Wait, Did Apple Just Patent the Ultrabook?

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Scoregie

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I wish.. patents would die.... or apple not sure which one... perhaps... never mind screw this im gonna go eat my oranges
 

HDmac

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Oh, well that's ok because I have a patent for a device that has a screen and keyboard. That device also uses 1's and 0's to complete mathematical problems. Even though these devices have been around for years now, I am going to be filling this patent tomorrow. /patent troll
 
Well, if apple messes with the ultrabooks and ultrathins, they'll mess with Intel and AMDs bottom line as well as the vendors.

I don't think Apple would sue them like that with it. Not Intel at least... I don't think their lawyers are THAT arrogant...

Cheers!
 

bigdragon

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That design looks obvious to me. There are only so many ways you can build a thin laptop. I want to see the patent office write 100 page essays on why they approve things like this. I want to see them justify it. I'm tired of them rubber stamping everything. I'm tired of seeing them take my tax money to fund allowing obvious stuff like this to be patented.
 
[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]Well, if apple messes with the ultrabooks and ultrathins, they'll mess with Intel and AMDs bottom line as well as the vendors.I don't think Apple would sue them like that with it. Not Intel at least... I don't think their lawyers are THAT arrogant...Cheers![/citation]

Yeah really... Don't bite the hand that feeds
 
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Problem is, Apple wasn't the first to design the thin and light notebook. I believe Sony first came up with the design. Apple is just the first to patent it. Apple = patent troll.
 

Tab54o

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Screw apple, ultrabooks suck anyway why is thin so inportant you cant put blue ray drives on it theres hardly any USB ports or anything else. Apple DIAF ASAP, k thanks.
 

DjEaZy

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... there is a way, that i can imagine, to build a thin notebook... why copy Mac Book Air? By trying to to that, you wanna copy apple's success... but the apple's success is in the whole package: hardware and software... ultrabook's success will be then, when M$ gonna built windows 8 intel ultrabook edition... and in a way, M$ did announce something different with the surface... it's nothing like any Mac Book Air clone...
 
I'm sorry but I cannot blame Apple from trying to patent everything that exist under the Sun.
The brainless morons at the US patent office need to be held accountable. They are the ones granting all this bullshit. WTF. I don't think they like the drama cause by it, so they have to be getting paid.
Lets see what Intel and Microsoft do about this..
 

killerclick

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On one hand, the whole patent thing is harming consumers.
On the other hand, if patents weren't protected and profitable, fewer companies would be investing in hi-tech R&D, they would instead just take inventions from enthusiasts (and pay them nothing).
Maybe patents should be valid for only a limited time, and there should be a maximum percentage of the product value the patent holder could ask.
For example, if Ultrabooks really infringe on Apple's patents, Apple could demand like 5% from OEMs the first year, 4% the second year, 3% the third year, etc, until they would lose the patent.
 

dj1001

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Yeah Apple do that sue intel, lets see how you entire product line does without intel cpus. Remember what happened last time you tried to make your own processor or use AMD, your company was in the shitter.
 

teh_chem

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I'm shocked that this design is seen as a "significant improvement" from contemporary laptop designs in the eyes of the patent office. IMHO, it's not a "significant improvement," it's more like a "natural progression."

Also, it was so dumb for the patent office to go from first-to-invent to first-to-file. Regardless, I can't see how this, if truly used in court, wouldn't easily be invalidated by the oodles of prior-art for wedge-shaped laptops in the progress of going to smaller and smaller form-factors over time.
 
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Most of the SHAPE elements of the patent, and also most of the connection elements do seem to conform very well with the Sony Vaio x505 from 2004 (some .
This is very much like the pre-invented iPad shape (1994, Roger Fidler of Knight Ridder Labs) and the millimeter perfect copy of the "futurephone" demonstrated by a junior reserarcher at a mid-nineties digital communication workshop hosted by Microsoft that later "became" the iPhone.

I do like Apple products (and use an MBP daily, next to my Samsung Phone and my PC workstations), but I do also hope they willl be forced to own up the 2.6 Billion dollars they injected as security for banning the Samsung Pad in the US. This is getting ridiculous. And my faith in the US patent law structure has been given a serious whack - again.
 

GozerHozer

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Friday Rant..
As IT director for an Oil Company in Alberta, Canada; I see a few iphones, most blackberry HTC, Samsung.
Zero Apple laptops/work station on any of our networks.
All the production engineers use Intel/Windows.

I just got my wife and myself the new Samsung s3..Love them.
Apple products are ok, over priced for the performance they offer.
From what I have seen, a well priced Intel/Win PC can crunch any Apple in any application.
Ive seen many benchmarks in Video editing and frame for frame, PC is faster and cheaper.

But what kills Apple for me is their PR.
I will give any vendor my money before I ever spent a penny on Apple.

Why did we love AMD?
AMD was the Humble under-dog that tried so hard.

All I think about when I hear Apple is "Apple Chinese slave labor committing suicide"

Im not a Microsoft Drone, but I owe my Career and many hours of fun PC gaming to Microsoft/Intel.
Yep I'm going to say it, too bad Steve Jobs didn't take Apple with him..
 
[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]Well, if apple messes with the ultrabooks and ultrathins, they'll mess with Intel and AMDs bottom line as well as the vendors.I don't think Apple would sue them like that with it. Not Intel at least... I don't think their lawyers are THAT arrogant...Cheers![/citation]

I wouldn't put it past them Yuka. Look what they did to Samsung. They used to use Samsung CPUs in the iPhone. Then they pretty much took the same design and started making their own CPUs, threw Samsung to the side then started suing them and currently the SG Tab is banned from being sold in the US because it "looks" like a iPad, even though Apple doctered photos.

Apple could easily decide to do the same thing to Intel although they would be messing with some very hot fire.
 

twelch82

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The government should investigate and see if there is corruption at the USPTO. With so much money at stake, I wouldn't be surprised to find out Apple is paying someone there to put through dubious patents.
 

Anomalyx

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As IT director for an Oil Company in Alberta, Canada; I see a few iphones, most blackberry HTC, Samsung.
Zero Apple laptops/work station on any of our networks.
All the production engineers use Intel/Windows.
This. Although in a different industry in a different country, nobody here uses Apple products except for a few executives. Unfortunately, we (I.T.) have to support them because they're executives. The executives did decide to issue iPhones to some employees, but every single one of them still uses their personal phone, and only carries their iPhone to give the appearance of using it, to please the higher-ups.
Apple products don't work well in an enterprise environment. They're fine for the email-checker and facebook-surfer types of people, but they seriously lack any capability beyond that. In fact, all our executives that use Macs have to virtualize Windows for every single work-related application. Kinda makes you wonder why they wanted one in the first place, if they have to virtualize the entire time.
 
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The question is not whether this design is better, or whether other companies are doing the same thing now, it is whether anyone had created an article of manufacture (i.e. a device) with this particular design at the time Apple filed the application. If other companies followed Apple's lead and duplicated the design such that an ordinary observer would confuse the two, then they copied. If not no foul.

Don't blame the PTO. Most of the people who work there do the best with what they have and, contrary to most people's belief, the majority issued patents meet the novelty and nonobviousness standards at the time of filing, as they should. Most people look back and say 'that is obvious' but everything is obvious once it's been created.

For the person who blames the PTO for the AIA (i.e. first-to-file), blame congress. The pto didn't change the law. Congress did.
 

teh_chem

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[citation][nom]GozerHozer[/nom]But what kills Apple for me is their PR. I will give any vendor my money before I ever spent a penny on Apple. ...snip... All I think about when I hear Apple is "Apple Chinese slave labor committing suicide"[/citation]

The same manufacturing plants that make Apple devices typically make most of the other mobile devices too, so if you dislike Apple for using them, then you might as well not use any hardware ranging from mp3 players to phones to tablets to full-on desktops.

These plant jobs like the ones with Foxconn are a very very very far cry from slave labor, and generally pay among the highest wages in their job market--so much so that just getting the opportunity to apply means waiting in massive lines, with eventual workers trying to get more hours worked per week whenever they can. The work and cultural values in China are different from the Western world and vice versa, but the work conditions in Foxconn-esque manufacturing facilities are nowhere near slave labor. If that is why you dislike Apple and its business practices then you have a poor understanding of Apple in general.

^^^Said as a generally-non-Apple user (minus an ipod touch). Read up on Apple's history, their business decisions, how they "developed" a lot of the technology that got them where they are (aka, "borrowed" at some point or another). The difference between Apple and most other tech companies is that other tech companies view their contributions to the industry as communal and open to licensing whereas Apple will work against allowing anyone else to have even a remotely-similar product. And and historically Apple has refused to license their technologies because they don't want to dilute their precious brand-recognition and de-value their products. That's why Apple sucks, because they work against communal innovation in technology. Not because they use Chinese factories like every other tech giant.
 

leakingpaint

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Anticompetitive behaviour is what Microsoft have been fined for a couple times in the past, and what Microsoft have done pales in comparison to what Apple have been trying these past few years. Trying to block certain handsets from entering the USA, patenting everything under the sun...jeez I feel sorry for small starter companies...
 
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