Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll)

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/09/apple-made-a-deal-with-the-devil-no-worse-a-patent-troll/

by llambda • 15 years ago

301 64 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

oniTony• 15 years ago

This is really really messed up. Besides the usual patent troll options of:

- (costly) settle

- (costly) fight

There is now a third option of:

- (profitable!) join the bandwagon, not get sued (by this particular company), strengthen your own IP defence position by gaining licenses to the entire portfolio that was threatening you in the first place. There's even profit-share for settlement revenue!(Edit: profit-share might be for "board" seats only, but it sounds like it costs IP contributions to get in anyway.) All for a low low cost of transferring over some patents (that are just licensed right back to you). Of course this just enables more of the other companies to get sued.

This has a potential to get really out of hand, really fast. :(

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

Yes,

Once you accept the framework of software patents and all its implication, you have embarked on the project of dividing up the "digital commons".

And to do that, you just need an "alliance of the willing" - ie, you first gather together the muscle power needed to control the turf and then divide the spoils. There's no idealism and no distinction between patent troll and "real company" once the company is playing the intellectual property game.

r00fus• 15 years ago

That third option is what forms the basis of Intellectual Ventures' business model [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures

MBlume• 15 years ago

Remember that the primary power the average HN reader has to fight abuses like this is simply not to work for the companies that engage in this chicanery. Good hackers are valuable, and companies fight for them. When companies do things most hackers consider evil, it should hurt them.

thwarted2• 15 years ago

Apple most likely isn't in this camp, and has enough cachét and goodwill to still be a desirable place to work, but those kinds of companies usually can't recognize good hackers, or even know that there's a difference. They will execute on their harmful and odd undertakings with whoever they can find, quality or not.

This is how we end up with things like spyware being distributed under the guise of marketing.

And patent troll/patent hording companies don't need to hire hackers.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

How is Apple not in the "doing things hackers consider evil" camp? They've been doing such things for a long, long time. I had hoped it might end with Cook as CEO, but apparently no such luck.

maximusprime4• 15 years ago

Surely it's the rules of the game that are at fault here. You can't blame companies for using the rules of the game to their best advantage.

The answer is to tell everyone how much of a ridiculous unfair idiotic idea most patents are.

You shouldn't be able to patent software - it's trivial. You shouldn't be able to patent things like "Touchscreen used on mobile device" - It's obvious.

Patents should be reserved for things that aren't obvious, take a lot of research, and can be done many ways. For example drugs research. They should be denied and ruled null and void for most things related to software/consumer technology.

gregschlom• 15 years ago

Either you stand up for what you believe in, or you don't. The "rules of the game" as you say, were made by the people that are playing it.

So if you believe that some companies have taken the patent game too far and are a nuisance to society, why not take action against it and stand up to your beliefs?

betterth2• 15 years ago

Having spent a whole lot of time researching the effects of patents in the pharmaceutical world, I am really going to question you on that as well.

Do you know who spends roughly the same percent of their revenue on R&D as the pharma companies?

Apple! In fact Apple spends astronomically on R&D. One of the best in the field.

You know who doesn't? Samsung Mobility. Moto Mobility. HTC.

But that's to be expected: we know they're not innovators, they're assemblers.

sunahsuh• 15 years ago

This is the same individualistic fallacy that comes up over and over again. Yes, individual actions matter for your own personal integrity, but focusing on those as a solution to what is essentially a systemic problem ignores root causes.

Society is a system that's just waiting to be hacked, if you're willing to start seeing it that way.

feralchimp2• 15 years ago

Society is a system made up of point-masses of personal integrity (or lack thereof). "The system" didn't make Apple decide to fuck over consumers by jumping on board with a patent troll; that decision was made by a group of specific persons who deserve neither my respect or my business.

Don't reward moral cowardice by hacking your own mind into considering it "just the way things are." Make the bastards work a little harder to buy you out, at least.

EvilLook• 15 years ago

The whole damn valley is a pussy just waiting to get fucked.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

How much progress has been made in reforming patent software laws so this kind of shit stops happening?

luriel• 15 years ago

Zero.

div• 15 years ago

Very little to none.

Software patent laws are largely written by people paid by companies who:

a) have a lot of patents

b) invested billions buying up patents

c) would very much like to see those patents as an asset which makes them money

d) would very much like to see those patents as a weapon to stifle competitors

Extra patent laws that are introduced as bills are almost always laws that make the current state of affairs worse.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

This country is so corrupt

SomeCallMeTim2• 15 years ago

I don't get why they didn't mention a very obvious reason why Apple would sell a patent to a patent troll:

They want the troll to sue someone with whom they have a reciprocal patent portfolio license.

Most big companies are members of lots of these agreements, where any patent owned by one company is licensed to the other, and vice versa.

If Apple is simply a licensee of the patent now, and doesn't own it, then presumably it wouldn't be part of their reciprocal licenses with other companies any more, and the troll would be able to sue?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, here. (The most likely way I could be wrong is that the standard reciprocal agreements cover all patents owned during the term of the license, in perpetuity -- i.e., selling a patent doesn't invalidate the reciprocal license. Even then, they may be planning to sign a new reciprocal patent license with, say, Samsung, who just won the ability to block shipments of iOS devices that support HPSA, but they still want someone else to be able to sue Samsung...?)

fpgeek• 15 years ago

AFAIK, Apple's most prominent cross-licensees are Microsoft and Nokia. If you're right, this looks like part of a pre-emptive strike against WP7. That is at least a bit surprising because the previous indications had been that Apple was fine with a iOS / Windows Phone duopoly in mobile.

jsnell2• 15 years ago

Note that a few months back Microsoft and Nokia sold a very significant amount of patents (reportedly 2000) to a patent troll company.

maeon3• 15 years ago

How the heck do you BUY a patent and sell licenses to multiple third parties? How does this maintain the spirit of patents where we encourage innovators?

Say I want to build a new phone in the shape of a rectangle, black, with beveled edges? oops I have to purchase licenses from a gigantic enterprise which has the patents on "rectangle", "black" and "beveled edges".

Well, maybe it's too much work to build a new piece of technology, I can't make it work with all the fire hoops to jump through! Guess I'll get into selling apples on the side of the road, that is until somebody patents that.

praptak• 15 years ago

Selling actual apples is safe (for now) but you better not have "apples" in your company name.

dextorious3• 15 years ago

"""How does this maintain the spirit of patents where we encourage innovators?"""

You think anyone in Congress cares about the spirit of the law?

Once a body of patents exists and is owned by big lobbying companies, it's all about protecting them.

Similar to the copyright protection, that just keeps expanding to the whims of Disney et al.

akg• 15 years ago

Reminds me of a company that I worked for in the past. They tried to sue me for patent infringement long after I had left and started my own company. They of course had no case, but it does cost significant resources for a small startup to fight a multimillion dollar enterprise. All that wasted effort could be better spent developing real products and actually providing value -- on both ends. Not sure why big companies are so afraid of the "little guy" flying under the radar.

petrichor• 15 years ago

the implications of this article are potentially disturbing, but i can't even muster the energy to get upset by these things anymore. i just have this feeling that the bad guys one; it's over. (or maybe we're just in the empire strikes back phase of things)

honestly, i think the most surprising thing about this article is that it was written for techcrunch, and it contains actual journalism. how refreshing to read something in the tech press that is not just linkbait aimed at activating whichever legion of fanboys.

good work Jason Kincaid,

teyc• 15 years ago

If this is aimed at the big products like WP7 and Android, then Apple better think it through carefully.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK famously said:

     any missile attack from Cuba would be
     considered an attack from Soviet Russia and
     bring "a full retaliatory response" from
     the United States against Russia itself.

Transferring your weapons to a third party and then saying you have no control over what a third party does will be viewed dimly indeed.

joelmichael• 15 years ago

In the patent wars, patent trolls will prove to be valuable allies.

ypcx2• 15 years ago

This is great, and exactly what we need. Through the patent war, massive losses must be incurred on the richest corporations, until one (or more) of them say "enough", and use their money to lobby the patent system into oblivion.

OstiaAntica• 15 years ago

Actually, this is a barrier to innovation and small, disruptive newcomers. The richest corporations are using patents to lockup the marketplace and secure the status quo.

ypcx2• 15 years ago

But this barrier can only fall if the titans make it fall. Probably makes sense to expect that the titans will try to make it only fall for themselves, but I don't think that would work. How that works exactly is what we see now. Hopefully soon it will be cheaper for the titans to allow newcomer competition than to continue this war. But then, maybe not!

tobiasu• 15 years ago

Why the downvotes? It's one of the more plausible ways that could end the global patent system, whether you like it or not.

chaostheory• 15 years ago

Not sure if I understand it well enough but is this Apple's version of pulling an SCO?

va_coder• 15 years ago

It's trendy to knock TechCrunch down but you have to admit that's some good journalism.

feralchimp2• 15 years ago

Couldn't agree more. I've never been a fan of TC, and am something of an Apple fanboy, but they stepped in it here and I'm glad TC did the homework to call them on it.

SODaniel• 15 years ago

The fact that Steve Jobs pioneered the '1984' style commercials that Futurama so successfully parodied is a testament to the fact that you can indeed become larger then your cult.

Apple today is one of the champions of collecting personal information, defenders of monopoly on a scale that Microsoft can only dream of, and one of the largest collectors of non-essential patents.

'I'm Loving It'

juliano_q2• 15 years ago

Interesting how recently I am feeling more guilty using my Apple products (Macbook, iPod) and less guilty using my Android cellphone. Apple's attitudes related to patents is really starting to be a deal breaker to me.

I may be looking for notebooks alternatives next year. It is a bit sad because I love the build quality from Apple's products, but I like to think that I value my morals more than my consumism.

josefresco• 15 years ago

If you value your morals, the other two choices aren't much better. Apple might be making headlines now for their patent shenanigans but next week it could very well be the other two.

trobertson• 15 years ago

I am assuming that by "other two", you are referring to Google and Microsoft. Microsoft has a history of shady tactics, but they've been relatively "good" recently. They could easily fall back into bullying tactics, if they wished to. Although they do have tons of antitrust agreements they have to honor.

Google, on the other hand, has no history whatsoever of using patents offensively. I don't think [1] they've made a single offensive patent case, ever. If the morality of a company is going to affect your choice, Google is by far the better choice.

[1]: I haven't verified this statement. It probably doesn't hold true for some of the companies that they have purchased, e.g. Motorola Mobility.

podperson• 15 years ago

Well let's see: Google bought Motorola to use it as a patent hammer.

Microsoft has a long history of strategically settling lawsuits with patent and IP trolls (remember SCO's lawsuit against Linux? Funded by Microsoft paying them to license stuff that they could (a) easily have fought or (b) paid far less for; similarly Burst's lawsuit against Apple over QuickTime was funded by a Microsoft settlement).

juliano_q2• 15 years ago

I dont agree. Google refused to enter the patent war and was heavily bashed for years. They bought Morotola to use the patents to defend their partners. They are not using patents offensively, as far as I know.

poutine4• 15 years ago

Both Apple and Google are massive multinationals driven by shareholders for profit and couldn't give a shit about your interests where they don't align with their own. It's time that a good portion of the community here grows up and stops identifying personally with large corporate products.

angli• 15 years ago

I agree with some other commenters here that the correct response here is not to blame Apple. Yes, it's fashionable to attack them these days, but it honestly isn't their fault.

The rules of the game fundamentally change when you add software patents to the mix. All it takes in this new world to ban a competitor's products is a vague patent and a sympathetic judge. Apple, in fact, has now been on both sides of this issue – suing Samsung's products out of the EU, and losing an injunction to Motorola in Germany.

You can't blame Apple (or any of the other companies who may emerge) for playing this game. If they can prevent their products from being pulled off the shelves, it's stupid not to.

It's akin to (as many have noted) the problem of nuclear proliferation. Blaming Apple is like blaming the US for not unilaterally disarming. Sure they didn't, but it's understood that they had a good reason, and, out of self interest, should have done exactly what they did.

gvb• 15 years ago

Blaming Apple for giving patents to patent trolls is like blaming Pakistan for providing key information to help North Korea build nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass...

denzil_correa• 15 years ago

It's no longer an Apple to Apple comparison after all. :-)

Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll)

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