Young great artists still steal.
Old great artists litigate?
I missed the news about the Apple-HTC Patent Lawsuit (Google Android) until tonight when I found out about it on Mark Jaquith’s blog.
I’m happy that these cards of Apple are finally on the table. I think Apple’s Multi-touch1 related patents have been hanging over the heads of other hardware and software developers.
I don’t think I’ve ever found myself agreeing with John Gruber more:
“No doubt some of you are nodding your heads and see this as justification for Apple’s suit. But life isn’t fair. Great ideas make the world better. Apple can rightly expect to benefit greatly from the ideas embodied by the iPhone, but they can’t expect to reap all of the benefits from those ideas.
That’s the nature of implementing insanely great ideas. The bar has been raised, and, yes, Apple did most of the lifting. That’s how it goes.”
John Gruber, “Daring Fireball: This Apple-HTC Patent Thing“, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Right now people are in their venting phase. What comes next?
Is there an effective protest against the Apple-HTC patent lawsuit? Particularly something that Apple customers should do?
I can’t see enough people caring, particularly on the eve of the iPad.
May 5th quotes from the comments:
Ian wrote “I think Apple customers should use one finger at a time in protest.”
Mark wrote “Apple has to operate in the system as it exists.”
Terry — how can I just choose one of his tasty insights — wrote “I do think that holders of software patents should be forced to do some sort of licensing because of the chilling effect they’re having on innovation.”
- Multi-touch is a touchscreen technology which allows gestures done with multiple fingers simultaneously to send complex commands to the device. [↩]
I think Apple customers should use one finger at a time in protest.
Or switch to using products from companies that aren’t actively evil.
I think any sort of protest is premature. As cynical as this may be, Apple has to operate in the system as it exists. And the way it works is that if you don’t play the patent game, it’ll play you. Likewise, when you litigate, you throw everything you have at them, and see what sticks. Even if you only expected one thing to stick.
This is why we have courts. I’m still hopeful for a sane outcome.
The multi-touch patents actually come from a Utah-based company called FingerWorks. They got anonymously bought out in 2005 (I remember briefly considered buying one of their zero force keyboards in 2003). When I saw Jobs presentation at MacWorld 2007, I thought, “Whichever company bought out Fingerworks is so totally going to sue the pants off Apple.”
Turns out that company was Apple.
Apple has been spending the last five years building up this wall—fully two years before the introduction of the iPhone. While I agree that software patents need to be rethought, from a legal standpoint, I don’t think HTC has much of a leg to stand on here. If there is one place where a software patent can be won, I think it’s here. Multitouch and gestures have been around for years, patents related to it nearly as long, nobody thought of patenting its use input devices (keyboards) before Fingerworks, and Apple made a strategic buy of the company that invented the technology, their team, and patent portfolio, and then extended the patents into PDAs and cell phones before anyone could consider it. There isn’t any prior art here before Apple’s iPhone, and that’s why it’s going to be ugly for Apple’s competitors.
I do think that holders of software patents should be forced to do some sort of licensing because of the chilling effect they’re having on innovation. I think that should be true with hardware patents that are software-related, like this one.
The law, however, isn’t written that way. On one hand, Apple totally lost out on lawsuits related to the Macintosh (and before you start bringing up PARC on me, realize that Apple bribed Xerox PARC with a options, and concepts like the Desktop didn’t exist in PARC’s Alto. It really came down to really bad licensing and timing (copyright vs. patent wasn’t understood) on Apple’s part that left them vulnerable), and the Apple Records copyright thing, now they get to wield the multi-touch patent like a weapon—and it’s going to be ugly.
Basically, what I’m saying is that it is obvious Jobs was worried that the iPhone idea would be stolen, and he put up a lot of barriers to protect it: three or so years of highly secretive R&D, exclusivity on launch where information of the phone was kept from launch partner, no-plan-discount-on-launch… the portfolia patents was one of these.
The multi-touch patents are a proxy to protect the iPhone from competitors. You can’t successfully patent the look-and-feel (and clearly some of these phones, including the HTC are stepping on that), but you can patent the software and any inventions related to the implementation. And, Copyright/trademark doesn’t cover influence/inspiration (how many good commercials are outright thefts of works of art, movies, books, etc?)
I hate software patent law, but the law defines the land (terrain). And the terrain says you use this thing as a weapon.
As for Apple being evil? Shit, have those guys forgotten what it was like buying Apple branded stuff in the early 90’s? I ask, when was Apple ever good? Any corporation telling you they’re not evil is surely doing it because they know what they do is fundamentally evil. Apple is a corporation; Jobs is kind of an asshole. It’s not fair a corporation can use a relatively minor software patent to take their innovation to the bank; It’s not fair that Jobs is such a rockstar you have to live with his assholitude. To quote Gruber right back at himself, “Life isn’t fair.”
It’s important to protect our inventions, whether they are software or not. If Apple really did come up with it first, they should reap the benefits of their innovations. However, I’m fairly confident that either their patents will become crippled due to re-examination, or an earlier-filed patent will arise that trumps their patent. I’m a
patent attorney in irvine ca and I am following closely…
“I do think that holders of software patents should be forced to do some sort of licensing because of the chilling effect they’re having on innovation.”
I couldn’t agree more with Terry, but at the same time, without that protection, would companies devote the resources necessary to achieve that innovation? What I’m saying is that the huge profits that these patents generate is exactly what motivates and funds a lot of the innovation we see. So as cliche as this phrase is, it’s a catch 22