Apple And AT&T Sued For Infringement Over iPhone Haptic Patents (computerworld.com) 71
Haptic technology company Immersion has accused Apple and carrier AT&T of infringement of three of its patents in the latest iPhone models and Apple watches. Immersion, which claims over 2,100 issued or pending patents worldwide covering various aspects and commercial applications of haptic or touch feedback technology, has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban the import of the specified iPhone and Apple Watch models in the U.S., besides suing for damages in a Delaware federal court, company CEO Victor Viegas said in a conference call Thursday. Immersion decided to include AT&T and subsidiary AT&T Mobility in the action because the carrier is the most significant distributor of the iPhone in the U.S.
Cockroaches and patent trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
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Have you even looked at the articles you referenced yourself? Do they even exist?
He seems drunk with his spelling, but it did happen. Though it was "Obama" not Obama. Apple complained to the administration and they lifted the import ban, and it was only a temporary ban in the first place.
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Have you even looked at the articles you referenced yourself? Do they even exist?
He seems drunk with his spelling, but it did happen. Though it was "Obama" not Obama. Apple complained to the administration and they lifted the import ban, and it was only a temporary ban in the first place.
Actually it was one of the ITC commissioners who complained. And rumor has it the other 5 who voted for the decision actually agreed with him, but wanted Obama to step in and finally change the rules on standard essential patent trolls like Samsung.
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Not true! Patent trolls can be eliminated with the stroke of a pen.
Re:Cockroaches and patent trolls (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trolls (Score:5, Interesting)
How about some facts?
1) The McDonalds coffee in question was not only hot, it was scalding -- capable of causing serious 3rd degree burns.
2) Sheila Liebeck was, in fact, very badly burned by the coffee- a vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting.
3) During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992.
4) McDonalds revealed during discovery that, based on a consultants advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit "to maintain optimum taste". Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees.
5) Further, McDonalds' quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185 degrees, plus or minus five degrees. He also testified that a burn hazard exists with any food substance served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would literally burn the mouth and throat.
6) The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages (she had originally only asked for $20,000). This amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee sales.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/c... [lectlaw.com]
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While #4 is true, you've stated it in such a way that it is very misleading. Other establishments did and still continue to sell coffee at the same or higher temperatures, even today. In fact since McDonalds, other major vendors of coffee, including Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Wendy's, Burger King, hospitals, and McDonald's (again) have been defendants in hot coffee cases. I (personally) would consider the above to constitute a fairly large portion of the major prepared coffee sellers and th
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McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would literally burn the mouth and throat.
Leaving aside that McDonald's coffee is not fit for consumption at any temperature, it was common knowledge before this case that fast-food coffee was "designed" to be drunk at your destination, not when served. So yes, it was too hot to drink, but you weren't supposed to drink it. It was also served at common home temperature. Instant coffee is 10% of coffee in the US. So 90% is drip/filter or percolator. I didn't find a ratio between them,
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Leaving aside that McDonald's coffee is not fit for consumption at any temperature, it was common knowledge before this case that fast-food coffee was "designed" to be drunk at your destination, not when served.
Nonsense. No McDonald's employee ever told anyone, "Wait till you get home to drink it". The packaging doesn't say that either.
Face it: if you serve a food or beverage to a customer that will directly injure them if consumed, you're at fault and liable for damages.
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Holy shit batman, that's like suing McDonalds because you spilled hot coffee on yourself.
Actually, it's like suing the water supply company because you spilled hot coffee on yourself.
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Assuming a crime exists and ATT knew it. Otherwise you could go after a gas station for selling gas to a bank robber when they fill up the getaway vehicle before or after the robbery and the DMV for registering the getaway vehicle or issuing the driver license to the getaway driver.
There might be something to the idea but I'm not sure it makes sense.
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Going after ATT might be a big mistake. ATT used to have a huge research department that went deep into computers and devices not related to phones or telecommunications and they have purchased other companies doing the same when they went under. This research was not only in digital but analog too.
ATT might not have a patent on this stuff but they might have prior art that made its way into diagnostic tools or devices for the hearing impaired or even just pagers that could at times vibrate differently for
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Not the same AT&T. AT&T Wireless was purchased by Cingular who promptly changed their name to AT&T Wireless.
The AT&T your thinking of was sold to Alcatel-Lucent long before that.
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I didn't know that. Damn.. still i bet they did stuff close to if not the same in the old days. That would be one hell of an asset to still have available.
What are the actual patents about (Score:5, Insightful)
This is never covered in any coverage of patent cases. The actual substance. Because it is too hard for journalists to understand. So we just get the fluff.
I miss Groklaw.
Re: What are the actual patents about (Score:1)
FWIW, Immersion had been around for a while now. They have reduced their patented technologies to practice and have worked a legitimate licensing model. These are not patent trolls by any definition. Just a technology company working to get paid for the IP they developed first.
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Do they own patents used by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? Controllers have had haptic feedback since quite some time now.
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From what (little) I know, they have a patent portfolio that likely goes back more than ten years. So it's quite possible some of that reads on Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Apple products. Patent suits take a lot of time and a common strategy is to take on one big company, win that case, and then collect license fees from the rest using that judgement as a club.
Re: What are the actual patents about (Score:4, Interesting)
The haptic feedback in the Apple watch is not like the devices found in the Playstation 4 or Nintendo controllers. (Can't speak for XBOX One, sorry.) It feels like a tap, as opposed to the vibration motor modern game controllers use. The practical difference is that in a very short space of time you can count how many times you've been tapped. The vibration motors take long enough to spin up they're very sluggish in comparison, at least in the case of counting the actual buzzes.
I'm too lazy to look it up but I vaguely recall a lawsuit that affected the XBOX and PS2 for the vibration motors in their controllers, but it didn't affect Nintendo because they actually use a different configuration. If memory serves that fueled the rumors that the real reason the PS3 didn't originally have rumble in their controllers was to avoid further litigation. (They claimed it interfered with their SIXAXIS sensors, but the Wii controller showed that was bunk.)
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From what I can tell, all of Immersion's patents are just software patents that are somehow dealing with algorithms or methods of interfacing with haptic devices. Their IP has nothing to do with the actual physical implementation of haptic actuators, be they "rumble" style or linear "tap" style. Additionally, they do have a product line they sell (thus making them more than just patent trolls), which appears to be a kind of SDK for implementing haptics on Android devices, like a haptic studio of sorts.
That
Re: What are the actual patents about (Score:5, Insightful)
The law is "obvious to one skilled in the art".
If the problem, as stated above, was "Have the perceived vibration be constant regardless of where the device was held", any mechanical engineer would tell you the obvious solution is to vary the amplitude and/or frequency of the vibration at the source point so the amplitude at the measurement / sense point is constant.
In fact, due to physics, this is the only way to possibly do that.
So unless the patent is some novel way of determining the sense point and then from there the desired input intensity, where "novel" means "not just doing some kind of exact or simulated wave simulation", I'd say that is indeed an obvious solution and should not have been granted a patent.
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The real test would be to have every patent validated by paying labs full of people to solve the problem solved in every patent application. If the solutions look like the application, then it should be rejected.
One should not be granted a patent just because they were the first to attempt to solve a problem. If anyone who tried to solve the same problem were to come to the same answer, then that answer is obvious, even if identifyin
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They are both the same thing. They only differ in the frequency of the vibration.
Unless there was some new engineering required to create a driver capable of a more tap-like vibration (higher frequency, more like a square wave), there is no difference here. It's like clai
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No, they're not the same thing. The game controllers physically cannot recreate that tap.
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That's why the exact patents matter so much. They are generally invalid (in the opinion of people, even if not the courts). And that's the first line of disgust with the
Haptics Patents (Score:2, Informative)
FTA - "Feedback based on pressure-sensitive interactions with the touch screens."
The real question is, "Did "Immersion" actually invent anything novel, did they regurgitate an obvious concept, or did they describe something that they could not actually pull off?" IANAL, however upon examination of the three patents in question:
8,619,051 [uspto.gov] should be invalidated by prior art of a force feedback joystick.
8,773,356 [uspto.gov] is a meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.
8,659,571 [uspto.gov] is another meaningless over-broad
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At the risk of responding to an AC, I have to point out that you are most likely new to patent law and naive how it is applied.
Re: Haptics Patents (Score:1)
Well, how about refuting his points then? Oh, you can't. Not impressed.
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First, you clearly state that you're not a lawyer. This indicates that you're not a lawyer and certainly not one in the patent arena. It's what you said. You then go on to make some claims and yet you already indicated that you're not actually an authoritative figure.
Now here's what I find concerning... Rather than uphold the law or wait to see what evidence is introduced in court, you seem to think it's okay to go into a courtroom with your mind made up as to how you'd cast your vote.
So you have no skills,
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No software patents period. The US patent office does not have the ability, staff, or expertise required to provide proper scrutiny. The patent office has said this themselves. No one is shedding a tear for Apple. They have a huge legal team and an even larger cash reserve to routinely play as both plaintiff and defendant. They will continue with nary a disruption.
What myself and others deeply care about are the 1-, 5-, 10-, 30-, and 100-person companies who work to bring a product or service to market and
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I can understand that but this doesn't appear to be just software related. It does appear to include software.
I could see still allowing software to have design patents. I'm not sure that I agree but most open source software is protected by copyright. (Calling it copyleft doesn't change that.) At least patents expire.
Re:What are the actual patents about (Score:5, Insightful)
Popular misunderstandings about Apple's "rounded corner" patent make Slashdot's ad-counter spin. Slashdot thrives in commenter ignorance.
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Popular misunderstandings about Apple's "rounded corner" patent make Slashdot's ad-counter spin. Slashdot thrives in commenter ignorance.
You should put the scare quotes around patent not rounded corners. It was on rounded corners, but it was only a "patent", being a design patent.
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In a manner of speaking. Apple doesn't actually have the patent many people around here think they have. My Galaxy S6 has rounded corners, for example.
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There is a difference.
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Enough is enough (Score:3)
We should abandon patents altogether.
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We should abandon patents altogether.
At least software patents. It is also really hard to feel sorry for Apple, since they are the only tech giant not in favor of a patent reform. They seem to like the current patent hell, so it feels appropiate they suffer it.
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At least have "real" patent reform, probably along these lines:
1. Adjust patent periods to two or three times the typical new-product release cycle in the target industry. Pharma or manufacturing tech? Yeah you can have a 15 or 20 year patent. Computers: Here you go, 24-36 months.
That's it, that's all you'd need to do. Even if there was an "obvious" patent in this case, who cares, because the duration is short enough that only really valuable patents would even make it into the system, reducing the worklo
How can anyone claim a patent... (Score:2)
... against a material's proper use? It begs the question why the materials' provider aren't sued.