Apple starts patenting other people's idea

The USPTO started to receive many applications for mobile apps patents from Apple. It happens to be based on third party apps.

The problem? Three Apple patent applications that just became public on USPTO website. From the looks of them, it seems that Apple is now trying to patent mobile app ideas. For now Apple is seeking to get a patent for 3 apps – travel, hotel and high fashion shopping.

Source: www.unwiredview.com...

To see a comparison of a real app and the equivalent "Apple" patent :

Source: venomousporridge.com...

Apple, a company that have it's roots in the hackers community of the 70's, a company that made it's fortune with the creative community, is now clearly crusading against it's consumers and programmers rights. First with DRM enforced mobile platforms, obfuscated proprietary "technology" for it's chargers, and now this?

How will the USPTO respond to that kind of behaviour?
Will you continue to support Apple by buying it's gadgets?

No wonder why Apple is starting loosing market share :

Why I Switched to Android from the iPhone :
smarterware.org...

Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S. :
gigaom.com...

I am glad own an Android smartphone. The platform is open instead of being locked down.

I prefer ubuntu. I will settle for Windoze (since i am too lazy to figure out the WINE configs for what i need). But i absolutely HATE apple.

I do not own an apple device, and will not own one (although i like the ipad...great idea for a handy device).

I do not purchase devices that I cannot run my own choice of software on. My son has a sanyo phone that is a pain in the butt to make ringtones for, but at least there is a decent way.

I am a big supporter of GNU.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


If you like the idea of the iPad but hates Apple, take a look into this article:
blogs.computerworld.com...

I am using Ubuntu and I can tell you Wine is a click away and require no manual configuration of copy of windows to be useful anymore. Not every program is supported though, I had to settle for Photoshop CS2.

[edit on 5-8-2010 by gagol]

Originally posted by gagol
reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

 

If you like the idea of the iPad but hates Apple, take a look into this article:
blogs.computerworld.com...

Great article. Highlights the reason i think the Kindle is morose. I read from my laptop. If i had a tablet, i would likely still read from my laptop. But the laptop isn't as mobile as you often think. i don't want to carry it from room to room, risking breaking my entire electronic life and history.

What i really hope is that Linux OS's will become more and more accepted. Not one type in particular, but multiple platforms. Keep the virus coders and hackers guessing by presenting hundreds of OS's to pick from.

I also think that if we get away from the MS/Apple OS's, we can get back to "lean and mean" on the basics, with a more robust application environment.

[edit on 5-8-2010 by bigfatfurrytexan]

Originally posted by gagol
How will the USPTO respond to that kind of behaviour?
Will you continue to support Apple by buying it's gadgets?

A patent for an application means nothing, in fact, I think apple is wasting time. The reason Toyota doesn't patent cars is the same reason I think this move is a waste.

Suppose Toyota decides to patent a car, great, now they got a patent, does it mean no one else is allowed to make cars without paying toyota royalties? Yes, but here is the catch: Change one thing, just one small itty bitty thing and voila, your vechicle is not infringing that patent anymore.

People and companies should file patent applications for large inventions only when they are sure any modification would only make the invention worse.

I've been sick and tired of Apple's bullying ever since I installed quicktime for the first time, and tried to figure out what option to set to make it not start when my computer starts. I found out that Apple didn't give me any such option. This is intolerable because I don't want or need quicktime 95% of the time, so why should it be hogging system resources 95% of the time when I don't need it? It shouldn't.

It's just a sign of a company that's overly arrogant and belligerent and thinks they know better how you should run your computer than you do. Well for some of their starry-eyed followers, that may be true, but in my case, it's not. So it doesn't surprise me to see such a belligerint company filing for patents.

So I refuse to install quicktime even though there are 1 or 2 cases where it might be helpful (apparently it's needed as a plugin in firefox to play the ATS media audio files...well I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen audio files embedded on ATS threads so I'm not going to screw up my computer's memory allocation to hear those 3 audio files, I can live without them.

And I really don't want any other Apple products either. I don't want them to go out of business but they do need some competition so it's good to see them losing some market share to some competitors. Maybe more people will wake up and see that some of the alternatives are better.

Originally posted by daniel_g
Suppose Toyota decides to patent a car, great, now they got a patent, does it mean no one else is allowed to make cars without paying toyota royalties? Yes, but here is the catch: Change one thing, just one small itty bitty thing and voila, your vechicle is not infringing that patent anymore.

While it may be true that after due process the court determines that Mr X's offering doesn't infringe on Apple's patent after all, for exactly the reason you said, unfortunately Mr X was a small start up and didn't have the financial resources to fight an expensive court battle with Apple's high-powered patent attorneys, even though they could have eventually won. So Apple can win before it even gets to court if they are fighting some small startups who can't afford expensive lawyers to fight expensive court battles. If a larger company who can afford the lawyers battles Apple in court though, I'm sure they can figure out a way around Apple's patents. The reason I make this distinction is that it seems like some of the companies involved in some of the iPhone apps, aren't that big.

I think patents serve a useful purpose to allow companies to recoup their R&D costs without their ideas getting knocked off right away, but in other cases such as this I think patents can be a negative rather than a positive. I wish there was a good way to avoid patent abuse but I see too much of it.

Apple has always been a 2 bit company and will continue to be as long as people all believe that the emperors' clothing is teh muttz nutz.

I'm only in before the fanbois come out and tell me why Apple is the best and everything else is pish.

I've been using computers now for just short of 30 years - and I've watched Apple that entire time try to hold back development (Saying the Windows set up was originally theirs...they' never even heard of WIMP as standard...lol).

Burn them all; computers, mp3 players, phones and fanbois alike.

-m0r

Long time Mac user here (since 96). After the Amiga died, I had to find an alternative that was comparable and that was the Mac for me. Never realy had any problems with it. I was allso exited when the iPhone came out. Why? Because now I could have a smartphone that could sync and use all the gizmos with my Mac (only reason for me to buy that phone). I love my dual xeon Mac Pro with nVidia Quadra workhorse. I still work with the software I used to love on my Amiga (Lightwave) etc etc...

Hehe, I don't even know where I'm going with this, it's maybe to illustrate where I come from, but I gotta admit. These days I'm a bit iTired. I feel like Apple is neglecting it's pro users in favor for it's iToys. There are a lot of annoying things in Final Cut Pro that STILL aren't resolved in the latest version. They completely dropped Shake. It's been more than a year for the new Mac Pro updates (we need a few new ones at the studio and we've been waiting since march, luckyly they are coming out one of these days, bout freakin time). Apple is becomming to big. Good for them that they are succesfully selling iGadgets but they should give a little bit more attention to their pro users who depend on Apple products to get bread on the table every day, If you know what I mean. They are becoming the beast I thought Microsoft was back in those days.

[edit on 7/8/2010 by KrisFromGenk]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
unfortunately Mr X was a small start up and didn't have the financial resources to fight an expensive court battle with Apple's high-powered patent attorneys

...

I think patents serve a useful purpose to allow companies to recoup their R&D costs without their ideas getting knocked off right away

Like you said, a patent is a way to recoup costs, but why would they spend a million dollars on a court to go after a guy who didn't make a single cent out of a similar product?

Apple would go after they guys making millions so that if they win the court battle they can walk away with more money than they spent in court. You can't really sue the small fish and expect to win anything but a bad image, at least that's the lesson that the music industry left when they started to sue people for file sharing. Related article:

RIAA SPENT $17.6 Million In Lawsuits... To Get $391,000 In Settlements?

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


I was actually quite impressed with linux mint. If you haven't tried it yet it's worth checking out. It comes with proprietary drivers for most graphics cards which was a great idea for those that want linux but are not as adept at computers as others.

I have also used ubuntu, but prefer the mint now.

We're reaching as point now where distros are becoming so user friendly that it's easy for people to make the switch.

Originally posted by daniel_g
why would they spend a million dollars on a court to go after a guy who didn't make a single cent out of a similar product?

If you ask why sometimes the answer seems to be, it's senseless, at least from a pure profit perspective. There's the example you gave, and I've been employed by companies that spent millions of dollars in patent battles, and so did the opposing company, and as far as I know neither company got any increased profits or recouped any of those court expenses from the patent battles. At the end of the process there's usually a settlement or court decision of some sort but that doesn't mean the court costs are recouped.

If a company has deep pockets they can sometimes afford to spend money on court battles that don't make economic sense to the outside observer.

Another thing to consider is the patent doesn't do anything to protect the company while it just sits in a file in the patent office. Violations of the patent have to be actively challenged to make it worth anything, so maybe that's why they do it. But still, many of the court battles on patents don't seem economically sound to me. Maybe the litigants know something I don't know.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


---Oops, missed the bit where you said you refuse to install Quicktime. That's what I get for reading in the wee hours of the night, I guess.

[edit on 7-8-2010 by riiver]