HTC Patents Likely Valid In Apple Suit

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It would seem that U.S. International Trade Commission judge Thomas Pender thinks that HTC's patents are valid. Obviously this is bad news for Apple since this could possibly lead to an import ban on iProducts.

A U.S. trade judge has hinted that Apple may struggle to invalidate patents owned by HTC, which could potentially lead to an import ban on the latest iPad and the forthcoming iPhone.
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After how Apple got several models of HTC phones banned from being imported over a really fuckin' trivial software feature (a list of options for clicking on a number) until the software was updated, it would only be incredibly deserved if the new iProducts end up being delayed.
 
I would love to see this happen, simply for Apple to get a taste of their own medicine. I think all of these patent issues for software need to be overhauled drastically.
 
Before this is over, everyone's products will be banned and nothing will be available from anywhere.

The patent system is the problem here. The look of a button or the ability to move data a certain way should not be patentable. Period.

Now, if the thing can wipe your ass, now that's innovation.
 
TechLarry said:
Before this is over, everyone's products will be banned and nothing will be available from anywhere.

The patent system is the problem here. The look of a button or the ability to move data a certain way should not be patentable. Period.

Now, if the thing can wipe your ass, now that's innovation.
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Larry's right. Regardless of which camp you wanna stay in when you roast marshmallows, it's pretty obvious that companies and consumers are dealing with a stupid patent system that should get fixed.

I dunno if I want my phone to wipe my behind though. :eek: That'd be sort of strange.
 
The problem is that Apple as not been an actual builder of its own hardware for a long time. They are a contractor now and a Brand Name now like many other companies. And they contract to places that are cheaper for them. One of the reasons very little manufacturing is left in North America.

Problem is that the skills that make you a unique as a contractor aren't going to last when the actual manufacture is half a world away. Not only is Apple's ability going to erode as the industry here fades away, companies abroad are going to become more and more capable. So the only thing ensuring Apple stays relevant is their Patents. Without those, boatloads of iPhone knockoffs would set sail to the US tomorrow. They may not be able to access all Apple services, but they'd be a match in hardware and use enough copycat services to fracture the market.

Because Apple knows its continued existence is based on enforcing those patents, they're nervous about it and gone way overboard trying to enforce it. As the infrastructure fades, engineering rolls will shift abroad to suppliers and Apple will generate fewer and fewer new patents. They will not stay relevant as only a Brand Name. Their days are numbered. And starting a patent war is the last thing they need.
 
I dont like these patent disputes. Besides Apple vs Samsung (for touchwiz) I dont agree with any of these suits.
 
It's clear the patent system is messed up, and needs to be fixed.

In the mean time, fuck Apple, and fuck them hard!

I hope they bear the full brunt of the implications of this patent violation so they get some of their own medicine.

Apple declared a patent war on the world. The world is slowly learning how to fight back!
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that Apple as not been an actual builder of its own hardware for a long time. They are a contractor now and a Brand Name now like many other companies. And they contract to places that are cheaper for them. One of the reasons very little manufacturing is left in North America.

Problem is that the skills that make you a unique as a contractor aren't going to last when the actual manufacture is half a world away.
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Outsourcing is not necessarily detrimental to your business, as long as you don't outsource your key strengths, or core focus of your business.

Apple's strengths have never resided in manufacturing.

They have always predominantly been a business where industrial design / R&D and marketing have been their strengths. As long as they don't outsource these they should be fine from that perspective.

If this was going to hurt them much, it would have done so a long time ago. Their manufacturing has been outsourced for decades at this point. They closed their Freemont Macintosh Plant in 1992...
 
rock the boat!.. don't rock the boat baby... rock the boat!..
I think with these kind of devices the patent war is set to go nuclear... it might have a good outcome in a long time from now... specially for lawyers :) (no i am not against lawyers)
 
ghost6303 said:
i would wipe my ass with an iphone... and the patent system.
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But how would you use that to get an injunction of currently shipping devices?

entropy13 said:
Your phone wiping your behind does not necessarily mean that it is wiping your behind with itself.
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Unless it's using the Force, it has to come in contact with some iRobot-y Arm of Backside Doom or something. What if it gets confused by the movie you just watched and starts thinking, "I'm a snake and I'm on a plane!" I wouldn't wanna be anywhere near it when that happens.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039124734 said:
Outsourcing is not necessarily detrimental to your business, as long as you don't outsource your key strengths, or core focus of your business.

Apple's strengths have never resided in manufacturing.

They have always predominantly been a business where industrial design / R&D and marketing have been their strengths. As long as they don't outsource these they should be fine from that perspective.

If this was going to hurt them much, it would have done so a long time ago. Their manufacturing has been outsourced for decades at this point. They closed their Freemont Macintosh Plant in 1992...
Click to expand...

I should add that when - in 1992 - Apple closed their Freemont plant some 200 people were laid off, and moved to Sacramento.

The Sacramento manufacturing operations were finally discontinued in 2004, but they had been slowly declining for a long time to the point where there was little left but final assembly of less popular models there. Some 200 jobs were left in the end.

Meanwhile, Apple's production at Foxconn in China employs some 230,000 people.
 
This news makes me very happy. Apple deserves a taste of their own medicine. However, this also disappoints me because this is the same patent trolling bullshit that Apple is already doing.

The only benefit from this potentially banning the new iDevice's is that patents like this will force Apple to stop their own trolling and reach a truce with Android and it's OEM's.
 
Agree here the patient system needs a bit of an over-haul.

Software patents are a bit too broad, and I would say for certain aspects need a short time frame of protection. Software moves too fast for patients to lock up entire feature sets forever.

As someone mentioned, the patients for clicking a phone number hyper link seems a bit restrictive, where a company could literally lock out competitors from common functions just by being first and patenting various combinations. This restricts "innovation" rather then promote it, which patients shoudl be doing.

More complex software code/functions should be better protected, then less complex gui design function imo.
 
jpm100 said:
The problem is that Apple as not been an actual builder of its own hardware for a long time. They are a contractor now and a Brand Name now like many other companies. And they contract to places that are cheaper for them. One of the reasons very little manufacturing is left in North America.

Problem is that the skills that make you a unique as a contractor aren't going to last when the actual manufacture is half a world away. Not only is Apple's ability going to erode as the industry here fades away, companies abroad are going to become more and more capable. So the only thing ensuring Apple stays relevant is their Patents. Without those, boatloads of iPhone knockoffs would set sail to the US tomorrow. They may not be able to access all Apple services, but they'd be a match in hardware and use enough copycat services to fracture the market.

Because Apple knows its continued existence is based on enforcing those patents, they're nervous about it and gone way overboard trying to enforce it. As the infrastructure fades, engineering rolls will shift abroad to suppliers and Apple will generate fewer and fewer new patents. They will not stay relevant as only a Brand Name. Their days are numbered. And starting a patent war is the last thing they need.
Click to expand...

I'd say there is a huge difference between the cheap knockoffs that would flood the market and being outright anti-competitive like Apple has been. They're going after any device that challenges their supremacy, regardless if that device looks/acts absolutely nothing alike.

If they were going after those fake iphones sold abroad, I'd say go for it. Hopefully HTC does the right thing here and sues the shit out of them.

And no, I wasn't disagreeing .. just quoting for context.
 
I don't think patent system is really at fault in this case. Before Apple went stupid everyone was licensing to every onese. It was somewhere between $2-$20 a phone. Nobody sued..it was just good use of FRAND (google it). It was good for innovation since who ever got the patent would make revenue off it on every phone sold. It made sense. Thus something like slide to unlock may have been a $0.05/phone patent. Unified search maybe $2-$3. But nothing was every "you should go die now". Apple bascially took something that was the Olympics and turned into a hood brawl. Shame on them.
 
Maybe part of the problem is the justice system too (not just the American one either).

If you invent something, and you get a patent, of course you should be able to make a living from it.

Maybe litigation's inability to work swiftly, and cheaply, makes big companies abuse the system.

I feel sorry for the smaller companies now days.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Maybe part of the problem is the justice system too (not just the American one either).

If you invent something, and you get a patent, of course you should be able to make a living from it.

Maybe litigation's inability to work swiftly, and cheaply, makes big companies abuse the system.

I feel sorry for the smaller companies now days.
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I think even with the current system if court cases could be presented within 6 weeks instead of 18 months we would be way further ahead.
 
bbenz33 said:
I would love to see this happen, simply for Apple to get a taste of their own medicine. I think all of these patent issues for software need to be overhauled drastically.
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No US court is going to block an Apple product - look at this. We'll pretend to be fair to foreign companies, but bottom line is even if Apple products are manufactured overseas they are still an American headquartered company we'll want to protect. Just like Samsung has had it's best successes fending off Apple in South Korea (surprising right?).
 
Trepidati0n said:
I don't think patent system is really at fault in this case. Before Apple went stupid everyone was licensing to every onese. It was somewhere between $2-$20 a phone. Nobody sued..it was just good use of FRAND (google it). It was good for innovation since who ever got the patent would make revenue off it on every phone sold. It made sense. Thus something like slide to unlock may have been a $0.05/phone patent. Unified search maybe $2-$3. But nothing was every "you should go die now". Apple bascially took something that was the Olympics and turned into a hood brawl. Shame on them.
Click to expand...

The problem is that some are overly broad. Patent for device with rounded edges? Patents are not supposed to be granted to concepts that would be obvious to a component person in the field. They are now.

It's like patenting car with aerodynamically shaped windshields, chairs that have a smooth shape and not sharp spikes that might poke you, for loops.
 
Ualdayan said:
We'll pretend to be fair to foreign companies, but bottom line is even if Apple products are manufactured overseas they are still an American headquartered company we'll want to protect. Just like Samsung has had it's best successes fending off Apple in South Korea (surprising right?).
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LOL yeah, where in South Korea both got fined. :rolleyes: It's Tokyo, Japan where Samsung recently had "success."
 
SpeedyVV said:
Maybe part of the problem is the justice system too (not just the American one either).

If you invent something, and you get a patent, of course you should be able to make a living from it.

Maybe litigation's inability to work swiftly, and cheaply, makes big companies abuse the system.

I feel sorry for the smaller companies now days.
Click to expand...


I'll talk to my lawyer about patenting air
 
Zarathustra[H];1039124773 said:
I should add that when - in 1992 - Apple closed their Freemont plant some 200 people were laid off, and moved to Sacramento.

The Sacramento manufacturing operations were finally discontinued in 2004, but they had been slowly declining for a long time to the point where there was little left but final assembly of less popular models there. Some 200 jobs were left in the end.

Meanwhile, Apple's production at Foxconn in China employs some 230,000 people.
Click to expand...

this is why I stopped buying Apple products

why would an so called American company prop up the Chinese economy so much, when America is in dire needs of those jobs.
 
amd4life said:
this is why I stopped buying Apple products

why would an so called American company prop up the Chinese economy so much, when America is in dire needs of those jobs.
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American labor is more expensive than outsourcing to China and then shipping to the US. Also, Apple would have to endure shipping costs from the US to other nations where there are consumers that buy their products. It all boils down to costs like everything else does in making a profit. That's not an Apple-only thing.
 
amd4life said:
this is why I stopped buying Apple products

why would an so called American company prop up the Chinese economy so much, when America is in dire needs of those jobs.
Click to expand...

First, turns out my 230,000 figure was for FoxConn only. If you include the entire supply chain of people in China it takes to make Apple products its more like 700,000... Mind boggling.

There are many theories.

Some have suggested that a U.S. made iPhone would cost over $1000, but I find this false, and that other studies suggesting it would add ~$60 to the price tag of the phone would be more accurate.

The most interesting article on the topic is - IMHO - this one.

It's a very interesting read.

Essentially the conclusion is that you can't make a product like this in the U.S. today even if you wanted to, at any cost.

The entire supply chain (electrical components, glass, screws, etc. etc. etc) is located right there. There are few if any cities in the U.S. that can support the 230,000 employees FoxConn has in the same location, just because the cities don't have enough people.

While FoxConn's labor rates and working conditions are MUCH lower than anything we have over here, they are still so much better than anything else the people have going for them over there. If Apple needs to make a quick change, or boost production, FoxConn can go out and hire 3,000 people over night (and have). You just can't do that here.

Another issue is that for this scale of production, you'd need almost 9000 industrial/manufacturing engineers to oversee the operations. Even in this recession, there simply aren't enough highly trained Engineers in the U.S. (people don't like studying math in school). To hire that many Engineers you'd need to recruit them from other companies and just to get them on board would take an estimated 9 months. FoxConn was able to hire them in 15 days.

We've become soft. Kids don't like to study math and science in school, and we've been telling them they can "be whatever they want to be" rather than picking a field of study that leads to good stable incomes for so long now, that we are seeing the consequences.

Essentially the article concludes that we no longer have the skilled workforce in large enough quantities to pull something like this off. It is physically impossible to manufacture the iPhone in the U.S.

I highly recommend reading that article. It's an eye opener.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039128064 said:
Some have suggested that a U.S. made iPhone would cost over $1000, but I find this false, and that other studies suggesting it would add ~$60 to the price tag of the phone would be more accurate.
Click to expand...

IF that was precisely the case and the price were to remain the same for retail... that would mean Apple would make about $410 profit per iPhone instead of $470.
 
That's a pretty bullshit article. Apple wouldn't need to move their whole production here in 1 day. They'd start somewhere, demand would pull talent to that area looking for a job. Demand for 'highly skilled engineers' would rise and get filled accordinly. I know it's cool to hate yourself now, but somehow Intel keeps building plants in the United states, employing thousands of engineers.

Also "The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. "

Basically, they invested in a manufacturing future, and the cycle continues. The less you try to manufacture here, the less able you will be able to over time. The only thing it takes to reverse this, is to build that capabilty back. It would cost more since we don't want to live in dorms. That's all. Apple wanted 600 billion market cap instead of 500 billion. It's certainly not IMPOSSIBLE to build a phone here.
 
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