Apple guilty in iPhone ringtone patent rip-off battle with Sony, Nokia Apple has been found guilty of patent infringement and told to pay $3m in damages. A jury in Delaware decided that the electronics giants did infringe a patent from MobileMedia Ideas – a holding company owned by Sony and Nokia – that covered the sound the iPhone makes when there is an incoming phone call. The decision brings …
This is Apple we are talking about here.
Some will say that it should have been 0 patents ruled invalid or dropped even if the patents were crap anyway.
Some of these patents were blindingly obvious and IMHO in the class where they simply added 'on a mobile device' to an existing patents claims.
It's hard to choose a side in situations like this. Stupid patent trolls or MobileMedia Ideas. I mean Apple. I mean MobileMedia Ideas. Damn it, I'm confused about which side is which!
Bottom line, though, is that if you live by the swordsilly patent, you dieget a very minor, barely noticeable scratch by the swordsilly patent.
"This is Apple we are talking about here.
Some will say that it should have been 0 patents ruled invalid or dropped even if the patents were crap anyway.
Some of these patents were blindingly obvious and IMHO in the class where they simply added 'on a mobile device' to an existing patents claims."
These were patents being enforced *against* Apple, not *by* them. Though I suppose you could be making the argument that "if you live by the sword, you die by the sword". Actually, as we're talking about legal argument here, maybe we need a new version: "if you live by the words...etc.".
15 out of 16 patents dispatched. Not a bad ratio.
You only need one to hold up and it's win win win...
Which is why Apple, amongst others, spams the US patent system with ridiculous patents.
The US patent system cashes the cheque and says thanks you without even looking at the application, leaving the lawyers to sort out what is and isn't worthy for years to come... The system is incredibly broken.
If you were a small innovative company, you couldn't afford the lawyers to kill off the duff patent claims, so you're pretty screwed before you even get to market.
Even if you're a reasonably large innovative company, in the words of one patent lawyer "It doesn't matter whether the patent is valid or not".
There are several features our customers are begging for, that we simple cannot offer because the holder of a bollocks patent won't even licence it to us - and almost bankrupted one of our competitors when they tried to fight it.
Just add "mobile" to it, and you have a patent ... Seriously, how can you patent "ringtone" .... sound waves coming from MOBILE device when specific data is received by MOBILE device ... basically, grab all Bell's patents, put "MOBILE" everywhere, cash-in!
That court should be marshaled.
>HOW THE BLINKERED FUCK CAN YOU PATENT A SOUND?!
How the hell can you not have realised that Reg articles tend to skimp on the details, and that it is not a sound that has been patented?
An abstract of the patent in question, filed by Motorola in 1993, is worth reading for the typos (or rather dodgy OCR transcription, I assume):
"This invention shag be designed to be independent of the flap position... ...The sohare [software] shall scan the MUTE key while the tlap is closed, which was not done previously. This invention shag also work while the flap is open since the keypad scan shall scan the full keypad as normal."[sic]
http://priorart.ip.com/IPCOM/000006958
I think in this case it looks like they're patenting the idea of silencing the ringer by briefly pressing the power button, while also still allowing the 'phone to be turned off by holding the power button for longer - both of which are things iPhones do, hence the infringement.
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