Apple Ordered to Pay $21.7 Million in Patent Suit

[Manos]

Apple... Just sush please, no lube no nothing. Take it like a "man" ( dont wanna say bitch you are ) since you go after rich and poor when it comes to lawsuits without giving a crap yet again you are capable to be ignoring your consumers for faulty iPhones and walking all cocky for a rerelease of your accient, anymore, Os. Too bad the damage is small and indeed, you will be making back that money within a couple of days with all the overpriced bunch of crapaware you sell all over the world.

 

[asdf634]

[citation][nom]FunYun[/nom]By definition, if their device does not work, then they are patenting the idea of what it would do.I would like to the patten the idea of manned space flight to Mars. I don't know all the details, or even have a working model, but why should that matter?[/citation]
Hmm yeah, sorry but I already patented that. I'm going to have to sue you now, be prepared for my greedy wrath!

 

[pythy]

what can i say........ $uck $hit!!!

 

[lashton]

[citation][nom]Blessedman[/nom]this whole idea of patenting ideas that may show up in the future without a working model is total BS. The patent office needs to insist that if these companies are going to file for a patent that the company is obligated to first show a working model.[/citation]

This is logical imagine an idea of firing lasers at the satellite, if you have a working concept you can get a patent, simple apple STOP stealing shit and pay out of court

 

[BartG]

7600 Macs... that`s a year supply! PC rules!

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]gekko668[/nom]21.7 millions of dollars mean nothing to Apple consider they made billions of dollars in profit each quarter.[/citation]
Where the fuck do you pull these made up numbers from, your ass?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_inc
Net income, (that's after tax) $4.83 billion with 14.88% profit margin
That's a shade under $719 million for the year, with $21 million being nearly 3% of the annual profits.

Not a drop in the ocean.

 

[sykozis]

[citation][nom]maddad[/nom]I don't understand why there are so many Apple haters here. I don't own and Apple computer or an iphone, but Apple innovates and everyone else then jumps on board to try and catch up. Where were all the cool phones from Motorola, Samsung, LG, and HTC before the iphone showed up? Where were all the thin laptops before the Mac Air? Anyway reguardless, they need to get a handle on the patent trolls before all the companies who do create, build, and innovate decide they can't produce anything new without getting sued.[/citation]

Apple has a history of stealing ideas then suing others over them. Take the GUI and Mouse for example. Both were created by Xerox....both were subsequently stolen by Apple. Apple then turned around and filed suit against MS for use of the same "technologies", which Apple had no legal rights to. It's time for the industry as a hole to remind ALL companies that they're expected to actually innovate, not just steal and claim it's their own. Seems of late, that Intel has been the most innovative though unsuccessful. Larrabee's architecture is a true innovation. nVidia brought us SLI (developed by 3DFx), CUDA (developed by Stanford) and a CUDA compatible PhysX (developed by Ageia who got the idea from Havok). Can we get some companies that actually create something on their own?

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]sykozis[/nom]Can we get some companies that actually create something on their own?[/citation]
Simple answer is no.
Apple is the P Diddy of the computer world, nick a backing track with a bit of bling over the top and voila!

 

[cdwilliams1]

@sykozis , Keep in mind. Xerox invited the Apple team into their headquarters. They also forced,yes FORCED, the program manager to demo the tech to Apple. She initially refused because she thought Xerox was giving away the crown jewels. She made them sign a CYA document to make sure she wasn't blamed. The PARC team had been at the Xerox management for years to try to get them to sell the tech. Xerox wasn't interested. Apple got it right away and the rest was history.

Xerox may be a victim but Apple didn't come in like a thief in the night like you make it out to be. Xerox management blundered their opportunity, in many ways, for years before Apple came along. You can watch her interview on the PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" if you'd like the details.

 

[cdwilliams1]

Now, related to the article, Keep in mind that prediction has been used inside the CPU for years. Look at Branch Predicition on wikipedia. If I take this same concept that someone else came up with, and patented the concept of using that same existing technology but on the PCI lanes instead of the instruction pipeline on the CPU is that really a new invention? Seems pretty obvious to me that if prediction works well on the 1's and 0's coming through the processor pipeline that it might make sense to use it on the 1's and 0's streaming down the PCI lane. This is the problem with patent trolls. They take an obvious idea and wait for someone to implement it. Then, even though they've done no work, created no products, and innovated no technology, they get to cash in. Seriously, add the words "on the internet" to any basic idea there is today and call the patent office. The average patent examiner that reviews the submission reviews it for 6 hours and has no background in the field. This one person decides if you get a patent. It's a messed up system. While Apple was found to not have intentionally violated the patent (i.e. they didn't STEAL it) they still implemented an obvious idea that someone had tucked away in a drawer and now this troll gets to cash in.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]cdwilliams1[/nom]Xerox may be a victim but Apple didn't come in like a thief in the night like you make it out to be. Xerox management blundered their opportunity, in many ways, for years before Apple came along.[/citation]
It's not the method that Apple acquired the GUI and mouse that annoys people, it's Oh-So-Self-Fucking-Righteousness of Apple afterwards when Microsoft used it as well.

"Hey, you can't copy our GUI and mouse!"
"Who's?" Certainly not Apple

Which is why I think someone should bring out a phone and call it the iPhone. When Apple go ape-shit and start trying to bring down the house, someone should rightly point out that iPhone was held by Cisco, with an actual working device, Apple approached to buy the rights to the name, Cisco said "Get bent" so Apple used it anyway!

Before the internet it was so easy to hide this stuff, but now we all know how much of a slimy, theiving, robbing, triple-faced, backstabbing Judas they really are, and before the fanbois start giving it the "minus 1" I want you to prove me wrong.

 

[cdwilliams1]

It's not the method that Apple acquired the GUI and mouse that annoys people, it's Oh-So-Self-Fucking-Righteousness of Apple afterwards when Microsoft used it as well.

"Hey, you can't copy our GUI and mouse!"
"Who's?" Certainly not Apple

For the iphone... keep in mind Cisco was NOT selling a device called the iphone. They bought up a company that sold a product called the iphone. It sold in very limited quantities. When Cisco bought infogear in 2000 they cancelled the product (years earlier to Apples iphone). They did not sell an iphone since 2000. Keep in mind, trademarks (unlike copyrights or other protections) only apply when you are actively using them. Cisco never marketed an iphone. The company that did no longer existed and hadn't been selling it for a while. Apple looked at the law, realized they could use the iPhone name anyway but tried to do the right thing. Apple first approached Cisco and wanted to buy the name. Cisco wanted an ungodly sum of money and the two sides couldn't reach an agreement. So Apple went ahead and used the name. After Apple announced thier decision, Cisco then slapped the iPhone name on a Linksys phone product in 2006 after Apple already had the iphone ready. The name only appeared on their website. The product packaging and marketing materials for the Cisco/Linksys product NEVER mentioned iPhone, not once. It was just Cisco trying to preserve the trademark (after not using it for *6* years) but it was too late. I don't know, you seem to hate Apple, but from my perspective it looks like Cisco, not Apple, was the greedy one trying to cash in here.

As for your assertion that Apple sued and said "you can't copy out GUI and mouse", that is really simplifying a complex issue to try to make your argument hold water. Sure, Xerox had the first GUI. Have you ever seen it demoed? (Try looking at a youtube video of it, then look at a you tube video of the original mac demo). Sure, they both use Mice, have a graphical interface, and use the concept of windows to display data. However the implementations of these ideas are very different. Xerox had 3 button mice and menus that popped up when you clicked (sort of like a right click contextual menu today). Apple refined that down to a single button mouse and a fixed menubar across the top. They also had the same command with the same key combos in every app. They standardized how each program would behave. All the apps have a File Menu, then an Edit menu, etc. They really laid out file navaigation with a grpahical folders concept. All of these things were different then the Xerox interface. The experience of using the two was completely different. Now when windows came along, they used the same interface ideas Apple created. they had the same File... Edit.. menus. They also fixed the menus in a bar at the top of a window in the same layout as the mac. what Apple sued for was not "hey you have a mouse and a gui and we want it back", they were suing because Microsoft duplicated the experience and interfaced standards they had developed. Sure the underlying ideas of the GUI are the same across all three systems but the Windows implementation very much mimiced the Mac experience whereas Apple did not go and just redo the Xerox interface as it existed.

Besides when Apple got to court, they found that due to some licensing deals they had done with Microsoft to preserve Basic on the Apple II, they had inadvertently given away to rights to MS anyway. Plus the judge found you can't copyright, patent, or trademark an "experience" so I don't know why you're all bent out of shape about this anyway.