Apple turns the flamethrower on Android The details of Apple's patent offensive are now public, and it's clear that while HTC is the target, it's Google's Android that has got Cupertino so annoyed. The patents on which Apple is claiming infringement include obvious things such as the use of a gesture to unlock and rotate the screen based on device orientation, but …
Most of their claims have prior art, so their patents are actually invalid. The event driven system and proxy object ideas came from xerox and apple just copied them without paying for them. The automatically highlighted clickable link idea and the codec url in the media stream is part of the html standard, somewhere from the beginning of the web and both of them were invented by different companies or research groups, who (like xerox) choose not to patent them. For example, the highlighting support existed since ericsson added text support to their mobile phones and that was quite a few years ago.
it makes me so insensed that you can patent a gesture what a stupid f#$@%ing idea. I think i will head down the patent office and patent iwalk
a person moves their leg and places in front of the other. This motion may be repeated
numerous times. The purpose of this new gesture allows the person to travel from point a to
point b.
words do not really describe how hard i want to kick the us patent office in the balls.
Good overview, Bill...but you're missing the salient point. Of course, some of those patents are foolish.
I think what set off Apple is a secret agreement that Google would not activate multi-touch gestures on their Android handsets for a given period. Notice that Google just updated -- maybe a tad early -- the Nexus One to enable multi-touch.
Bosom buddies no more.
I find Apple's attitude difficult to comprehend. As the article says, there will be 10 years of shitslinging and then some dollar will change hands, and by then, the actual problem will have gone away.
Also, half the processes stated as against the patents are performed by any number of different softwares.
The only party who looks bad in this case is Apple. What a bunch of good-for-nothings. I hope the rest of the industry destroys them for this.
"A system in which a software module called an event consumer can indicate an interest in receiving notifications about a specific set of events, and it provides an architecture for efficiently providing notifications to the [event] consumer"
This sounds a whole lot like Amiga Exec messaging system (Commodore Amiga O/S circa 1983 or 84).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
