Apple sued for iPhone, iPad chip 'patent rip-off' Apple has been sued by the Taiwanese fabless semiconductor-design firm VIA Technologies for – what else? – patent infringement. The patents involved, Via's complaint charges, are for technology used in microprocessors in Apple's iOS products that "generally provides efficient loading of data in the microprocessors and …
I suspect over the next few months everyone even remotely connected with the Android business will be dusting off their patent files and going for the kill. Its a question of survival and since most of them are real companies that make real things they are likely to own a lot of real patents.
Apple are going to find themselves involved in so many law suits all over the world they won't know whether they are coming or going. I suspect they already have a bigger legal department than their R&D one, which is always a pity, and I know they employ some shit hot engineers, I've had the pleasure of meeting a few, but their legal teams going to need to grow till there isn't enough space in all of Cupertino to house them.
...but Eddison was very patent-happy about the Cinematograph back in the day; so much so that most of the film industry fled New York and set up in California in order to escape his reach. Course things were much simpler in those days. Rather than employing lawyers they simply hired toughs to smash up unlicensed projectors. Good times!
Mutually Assured Destruction.
It appears to me that the only thing stopping most large companies from trolling the patent system (appart from bad P.R.) is the fear of attracting litigation over the patents they themselves are potentially infringing.
Apple has upset the cart (to bastardise the phrase) by showing they are prepared to sue over the stupidest things and they should be careful that the gloves don't come off and we see the world grind to a halt under the weight of a lawsuit Armageddon.
How many of these companies originally filed patents for the defensive purpose of stopping themselves being sued by someone else rather than actively suing others? Since the Apple have started to aggressively go after competitors (usually the action of trolls from which the patents protect), maybe others have just gone "sod it, Apple need to be put in their place".
"The tech companies have been keeping fairly quiet on each others patent infringements for years"
But most of the (semiconductor) tech companies which have been going for years signed cross-licencsing agreements with each other in less litigious time ... i.e. company A and company B sign an agreement (sometimes with cash going in one direction as well) to say that neither company will sue the other for infringing the others patents. Now, if you are a new semiconductor company then you may have problem as you don't have these longstandaing agreements in place. In addition, if you are a company that has a history of being difficult with you own IP (remember, USB only came about because Apple wanted too much royalties for thei contribution to firewire) then that may be doubly so.
However, Apple may have patented a "method to stop competitors by throwing patent suits at them" and get a court to rule that VIA are infringing this by suing them!
All I can do is say
\o/ Yay...
Revenge is a dish best served with a subpoena.
Nice to see Apple on the receiving end of their own strong arm tactics. Still hate the current patent system, but as observed previously, they are valid hardware patents and justifiably defendable.
It is not that I hate Apple. Ummm, I just hate Apple.
"Nice to see Apple on the receiving end of their own strong arm tactics."
Incorrect. This sort of tit-for-tat suing and countersuing has been going on since the 1980s. Apple have been the target of patent trolls for years—coincidentally, since they started beating their competitors at their own game. (Seriously Nokia and HTC: how the f*ck did you not see the iPhone coming?)
"but as observed previously, they are valid hardware patents and justifiably defendable."
No, they're only "valid" hardware patents because the USPTO has a policy of wilful ignorance. The integer / floating point conversion procedure described is completely and utterly obvious.
Apple didn't start this. Whether you love or loathe them, the problem here is the USPTO and the US legal system which favours a constant scattergun approach to filing patents, regardless of their actual merits, in the hopes that enough will slip past the USPTO's underfunded and under-educated filters.
THAT is the problem here. Not Apple. Not Microsoft. Not HTC, or VIA, or any of the others. Businesses exist to do one thing, and one thing only: make their owners money. They do so by playing the game according to the rules of each nation. If the US' rules are broken, it's the *rules* that need fixing.
What's needed is the will to address the *cause*, not the symptom. But I see no evidence of this happening.
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