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back to article Apple patent disputes Xoom towards Motorola

Motorola could be next on the chopping board for Apple, after the Cupertino giant filed complaint against Moto's Xoom tablet design. Apple struck out at Samsung this week for patent infringement regarding its recently launched Galaxy Tab 10.1. According to Foss Patents, the buck doesn't stop there, though, with Apple also …

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  1. M Gale

    One of these days..

    ...Apple is going to go up against a company that has a lot of phone-related patents. In fact, they may just have done.

    Motorola make a lot of products. Apple make the iWotsits. Motorola can probably survive an injunction against one tablet far more easily than Apple could survive, say, not being able to sell any iPhones anywhere. If Motorola decide to slap Apple as hard as they can, I think the results could be quite amusing.

    Many years ago, I said that Apple are just as bad as Microsoft if not worse. Every day in every way they continue to prove me right. Seriously, patenting a rectangle with a screen on it? A grid of icons? And going after tablet vendors over alleged UI infringements when it was Google that made the UI? How very Microsoftian.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      UI infringements

      Didn't Apple basically invent litigating for UI "copying", I was under the impression that Acorn couldn't release their RISC OS desktop in America because Apple would sue them out of existence. Also, MS various others would testify to Apple's suey nature from the days of early Mac OS/Lisa OS (whatever that was called)

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      1. Velv
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Who's the Daddy!

        I remember many moons ago a spat between Apple and MS over the WIMP interface, both claiming they invented it. They traded blows for months.

        The Xerox slapped the both in the face with their output from Xerox PARC.

        I can see similar on the horizon over tablets and UIs ...

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    What happened to competition?

    Just because Hoover's name is synonymous with vacuum cleaners doesn't mean that other companies can't make/sell vacuums.

    Apple needs to shut up, and the EU competition commission needs to grow a pair and stop these anti-competitive law suits. At the end of the day one hoover, er, I mean vacuum ;-) looks like another. As does one fridge, one car, one pair of shoes........etc. But they aren't sueing each other like this.

    Come on Apple, stop being a pathetic bully boy. The tablet computer wasn't even your idea, neither was the computer, the smartphone, online music service, the word app......catch my drift?

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    1. Steve Todd
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Hoover's original patent on the vacuum cleaner expired years ago

      and anyone who tried making one while it was in force was likely to see their lawyers also. More recently you might want to ask Hoover about how easy it is to make a model based on cyclone technology, which is patented by Dyson who won a law suit over Hoover's use of the technology.

      The whole point about a patent is that it's a government granted monopoly for a fixed period IN EXCHANGE for complete disclosure of how the invention works. When it expires ANYONE who wants to can use the information to create the items themselves, hence the world full of vacuum cleaner manufacturers.

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  3. Alastair Dodd 1
    Devil

    are cupertino

    actually scared of these other Tablets? Because that is what this looks like not just protecting their IP.

    Stupid I say, and bully boy tactics AGAIN from Steve et all.

    6 1
  4. cexcells
    Big Brother

    Nuts

    How are Apple getting away with this, it is nuttier than a wagon load of pralines?

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  5. Steve McIntyre
    Thumb Down

    -1 for the link to Mueller

    He's consistently waging a negative campaign against Google and Android, and writers at the Reg and elsewhere are continuing to lap it up.

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  6. PaulR79
    Thumb Down

    German court ordering EU wide blocking of sales - how?

    This is unrelated to the article but related since they're talking about blocking sales. I know that we're (sadly) part of the EU but since when has one country been able to apply court orders to the whole of the EU without some long, drawn out headline grabbing waste of money?

    0 2
    1. AdamWill
      Reply Icon

      Since the community design process existed

      It does seem like a rather spectacularly badly-designed system.

      See http://www.osnews.com/story/25056/The_Community_Design_and_you_Thought_the_USPTO_Was_Bad .

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  7. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Regardless...

    Even if Apple wins every single court case and every single injunction is granted, they will never get a single pound from me and their goods and services can rot on the shelf.

    1 0
    1. Steven Roper
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      I'm with you brother

      Not only will Apple NEVER see a dollar from me, I won't even allow people to bring their products into my house. I have insisted before - to my visitors' chagrin - that they leave their iPhone in the car if they wish to step over my threshold. I've been so vehement about it that I've actually managed to switch several (now ex-) iFans over to Android phones and tablets.

      I spent a lot of my life thinking that Microsoft were evil. But they are a fucking humanist charity compared to Apple. Microsoft might be greedy, monopolistic and litigious, but at least they don't require vetting of all software by them before publication, reserve for themselves the right to tell me what software and data I can and cannot install, or prevent any third-party manufacturers from making hardware for or expanding on their product.

      Apple are all that I consider to be truly vile - litigious, monopolistic, innovation-stifling, megalomaniac control freaks who want to micromanage every aspect of the closed, locked-down technology they seek to impose to the exclusion of any competitors. They don't partner with any other company; they exist in their own self-created universe, and seek only to destroy anybody who might impinge upon their absolute control of it.

      What I'm hoping for is to see Samsung, Google, Motorola and other technology giants get so sick of this patent-trolling interloper in their midst that they band together, and with their combined legal and financial might, wipe Apple off the map for good. I have promised I will throw a party for my neighbourhood with free beer for all, the day I see Apple file for bankruptcy.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Come on then apologists

    Lets hear you screaming about how the xoom is a blatent copy and Motorola should be innovating not copying.

    And then remember you were pointing at Motorola and saying how they have managed to produce a tablet without copying Apple in the comments section of the Samsung story and why couldn't Samsung do the same. Go and look, the comments are still there.

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/08/09/apple_wins_injunction_against_samsung_galaxy_tab_in_europe/

    Maybe one day you will realise that Apples actions are a bad thing that will stifle innovation. Won't hold my breath though as most of you are so taken in by the Apple marketing machine that you have forgotten how to think and will blindly repeat the mantras that the marketing department spew out. Maybe one day we will find the hidden RDF generator and smash it just to watch all the mindless zombies who no longer know what to do, say, think or buy as they can't receive instructions from the mothership at Cupertino.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    not interesting anymore, but still newsworthy.

    The ipad is hardly the first tablet computer (or a touchscreen only computing device, since basically it's just a big ipod touch).

    It's merely the first "wildly successful" tablet computer - designed right, simple enough for toddlers (or even cats) to use, good screen and impressive battery life...

    ..but this hardly qualifies for the anticompetitive lawsuits.

    If any company is able to get the legal system rolling for such an anticompetitive aim, then the legal system is to blame. It is supposed to work for the benefit of the general public (as well as protecting the rights of the individual, as long as it's not infringing on others'), and in this example it is not doing so.

    It never really was "by the people", but it's no longer "for the people" too.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    rounded edges

    My car also has rounded edges. Being a sportscar, it's also kind of flat from the side and rectangular from the top. Does this mean Apple will sue Mazda too?

    <enter an iCar joke here>

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Exxon-level valuation brings Exxon-level ethics

    Need I say more?

    1 0
  12. kain preacher

    licensing

    I have a funny feeling that if you look at the iphone you see some Motorola stuff licensed in there. I never thought Apple would sue Motorola . Up next apple sues Intel, AMD, nivida and TI.

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    1. P. Lee
      Reply Icon
      Black Helicopters

      Does this attack benefit both companies?

      Do I sense a quick cross-licensing deal?

      That gives Apple's claims credence, protects motorola (from cheap pads from the far east) by pretending there is a legal basis to ban out non-licensed products.

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  13. Dick Emery
    FAIL

    I patent this title. Now pay up.

    The patent system has been broken of r veeeery loooong tiiiiiiime. Just one more reason it needs overhauling. Apple are not entirely to blame. The idiotic patent system is (and greedy legal types).

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  14. Eradicate all BB entrants

    Long slow suicide

    It seems Apple are burning their bridges with existing partners, find a new chip supplier, sue the old one. Both Samsung and Motorola have been big partners in Apples recent boom, but now they have the required share prices, new suppliers and a big market share they seem to think they no longer need their old partners.

    Would you renegotiate a supply contract with a company suing you? Sign a contract with someone who may sue you? To Joe Public Apple are a company taht produces shiny, to tech companies they are quickly becoming someone to avoid at all costs.

    So come on Apple, as you are the only company who innovates these days let's see your design for the GSM module, let's see your extensive patents in regards to battery tech, can we have a tour of your display panel factory and R&D department?

    Taking many parts and putting them together is not innovation, and you don't even do that these days, someone else does it for you. Stick to designing shiny cases and stop suing REAL innovators.

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  15. Teorias
    Flame

    Is the Dusseldorf Court a main stockholder of APPLE?

    Sure seems to be the case...

    What are those judges smoking?

    Apple Weed?

    Thumbs up for Steve Jobs, if you can't outsell them, you can always injunction them, marketing strategy.

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  16. randombrick

    rounded-edge tablet, you say

    Hey, what's this - http://bit.ly/pufrB0

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