Apple in patent cross-hairs AGAIN A German patent cash-in outfit called IPCom is claiming $2 billion from Cupertino over the iPhone's ability to give priority to communications such as emergency calls. The Munich-based patent licensing company has received permission from the Mannheim regional court to sue Apple over this patent, applied for in 2000, and …
Apple and Google working together pressing for relief from patents trolls! How is that not a bigger headline than yet another patent troll lawsuit? This troll has already sued Nokia and HTC, and surely Samsung will soon follow.
Perhaps this is a worthy patent, but they seriously overestimate its value by asking one company with only 10% of the overall mobile market share to pay $2 billion. Most people never make an emergency call, and it is pretty much only during major disasters that the cell network becomes congested enough that the "priority" feature would matter - things like 9/11 or the Boston marathon bombing.
Probably less than 1% of subscribers have a circumstance where this patent matters, and as a percentage of all calls placed, emergency or not, it is probably on the order of one in a billion.
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The only thing anyone can do with a patent is get an injection preventing sale of the infringing device. It does not matter that the relevant claim only brings in one pound of extra revenue per century, infringement provides the thread of an injunction. This sets the value of a valid, infringed patent as everything you can afford. Lawyers will tell you that the value of an invalid / not infringed patent is a little under the cost of defending against nuisance litigation. In the real world, the only thing you get from paying danegeld is more Danes.
I'm not so much defending Apple as I am commenting on the virulent, global patent madness that seems to be boundless.
In the 1980s, in Naval (as well as NATO) communications, we had various speed of service/precedence flags for speeding messages through messaging/traffic cueues and shifting them to other circuits.
Z, O, P, R
Z= Flash
O= Immediate
P= Priority
R=Routine
Classification, and other keywords could tweak the message's exposure, how many satellites would carry or redirect the traffic, and how many land-based or relay aircraft would receive or handle the traffic.
That was in the 80s, and this mind-fucking differentiation by civilian mobile phone network is just plain, goddamned STUPID.
Now, if Apple used a proprietary technique, one not taught in rudimentary communications systems, or not taught in schools of programming, signal distortion, mass digital signals communications, or the like, then let the plaintif's case move forward.
But, if Apple's technique/implementation is sufficiently different in method/approach, then drop-kick the compaint out of the court.
Really, patents need to be granted worth if they actually do something for the filing party, and ONLY if the patent filed was novel, non-obvious, and not easily-arrived at if discerning eyes (in or not in the skill of the trade) took a few days of sniffing at it.
At the very least, I suspect NATO and non-NATO military communications/signals designers will probably agree that by 1988, plenty of stuff preceded this awarded patent.
Again, I'm not defending Apple. I'd say the same thing if it were Slumberger, BT, BSkyB, or any other small or large firm being put on the target end of a patent claim.
Patent madness needs to stop. A patent granted protection should generally be a patent in productive, active use with a userbase demonstrating the patent is applicable. If they sit on it, the best they can claim is prior art/copyright, but, only if Apple is using unpublished, non-education-obtained, proprietary methods or stuff to which Apple signed an NDA/non-compete of some sort. (Which, BTW, I have not bothered to look into...)
Is that entity a PAE?
well dssf, do you assume laws are made to allow societies to run in a controllable (to a point) manner. Perhaps orderly is a better term. However, laws are written up by lawyers. A monopoly in short. And what do monopolies/oligopolies do ? Charge maximum price and try to increase work for more of their kind. After all, like petty bureaucrats, most lawyers assume everyone else has infinite time and resources to play silly court theater. How many parliaments are not mostly led or infested by lawyers in the west or advised by packs of them ? BTW, what is the collective for a pack of lawyers ? Another chance of creating a another tedious conspiracy theory.
The claimed invention must have been in use for over a decade and be obvious to a squashed slug. That way there are plenty of people to sue.
Good news: Instead of a court with a judge and jury who are not patent professionals, patent disputes will soon be heard in a dedicate European Patent Court where everybody involved earns their income deciding how much protection money the rest of us have to pay. Even better, thanks to the patent box, they pay tax at a discounted rate. What could possibly go wrong with that?
PS: I have seen an eloquence of lawyers. I have not seen anything for weevils, but there is a sneak of weasels.
Ok,
Color me silly, but how is this a handset issue?
(Granted I'm too lazy to read the patent.)
From the article, the patent deals more with providing priority to cells making emergency calls, which wouldn't be a handset, but the cell tower and cell network which decides which calls are more important or should be given a higher priority. (Assuming congestion issues.)
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