like a demented child the last time this man did his thing. When people commit crimes and think they can get away with it (racketeering is one of them) it takes a bold group of people in an insular room (no PR and press) for truth to come out under pressure. Gates is busy buying himself a new image, but the legacy he puts in patent lobbying and trolls should also come out for all to see. Sooner or later justice might be served. Groklaw has some analysis related to the news:
Google’s filing is eye-opening. It seems Microsoft is trying to compel Google to respond to a very broad subpoena. Google is not a party to this ITC matter or the litigation. Microsoft’s motion “goes far beyond the threshold for reasonable third-party discovery in Section 337 investigations,” Google says. What is it that Microsoft is asking for? — information concerning Google’s “strategies for responding to Microsoft’s patents and patent infringement claims.”
It is good to see Google and others finally fighting against Microsoft’s behaviour. The European regulators are meanwhile investigating Apple’s behaviour, so there’s a glimmer of hope. More up-to-date information will be posted this week. █
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