OpenWave fires ten-gun patent broadsides at Apple AND Google Apple and Google will find themselves on the same side of the patent court defending against Unwired Planet, which has accused the pair of infringing 20 patents filed while it was known as OpenWave. The 20 patents are split between the defendants, ten for Apple and ten for Google, but it's hard to find any which equally apply …
This is great. The US population needs a wake-up call so that they can realise just how brain-damaged their patent system is.
The "thermonuclear war" needs to happen because, as we all know, no-one wins a thermonuclear war. So Apple, et. al. will be financial destroyed just like those two fucking idiot lawyers who completely squandered their wealth in an acrimonious divorce battle.
Go thermo, Go thermo...
"Method and Apparatus for Informing Wireless Clients about Updated Information"
I wonder how many periods there are in history where we have stood at the foot of the next mountain range of intellectual progress and taken one step back to wallow in the warm cow pat of stupidity.
Why would they allow such broad patents to be established? I mean, I could understand perhaps a broad patent precursor.
"I declare a broad patent for cloning monkeys"
and then you have a two year period within which to posit a suitable patent for the functionality of cloning monkeys. But a full patent for it is just absurd.
Why would they allow such broad patents to be established? I mean, I could understand perhaps a broad patent precursor.
It's not the US Patent Office's to actually do any work, such as looking at patents. It's their job to take a relatively small amount of money for each one, stamp it, fling it in their files and produce statistics that idiots (politicians) can read to prove (in the way that statistics can be read to get the desired result out regardless of the original data or concept) just how innovative US companies are.
It's the role of the US courts to argue the toss about what is valid or not. This is a win-win-lose situation. Win for the USPO as their income is high and KPIs are met, win for the lawyers as they print money arguing over paperwork but lose for everybody else as entire industries are stuck in an expensive quagmire of potential litigation rather than doing anything useful or productive.
AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents
Probably only a very dim light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but maybe it's a step in the right direction.
Because when OpenWave (allegedly, I haven't checked but this is what the author implies) was granted those patents, this was totally new their use case was *not* as obvious as you seem to believe it was.
When WAP was at its peak, apart from a very limited range of niche smartphones, phones were shipped with accessories (that's what they were called before Apple invented the word apps) which were set in electronic stone and never updated. The phones everyone had in their pockets were not phoning home every two seconds because there was no-one to phone home to.
Even to update your PC at home you had to buy a PC mag once in a while to get one of those CDs or DVDs which contained a copy of the most popular FTP sites carrying patches and drivers.
in the current market normal patents just don't seem to work, they last too long for a start, 6 months in the smart phone and software world is like 30 years in the world of steam.
Patents are too broad and last too long for fast moving technologies while being very suitable for slower plodding industries like pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. A year is more than long enough to give a company in the software market a good lead so why do they need such long patent protection?
"But these patents aren't broad because they were filed by a troll looking to make money: OpenWave was genuinely breaking new ground and doing things which had never been done before.
.
But that was a decade ago, and last August the company publicly recognised that its most valuable asset was its patent portfolio. "
Those two sentences are surely contradictory?
Were they just about to release a server-based speech-recognition application? Highly doubtful, isn't it?
OpenWave look exactly like a troll looking to make money out of holding up progress, to me.....
If you were a startup company doing anything interesting, a potential investor would come round and ask about patents. If you had a clue, you would send him to your nearest competitor as fast as possible. If you took the bait, you would waste time and money getting some patents. As your focus was not a product, you would have no income. As your field was new and innovative, you would not have any successful companies to troll. Even if you could hold out long enough for someone else to turn a profit, patent litigation would cost far more than you had. The solution was to file for bankruptcy. The potential investor could then pick up the invalid patents at fire sale prices and sit on them until a rich target infringed them.
Actually, it isn't contradictory at all....
You take a company that is past it's prime, but has a patent portfolio that's actually able to "fire a broadside" as the article so aptly states, right into an ongoing war getween giants.
Part of that war is snapping up "valuable IP" ( part arms race, part restocking ammo ) by buying up companies that have patents that are useful to "the Cause".
Instead of being a company that's slowly sliding into obsolecense, which would fetch a rather tepid price, if the Big Ones were looking at you at all, you suddenly become hot property with the rise in value that goes with it.
Queue fat bonuses for the top brass, happy shareholders, etc.
It's a gamble, but given the fat wallets of some of the players not an insane one.
How Apple and Google go about invalidating broad patents - they'll have to be careful they don't dig up some prior art that also knackers some of their own patent portfolio. Although it would be amusing if Apple successfully invalidated one of these patents only to have Samsung turn around and use their own evidence (now with legal precedent!) against them.
So when a court in the case against Google awards them damages many times more than those awarded against Apple on the basis of market share then that is all perfectly fine and dandy?
That would have a far greter effect on Google's net worth than it would on Apple's finances.
Why don't you put the effort you extend in hating Apple into getting the whole patent system changed. The system is broke/busted/kaput and needs fixing properly.
My attitude is 'a curse upon all of them'. However all of the companies filing suit are merely using the law as it exists. Fixing the law will stop this patent MADness.
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