05.17.10

Gemini version available ♊︎

Bad Apple, Part II: Apple Carries on Armament With Software Patents, Harms Firefox

Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Patents at 5:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Fennek

Summary: As Apple’s fight against Linux continues, new lawsuits against Apple arrive, new patents are granted, and Theora is affected too (Mozilla employees who uses Macs ought to rethink their choice of relationships)

IN THE mobile industry, everyone is suing everyone else these days (Fennec is potentially affected). As we mentioned the other day, Wired highlights this serious issue because there are no winners here except the lawyers. It makes no sense. Apple is among the aggressors, not the defenders. Nokia is the same and its case against Apple we have already covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].

In the previous post we showed that Apple not only sues Linux using software patents; Trademarks seem likely to have been used too.

There are some articles out there which describe HTC’s counter action against Apple as offensive. The Inquirer‘s headline says “HTC sues Apple again” (not again, that’s for sure). HTC is not the aggressor, but a lot of the mainstream press — MSBBC included — paints it that way. In the following video, the people in the studio get it wrong, but the lady whom they speak to corrects them.

Please someone explain how casio linux Qt-based pdas 12 years ago with touch screens did not infringe patents but todays Qt-based Nokias and Andriod Nexus does?

We criticised this poor type of coverage some days ago. Here is some better coverage and a list of software patents used by HTC:

* Patent #6,999,800 – Method for power management of a smartphone
* Patent #5,541,988 – Telephone dialer with a personalized page organization of telephone directory memory
* Patent #6,058,183 (PDF) – Telephone dialer with a personalized page organization of telephone directory memory
* Patent #6,320,957 – Telephone dialer with easy access memory
* Patent #7,716,505 (PDF) – Power control methods for a portable electronic device

It is interesting to see HTC filing for US patents on software. It’s distributing Linux, isn’t it? Well so does IBM and so does Novell. More software patents from Apple continue to be pursued:

Apple patent filing portends Google ad war

Apple has filed a patent to enable info and apps to be automagically loaded onto your iPhone/Pod/Pad based on your location – but exactly how it would affect location-based ads remains fuzzy.

The patent application, “Location Specific Content”, was published by the US Patent and Trademark office this Thursday, after originally being filed in November of 2008.

Another interesting one says: “Ad company Virtual Iris riding the HTML5 wave”

As the web format battle between HTML5 and Adobe’s Flash heats up, the creators of an ad-building tool called Virtual Iris say they can deliver the rich media experience of Flash in HTML.

Much of the interest in HTML5, which is the latest update of the basic format of the web, has been fueled by Apple, which doesn’t support Flash on the iPhone and the iPad (leading to back-and-forth insults between Apple and Flash-maker Adobe). Apple has also announced an ad-building service called iAd, which will feature HTML5 video. Not wanting to be left off by Apple’s devices, startups like Scribd have abandoned Flash for HTML5, and ad-building startup Sprout, which was initially all about Flash, now supports both formats.

Apple uses these offensively and it also fights against Theora — a move that in turn harms GNU/Linux and Mozilla for reasons that we mentioned in:

“The Firefox project has opted to exclude certain features due to software patents,” posts the FFII’s president who points to this new article.

Wild Fox: Firefox Fork with H.264 Support

[...]

Mozilla, sticking to its ideals of the open web, decided long ago that support for the patent-encumbered H264 codec would not be included in any of its products. Not only is H264 wholly incompatible with the open web and Free software, it is also incredibly expensive. Mozilla could use one of the open source implementations, but those are not licensed, and the MPEG-LA has been quite clear in that it will sue those who encode or decode H264 content without a license. Software patents, however, are only valid in some parts of the world, so an enterprising developer has started a project that was sure to come eventually: Firefox builds with H264 support.

Wild Fox may be valuable (and legal) outside the US and Japan, but its main problem is that it would encourage webmasters not to choose and to spread Ogg Theora. Mozilla would have to pay about $5 million per year for MPEG-LA licences (mostly covering places where software patents are not legal) rather than use the same amount of money to pay 50-100 more programmers.

Here is a video of Stallman talking about patents and Free software [Ogg] (thanks to tinyvid.tv, which is back to delivering Ogg).


The quality of this video is considerably high. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with Theora.

As a bonus point for Apple, the Theora FUDMeister and saboteur, here is another lawsuit that might teach them a lesson if not anger them:

Bear and Monkey smack Apple with patent suit

[...]

Apple has been slapped with another patent infringement lawsuit – but the suit says more about the festering sore that is the US patent system than it does about the individual patents involved.

The lawsuit was filed by Austin, Texas inventor Eric Gould Bear, President and CEO of interface design firm MonkeyMedia. The core of his infringement claim is that his patents cover a user-interface concept that he calls “Seamless Contraction” – essentially a set of techniques to narrow the display of information to that which is most “salient,” to use his term, to the user’s needs.

Might Apple ever join the fight against software patents? It’s extremely unlikely. Apple actively uses those patents to harm competition, notably Linux/Android at the moment.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 07, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, June 07, 2023



  2. The Need to Evolve on the Internet

    Tux Machines is one year away from its twentieth birthday and its increased focus on protocols aside from HTTP/S is paying off; Tux Machines also weaned itself off all social control media, including Mastodon and Diaspora (they're not the future, they're the past)



  3. EPO Management is Still Bullying the Staff (While Breaking the Law and Violating the European Patent Convention)

    Overloaded or overworked EPO workers are complaining about further deterioration at the workplace and their representatives say "this management style may well contribute to feelings of disengagement, depression, or even burn-out"



  4. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Not Responding After 20 Days (Well-Founded Report of Tax Fraud) and British Police Pretending Not to Exist

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ have helped unearth a profound problem in the British law enforcement authorities; What good is a monopolistic taxman (called after the British Monarchy even in 2023) that cannot assess its own tax abuses? Or abuses connected to it via a contractor? Meanwhile, as per what I was told, the police is not responding to my MP and that’s ANOTHER scandal (police not only refusing to act against crimes, committed against many people, but moreover not responding to elected politicians)



  5. Links 08/06/2023: Cinnamon 5.8 and Leap 15.5 Release Mature

    Links for the day



  6. Gemini Links 08/06/2023: Emacs and Thoughts on Bubble

    Links for the day



  7. Links 07/06/2023: Reddit Layoffs and OpenGL 3.1 in Asahi Linux

    Links for the day



  8. Gemini Links 07/06/2023: Jukka Charting Geminispace

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023



  10. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning



  11. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source



  12. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day



  13. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day



  14. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  15. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  16. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  17. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  18. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  19. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  20. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  21. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  22. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  23. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  24. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  25. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  26. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  27. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  28. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  29. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  30. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts