The U.S. International Trade Commission handed down a ruling Monday that certain features of HTC’s Android phones infringe upon a patent owned by Apple. The order would prevent HTC from importing infringing handsets beginning in April 2012, but HTC has said it will simply remove the related features rather than lose business. Apple has won several patent cases abroad, but this marks its first high-profile score in the US.
The infringement has been narrowed down to two claims revolving around “data tapping”, refering to the ability to tap on a phone number, address, or date in an email or webpage and then be able to make a phone call, map an address, make a calendar appointment, etc.
Clearly a small part of the mobile experience, but a W is a W, I guess.
Of course, Apple, via a spokeswoman quoted by Jessica E. Vascellaro in the Wall Street Journal, was pretty hard-nosed in response to the win: “competitors should create their own original techology, not steal ours.”
Oh snap.
(Hope no one from Xerox PARC was reading that.)
Whether this or continuing claims will cause functionality roll-backs among all Android devices is unclear. In an ideal world, this will spark innovation to find new ways of doing similar things. In reality, it will more likely result in settlements with Apple by the infringing companies.
So maybe someone will profit directly from Android after all.
Source: Wall Street Journal
yeah. i think we're barely out of the wild west of mobile computing, and rulings like this are going to establish the legal side of the way the business and market will work. unfortunately, the legal side is coming out of an extremely progressive, litigious, entitled society (very POST-wild west), so its effect on ingenuity is pretty tangible.
i'm torn, and glad i don't have to decide these things, because i believe that innovators should profit from their ideas and have some protection over them, but also agree with the sentiments here regarding the grey area of what is a process, what is a technical manifestation of an idea, what is just the nature of using something, etc.
to put it in terms of another tech, i think a company could definitely patent a coffeemaker that shuts off with a timer after 2 hours, but i'm not sure they could patent the idea of an automatic shut-off. but in our litigious society (and with Apple's billions on the front lines of the legal war), the boundaries are being set far within the idea realm than they would have been at any time previous, i suspect.
thanks for the comments, guys.
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LikeYes this is not a unique gesture, its the crazy patents that apple has gotten away with getting with there $$$ that is whats going to try to bring down android, like steve said hell spend all trillion dollars to ruin android. They say come up with there own ideas, like tapping on data and it letting you add or take you somewhere is unique and should be granted a patent, I think not.
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LikeThese "patents" are pure fraud. Its so sad that rulings are in favor of patents that clearly have been illegally granted (as they violate the requirements for a patent to be unique and not being a "process". They are patenting results
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