Apple leeched off of FreeBSD and other open source entities in making OS X.
Without Xerox, Apple would have had nothing to copy from all those decades ago... Given Xerox lost their lawsuit... one also has to ponder how many of those jurors' questions were loaded and designed to make them feel rather than to independently think...
Apple's bullying has been voted down in other countries.
Without competition, Apple would not have fathomed a 7" display, or anything from articles such as "top-10-android-features-ios-5-impersonated-apple-iphone-5-ipad-ipad-2-iphone-3gs-iphone-4-ipod-touch" that show Apple has been copying, borrowing, and stealing right along with everyone else.
Touch screens, icons, etc, existed for years. Virtualized versions of real-life functions (e.g. zooming, slide locks, etc) are not patent-worthy due to their generic concept and not being oh-so-special, and patents did not used to cover such creations (copyrights would).
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The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Then we can get rid of all the safety warnings and similar crap and let Mother Nature sort it out.
Then we can get rid of all the safety warnings and similar crap and let Mother Nature sort it out.
"Remember the original Xerox mouse? Maybe that company should open up a can of lawsuit on Apple for basically stealing their idea." Apple licensed the technology from Xerox. Technology licensing is ubiquitous. The problem between Samsung and Apple is Apple had no interest in licensing their design ideas.
"Touch screens, icons, etc, existed for years." Everything is built on what came before. And everything is obvious once its been done. When the iPhone came out everyone mocked it because it didn't have a keyboard. Now it's considered obvious. Delivery to market is what counts. Belittling your competition is the best path to losing to them. You want to beat Apple? Give them their due, understand what makes them successful and then attack them where they're weak.
"Touch screens, icons, etc, existed for years." Everything is built on what came before. And everything is obvious once its been done. When the iPhone came out everyone mocked it because it didn't have a keyboard. Now it's considered obvious. Delivery to market is what counts. Belittling your competition is the best path to losing to them. You want to beat Apple? Give them their due, understand what makes them successful and then attack them where they're weak.
http://gizmodo .com/5937493/samsung-vs-apple-the-south-korean-verdict-is-in
That these different Courts are making findings along Country Lines instead of the Law are you? 
Nowadays the companies are no longer Patenting Inventions they are actually Inventing Patients.
That about says it all about what is wrong with the Patent System they rely on their country Courts to uphold their patients and to hell with everything else.
Col
Nowadays the companies are no longer Patenting Inventions they are actually Inventing Patients.
That about says it all about what is wrong with the Patent System they rely on their country Courts to uphold their patients and to hell with everything else.
Col
some of the comments that are said to be coming from a few of the jurors do make you wonder on what they based their decisions.
Because the entire case was made in America versus made in Korea, namely a home town decision. The same so-called patent infringements by Samsung are evident in almost every other cell phone/tablet maker today. Can you imagine if they sued Google over the OS that actually supports all these infringements?
Why did the apple core go after Samsung? Lots of dollars on the table and they don't have to sell anything to get it. Hey, the lawyers were already on retainer, so give 'em something to do maybe? Makes one wonder why Apple didn't go after the "j"-phone (a cheap Chinese pure rip-off copy of the i-phone sold at every flea-market)? Oh yeah, no money there, just fleas.
Why did the apple core go after Samsung? Lots of dollars on the table and they don't have to sell anything to get it. Hey, the lawyers were already on retainer, so give 'em something to do maybe? Makes one wonder why Apple didn't go after the "j"-phone (a cheap Chinese pure rip-off copy of the i-phone sold at every flea-market)? Oh yeah, no money there, just fleas.
I don't see the negative effects being restricted to open source development. I'd expand it to include all small developers, open or closed.
I have a daughter and a son. We watched My Little Pony and Teletubbies together. Just because Teletubbies are strange and My Little Pony is geared for girls doesn't mean I didn't enjoy watching them when my kids were small...
Smurfs were also in the "weird but enjoyable" category. I don't recall seeing them on TV during that time. Or at least when the movie came out a year ago my children said "What the heck are SMURFS?"
Smurfs were also in the "weird but enjoyable" category. I don't recall seeing them on TV during that time. Or at least when the movie came out a year ago my children said "What the heck are SMURFS?"
I'm pretty sure your down vote was due to your 'thats really gay' remark. I'm somewhat surprised that whoever cast it didn't flag you as offensive too.
but that makes sense. My Grandmere used to call us 'gay' and that meant we were 'happy' or 'flighty'.
Some people have no sense of humor....
Maybe I should have said homosexual
Maybe I should have said homosexual
I have been unable to eat M&M's ever since taking the nephews to see the Smurf Movie.
The Smurf landing in a bowl of Blue M&M's and saying OH No Smurf Droppings was just too off putting.
Col
The Smurf landing in a bowl of Blue M&M's and saying OH No Smurf Droppings was just too off putting.
Col
Was the Smurf lieing in a half eaten bowl of Blue M&M's trying to Make out with the Green M&M Character on the display above the bowls of the different color M&M's.
OH No Smurf Droppings they taste so good which is so wrong was roughly what was said.
Col
OH No Smurf Droppings they taste so good which is so wrong was roughly what was said.
Col
Children's TV beats most other entertainment... I guess it's because the creators have to get... well... creative, since they can't just show random gore and naughty bits.
Let the limitations be your launch pad, I always say.
Let the limitations be your launch pad, I always say.
I prefer an intelligent plot. Or at least slightly intelligent. Either that or roadrunner cartoons which are always funny.
It's always the same. What makes them funny is not the plot but the various nefarious ways that poor Wile E. gets pwned.
Who? I only see my Avatar in this conversation, and its a CGI face of a swordsmen from a really old game.
Here is a bigger version if your interested.
http://trevorsarchives.homenet.org/funpics/sigs/MSProfile.jpg
Here is a bigger version if your interested.
http://trevorsarchives.homenet.org/funpics/sigs/MSProfile.jpg
- Open Source code should NOT be patentable due to it already being covered by copyright and owned by the people who first created it and put it in the public domain.
- This court decision is very unlikely to have any affect outside of the USA. Different laws in other countries make that a matter of fact.
- Maybe the owners of the Star Trek franchise should now sue Apple for many billions as they have over a decade of prior art on small square and rectangular thin devices with round edges that use touch screens for carrying information and communicating.
- This court decision is very unlikely to have any affect outside of the USA. Different laws in other countries make that a matter of fact.
- Maybe the owners of the Star Trek franchise should now sue Apple for many billions as they have over a decade of prior art on small square and rectangular thin devices with round edges that use touch screens for carrying information and communicating.
In the US it is possible to Patent Open Source Ideas and processes for financial Gain of a Company or Individual at the expense of everyone else.
For example look at what happened to the Processes of making Penicillin which was developed in the UK made freely available to all for the benefit of Mankind and then several years latter Patented in the US where the people who made up the processes where forced into a position of paying another company to continue doing the work that they had developed.
The US no longer Patients Designs they Patient Illusions and call them Designs. They are effectively Inventing Patents without any Oversight and then expecting their Courts to Uphold them for their benefit.
Currently I'm surprised that every woman isn't filled with a Patient Infringement Notice and Court Documents when they give birth for Violating the Human DNA Patient held by a US Company. After all they are producing a Patented Concept so they are guilty of IP Theft.
That's how silly the US Patient System has got.
Col
For example look at what happened to the Processes of making Penicillin which was developed in the UK made freely available to all for the benefit of Mankind and then several years latter Patented in the US where the people who made up the processes where forced into a position of paying another company to continue doing the work that they had developed.
The US no longer Patients Designs they Patient Illusions and call them Designs. They are effectively Inventing Patents without any Oversight and then expecting their Courts to Uphold them for their benefit.
Currently I'm surprised that every woman isn't filled with a Patient Infringement Notice and Court Documents when they give birth for Violating the Human DNA Patient held by a US Company. After all they are producing a Patented Concept so they are guilty of IP Theft.
That's how silly the US Patient System has got.
Col
Copyright law applies to code. Patents apply to inventions or methods. Put another way, the code itself cannot be patented, but what the code does may be able to be patented.
That's really what Apple is arguing (and I'm not defending Apple here). They claim that the patented methods they have created (e.g. swipe to unlock, etc.) have been infringed upon by Samsung. In patent litigation like this, the question usually comes down to what's known as "prior art", that is, the method or invention existed prior to the patent holder's supposed invention. I'm sure Samsung has lawyers crawling through data to find evidence of prior art for Apple's inventions in question.
That's really what Apple is arguing (and I'm not defending Apple here). They claim that the patented methods they have created (e.g. swipe to unlock, etc.) have been infringed upon by Samsung. In patent litigation like this, the question usually comes down to what's known as "prior art", that is, the method or invention existed prior to the patent holder's supposed invention. I'm sure Samsung has lawyers crawling through data to find evidence of prior art for Apple's inventions in question.
Makes me wonder when Apple is going to go after mouse gestures. Hover and shake are probably close enough to touch & swipe to make it worth their avaricious while...
If Apple did not file for a patent within one year of either the method or invention being either a) offered for sale, or b) described in a publication, then they cannot receive a patent. They may have a patent for things like this, but since they have not brought lawsuits, I doubt they do. Regardless, it is something to be cognizant of.
shown that way in some old Star Trek shows and movies from 30 years ago.
You can patent code today (a program). At one time, patenting code was not allowed as it was considered a class of mathematical algorithms. You cannot patent a mathematical algorithm. But in the 80s, the USPTO started allowing code to be patented - long after the horses had left the barn. Why do you think the MS FUD of suing people and small companies who used Linux unless they paid MS a "fee" occurred? Chances are extremely high that some minor, small subroutine was implemented the same way (obviousness) or even copied from a Unix or C textbook from years ago. I can go back to the late 60s, when I had a software implementation that we had tried to patent and it was rejected. To get around that rejection, I worked with a "lawyer/engineer" who helped me turn the S/W implementation into a H/W implementation that was patentable (which I was later awarded by the USPTO). It was a pure H/W implementation, not microcode. If the patent lawyer had not been an electrical engineer originally, I would never have received the patent.
Even copyrighting code was never done originally. It wasn't until the 70s that one could copyright code. Of course, copyrighting code makes a lot more sense if you keep it strictly to an entire program. It is akin to copyrighting a book. While an individual sentence, or even an equivalent paragraph, may appear in another book, it doesn't violate the copyright if the rest of the book is significantly different. A case in point might be garbage collection subroutines being nearly identical iin different programs. There, typically is so many ways of doing garbage collection that you have a very good chance of producing identical (or nearly) code. The same for program prologs and epilogs. can you imagine MS or Apple suing some little outfit for patent infringement because the start of the code does some set up work and MS or Apple says their "patented" code also does similar setup work and, therefore, they own the concept and "small company" is in violation of their patent. Don't think this is absurd as the company I worked for back in 80s was involved in a suit akin to this. It was tossed out when the judge was shown that the technique used was "prior art", dating back to the 60s (pre-patent days).
First of all, the UPTO is not staffed to handle the volume of patents they receive daily. It has become a rubber stamp. This has been going on for years One individual I used to work with, would come in early, print off listings of other co-workers implementations and tweak them and file a patent indicating the process was new and novel (akin to making a different mousetrap - not necessarily better). File so many patents and the company gave you awards for each level of filings. Of course, when others found out what was going on and complained, company management chastised the original developer for not filing in the first place. Secondly, the initial reviewers in the USPTO back in the 80s were not trained programmers. To them, anything in S/W was novel, non-obvious and advanced the state of the art. While they may have more and better qualified people today, the sheer volume probably has them overwhelmed. Probably working with antiquated equipment to boot (I might suspect the government deems them low priority when it comes to equipment upgrades).
Even copyrighting code was never done originally. It wasn't until the 70s that one could copyright code. Of course, copyrighting code makes a lot more sense if you keep it strictly to an entire program. It is akin to copyrighting a book. While an individual sentence, or even an equivalent paragraph, may appear in another book, it doesn't violate the copyright if the rest of the book is significantly different. A case in point might be garbage collection subroutines being nearly identical iin different programs. There, typically is so many ways of doing garbage collection that you have a very good chance of producing identical (or nearly) code. The same for program prologs and epilogs. can you imagine MS or Apple suing some little outfit for patent infringement because the start of the code does some set up work and MS or Apple says their "patented" code also does similar setup work and, therefore, they own the concept and "small company" is in violation of their patent. Don't think this is absurd as the company I worked for back in 80s was involved in a suit akin to this. It was tossed out when the judge was shown that the technique used was "prior art", dating back to the 60s (pre-patent days).
First of all, the UPTO is not staffed to handle the volume of patents they receive daily. It has become a rubber stamp. This has been going on for years One individual I used to work with, would come in early, print off listings of other co-workers implementations and tweak them and file a patent indicating the process was new and novel (akin to making a different mousetrap - not necessarily better). File so many patents and the company gave you awards for each level of filings. Of course, when others found out what was going on and complained, company management chastised the original developer for not filing in the first place. Secondly, the initial reviewers in the USPTO back in the 80s were not trained programmers. To them, anything in S/W was novel, non-obvious and advanced the state of the art. While they may have more and better qualified people today, the sheer volume probably has them overwhelmed. Probably working with antiquated equipment to boot (I might suspect the government deems them low priority when it comes to equipment upgrades).
I doubt anyone at the patent office knows its already in use 
Conditional logic was first posited about 2500 years ago.
Of course, the USPTO may not know that...
Of course, the USPTO may not know that...
after all, it's within the last three millennium, so there's no way they can know.
Your presentation is a very simplified version of the truth, but describes the problem in everyday language. Since production of goods has become an IT-driven process, what used to be patentable no questions asked is now a mixture of what fits to the past, but in combination with IT features, with mainly are software developments in many other countries subject but to copyright protection. As big business is only in the business of regardlessly making money, they work hard to eliminate the barrier between copyright and patent to get everything patented and exploit this to the maximum.
Since Apple is so keen on Star Trek designs, has anyone checked to see if they have got the US patent office to grant them one for a Warp drive, or prehaps a cloaking device? After all it would be a relatively easy and logical step for them to innovate from a reality distortion field!
Nano assimilation code, a dark fork of the previously assimilated BSD. I wondered what the "B" stood for, (mistakenly thought it was Berkeley.)
Lieutenant Commander Data must be quite worried by Apple's declaration & action to prosecute with extreme prejudice!
Lieutenant Commander Data must be quite worried by Apple's declaration & action to prosecute with extreme prejudice!
Apple has declared itself unable to compete on ideas. It's now going to do everything in its power and pocketbook to squash competition. This kind of creative bankruptcy will take a while to become obvious, but Apple will become less relevant as time goes by. A shame.
Big Brother wants iSnitch in everybody's pocket.
"I hope Samsung will take this back to the courts and appeal this until the court system realizes their folly."
As long as Apple has the money, nothing will be overturned, at least not in America where the justice system and the political system are bought and paid for by the corporations with the most MONEY.
As long as Apple has the money, nothing will be overturned, at least not in America where the justice system and the political system are bought and paid for by the corporations with the most MONEY.
Maybe not in the US (where it is the duty to protect Apple products manufactured in China, or MS products "taken" from smaller players), but certainly other countries have no problem ignoring US court rulings on this type of ruling - definitely not China - and in this case, not South Korea (and maybe Japan and Taiwan). What would be interesting, if China decided to nationalize "Apple's facilities there, kick Apple out and take over the facility and market those I-Pads, I-Phones, etc. to the rest of the world.
Keep in mind (as I thin someone mentioned above), this is ONLY in the USA. A UK court a few weeks ago found in favor of Samsung in the same argument. I know we like to think that the USA is the whole world, but we really are a shrinking percentage of the market. Outside the US, MegaCorporations don't hold as much sway.
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