Kodak says Apple patent moves prevent any end to its misery Bankrupt photography veteran Eastman Kodak is suing Apple in the US, claiming the fruity firm is trying to interfere with its plans to sell its patent portfolio. Flogging off its intellectual property is a major part of the company's bankruptcy restructuring but it can't go ahead while Apple is claiming that some of Kodak's …
If a competent person (seemingly very few in any given patent office) can't see the "obviously clever" bit in a patent, then it should fail on the "not inventive" step.
Want to argue over ownership? See who it is assigned to: it's there in black/white.
If the assignee company (if any) has since sold/split etc? That should have been handled when buying/selling/splitting the assests of a company. If nobody clearly has a claim to them - i.e. the companies involved were incompetent - then default back to the inventor(s) and be done with it.
>> Kodak says it's been licensing and litigating the patents in question for years and Apple never said a word until it went into bankruptcy proceedings
That's not so related to the bankruptcy itself, but due to the fact that Kodak tried to ban US imports of the iPhone based on those patents, at around the time they went bankrupt.
Clearly a sure way of getting Apple's attention.
Really, every patent case I see recently is always apple, apple apple fucking apple.
Can't the US courts get off their collective asses and go "hmm, apple is bringing up a pretty large amount of patent cases, a lot of them they're losing by a pretty large margin, and then appealing over and over just to screw over the competition. Maybe we shoudl do something to stop this"
I mean honestly, all these patent cases are a massive clusterfuck of apple trying to screw over any competition. Sure by the end of it each case probably cost them a few million, but to them that's less than pocket chage. To the companies they've stopped from selling any product, who've basically lost out on months of sales, as well as the few million for court costs, well that's basically causing a couple of them to risk closing down for good.
Apple are clearly abusing their patents to stifle innovation from other companies. Especially the software patents, which shoudln't even be patentable. I mean come on.
Every time Apple launches a patent case and loses, they should be forced to pay the court costs of the winner, and a sum equal to the projected profit loss from holding off the sale of their items, with projected of course including the fact that the several month delay has probably cost them for a year or so.
That secondary cost should also be payable to the courts.
Cant help but wonder if the lawyer for Apple just has connections to lawyers from all these other companies, I can see it now.
"Hey chad, how much are you charging Samsung per court case? That much huh? How would you like to become a rich man. We'll just sue Samsung over and over, if we lose, we appeal, or go after an equally frivilous patent suit, sure our companies don't get anything out of it, but we'll get RICH!"
... after Kodak sues them first. You're right it's not very surprising, surprising would be if they didn't defend themselves..
Oh and btw I think Kodak is already pretty much screwed anyway, having opened bankruptcy and all. It's not like they would be a market rival to Apple anytime soon.
Apple, according to a piece in Forbes, has around 840 patent claims in which it is the Defendant, way, way higher than those actions in which it is a Plaintiff.
That Apple let is claims rest for years until Kodak hit the rocks, simply demonstrates they didn't act in good faith.
I would imagine that even if the bankruptcy court awarded damages in the amount of $1,000,000 per calendar day per patent where it's patent claims are unsuccessful, Apple would give a damn. All is fair in American business but just maybe a judge will call their bluff,
I can't understand what you're saying.
You're claiming Apple is a prime target for patent claims - way more cases where they are the defendants than they are plaintiffs - yet somehow that makes them the assholes? You might want to cite that Forbes article so we all can really understand what you mean.
As for Kodak, you got the roles mixed up. Kodak where the ones that let their claims rest for years and years until they went bankrupt. Then suddenly remembered they could sue Apple (plus HTC and RIM) for them.
Well its the worst system, except for all the rest of them.
The problem is that there's too many courts issuing different decisions which take forever to reach said decision.
Each state has around roughly 5 layers of Circuit and Appellate courts, the Federal Government has Circuit courts, Appellate Courts, plus the Supreme Court, plus the various boards, commissions, councils, etc.
Its extremely confusing and its set up that way so no individual citizen can bring successful action against a corporation or the government pro se. Its set up by the lawyers to make money for them.
When Apple sues someone, the patents in question are obvious and never should have been granted. When someone sues Apple, Apple is stealing other people's innovations they deserve compensation for.
These patents are as low in quality as 98% of the patents Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Motorola et al have been suing each other over the past few years. Stuff like showing low resolution previews of images while still recording in a higher resolution, and tagging photos with additional information like where it was taken.
For every invention which really is something novel, like SWYPE for instance which I would argue qualifies, there are dozens of obvious patents like visual voicemail. I'm sure I was only about the millionth person to wish my cell phone's screen could display a scrollable list of voicemail messages similar to how call history worked on my Nokia. Took me about a week or two after owning that first cell phone to think this one up.
Maybe we need a website for people to put down their "obvious" ideas and timestamp them, to offer a free way to invalidate stupid patents. I should patent the idea of this website! Actually, nevermind, it was too obvious to me so someone has undoubtedly come up with it already. Anyone got the URL so I can bookmark it? :)
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