A US judge rules Samsung 'infringed' Apple's auto-complete text patent

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25842637

by SifJar • 13 years ago

30 45 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

SifJar3• 13 years ago

Within the article, it shows this image [1] stating that this image "of Samsung's user interface" was included in the ruling. This image does NOT show Samsung's (TouchWiz) UI, but rather stock Android, including the AOSP messaging app and keyboard.

[1] http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/72438000/png/_72438181...

EDIT: On further reading, this is a screenshot from a Galaxy Nexus, which is indeed produced by Samsung, but which runs completely Google Android, not Samsung's TouchWiz interface. Seeing as this is a software complaint, it should be directed at Google, NOT Samsung, who have little/nothing to do with the software on a Nexus device.

josephlord3• 13 years ago

"... Seeing as this is a software complaint, it should be directed at Google, NOT Samsung, who have little/nothing to do with the software on a Nexus device."

It is imported (attached to hardware) by Samsung so why should it not be their legal problem? Now you would hope that the software's provider would indemnify you and/or fight the legal battle on your behalf but that is for Samsung/Google to sort out not the company allegedly being infringed.

Note that I currently have not looked at the patent or this case in detail and I don't yet have a position on validty, infringement or even know if this is Samsung's own software or Google's.

[Edit - Fixed: "so why should be their legal problem."

bgaluszka• 13 years ago

It is imported (attached to hardware) by Samsung so why should it not be their legal problem?

Following that path, do you think hardware manufacturer is responsible for pre-installed software e.g. Asus for Windows, and that companies should sue Asus instead of Microsoft?

zerop• 13 years ago

Has apple patented auto-complete feature on touch screen devices. What if my app auto completes text. Is that infringement.. please help

SifJar3• 13 years ago

Seeing as they appear to have gone after Samsung, and not Google, whose keyboard also has this functionality (and in fact, an image of the Google keyboard appears to have been used in the ruling, referred to as an image of Samsung's), it seems more like a specific attack on Samsung with anything they can find, rather than them tracking down anyone infringing on that specific patent. There are literally hundreds of keyboards in the Play Store that have this functionality, as well as it being a staple feature of every modern mobile OS platform. I doubt they'll care much about your app TBH. You should be safe enough.

gopher12• 13 years ago

But if they did decide to target him, they would be perfectly within their legal rights to do so and poor zerop wouldn't stand a chance.

wilecoyote• 13 years ago

I believe part of the reason is that by suing Samsung, with direct (and substantial) revenue and profits from these devices it is more straightforward for Apple to demonstrate both infringement and damages. The case probably also becomes more straightforward for a jury. In addition, (though this may not be as much of factor here as Apple is simultaneously suing most of the Android device manufacturers) IP lawsuits often begin by targeting weaker parties with a greater chance of victory to establish early precedents before taking on larger or more difficult cases.

ohwp• 13 years ago

I'm reading the patent and can't believe it was approved.

Maybe I don't understand the patent but it seems Apple patented that the auto-complete suggestions are shown under the input field.

So this is all about interaction design.

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

Samsung has good lawyers and deep pockets so there must be a lot more to it. Autocomplete is not a novel invention from 2007.

nitrogen• 13 years ago

Not necessarily. The jury in the previous Apple vs. Samsung trial didn't even fill out the forms correctly when they ruled in Apple's favor. Apple's lawyers tell a compelling story, so it doesn't matter what the facts are.

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

The deep pockets and good lawyers couldn't make the judge even look into Samsung's evidence the last time.

I doubt there is anything more to it, but that's just a preconceived notion after reading a couple (literaly, 2) of other Apple patents.

smackfu• 13 years ago

Yet another part of the mess of software patents is that it took four years from this patent being filed in 2007 to it being granted in 2011. How are companies supposed to operate in that kind of environment?

belgianguy• 13 years ago

They aren't, that's the whole point of it. Increase Android's (or any other competition that isn't Apple or Windows Phone) Total Cost of Ownership, by adding layer after layer of frivolous patent licensing.

Now Microsoft and Apple even own their own patent troll (Rockstar Bidco) and they plan (or already have) made plans to split the patents over many shell companies, which can pass the patents along to each other like a merry-go-round, giving each plenty opportunities to sue a company time after time.

Android has a low cost of ownership at the moment which makes it interesting for OEMs. If Apple, Microsoft, Rockstar Bidco or any other trolls keep on attacking Android, the balance will tip over back to Microsoft for the 'accessible' OS that OEMs will want to license (or risk patent attacks of the likes of giant trolls like Rockstar Bidco), opening the door for them to claim all the ground that Android had to cede, and give or take a few years you'd get the same thing as on the Desktop: Apple small marketshare but high profitability, Microsoft high marketshare which compensates less profit margins. But the open mobile development spirit will be dead, as worst case it'll be a minefield with more trolls than innovators, as the former will deplete the market they're in until it's no longer profitable.

Oracle went after the development (break the programming language -> break the platform), Apple went after Samsung (break their biggest manufacturer -> break the platform) Microsoft went after the other OEMs, a bit more stealthy, but they too have attacked Motorola, HTC directly or through subsidiaries. (Patent tax the OEMs -> force them off Android to their own OS)

Anyway, that's how I see it, and it's not getting any prettier anytime soon. Alas, this is all perfectly 'legal'. So I foresee much more lawsuits that'll strangle innovation and limit mobile software development to the 'happy few', unless the USPTO changes (unlikely) or SCOTUS comes up with a solution to this unholy mess.

gopher12• 13 years ago

Meanwhile auto-completes have been around for far longer. Yet another ridiculous patent gets approved.

I'm sorry but I don't see any meaningful technical innovation by bringing it to a mobile touch screen.

mercurial• 13 years ago

At this stage, it is clear that the US patent system is, many times, leveraged to enable court-backed extortion. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Apple's ethics.

bushido4• 13 years ago

This is not helping Apple's image one bit. In recent months I have been meeting a lot of old-fans of Apple devices who are switching to other mobile manufacturers just so that they do not contribute to the closed litigious innovation killers that Apple has turned into.

Haven't seen as many people switch from Macbooks to Linux/Windows much yet, but have seen a blip in that direction too.

ryanhuff• 13 years ago

Having auto-complete is not the issue. You have to look at the patent claims, which would describe a specific approach. In this case, it seems to involve Apple's specific approach to auto-complete when paired with a touch screen interface.

bushido4• 13 years ago

That is true. AND even more infuriating.

I wonder if I could apply for a patent for sidebar designs and widgets (for increasing interactivity, customization, conversions etc.). Oh wait those have already been applied for and approved, for example:

https://www.google.com/patents/US8209622

hardwaresofton• 13 years ago

Is it me or is it impossible for Samsung to win judiciary battles against Apple in the US.

SifJar3• 13 years ago

The article also mentions blocking the sale of the Galaxy Nexus and the early Galaxy Note models; the GN has certainly not been available for purchase (new) for quite a while now, and I'm sure early Notes probably aren't too abundantly available either.

bushido4• 13 years ago

This is disgusting. I have had auto-complete on my mobile devices for years. Easily as far back as 2003.

Its baffling that this patent was awarded. Even more so that technology innovators are being so anti-competitive and stifling innovation.

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

I'm confused how Samsung's lawyers failed to show prior art or the fact that it was an obvious development. Autocomplete is on every IDE worth a bean, every T9-based phone... even if iOS was the first to bring it to the touch-screen, that's not exactly a huge leap.

sentenza• 13 years ago

I recently listened to a podcast in which they discussed that some Lightning-to-HDMI adapters sold by Apple had an ARM board inside which could actually run operating systems.

If it is possible to patent something trivial just because it is now on mobile or in the browser, then I CALL DIBS on patenting every trivial algorithm that exists out there, but "run on a cable adapter".

loceng• 13 years ago

You've got to pay into the system in order to solidify the dibs - which is what big companies do because they can afford to.

veganarchocap• 13 years ago

More mindless industry stifling courtesy of Apple. They're going around suing everyone because they know they're in decline, because they're running out of their own good ideas.

Like a dying star, they're violently trying to implode everything around it.

josteink• 13 years ago

This is just anti-competitive warfare and plain patent-trolling.

Apple scored 1 billion playing the trolling game last time, for a list over-scroll effect and rounded corners no less.

How much will it get this? Two billion? Who knows, but last time around they clearly got enough to buy another judge.

Utterly disgusting.

natdempk• 13 years ago

Agreed, at this point why not sue 90% of Android's custom keyboard makers into oblivion? At their core most of them have the same feature as the patent. The Samsung keyboard is barely different from the stock Google Keyboard anyways. Selective patent trolling at its finest.

shultays• 13 years ago

I always wondered, can Apple sue them too? Because I saw a couple apps that uses apple kind overscroll lists and wondered if it is illegal

dminor• 13 years ago

Who knows, but last time around they clearly got enough to buy another judge.

Same judge. Still have to convince a jury though.

coob2• 13 years ago

Apple vs. Samsung is in no way equivalent to patent trolling. Patent trolling is done by companies that don't make anything.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

It's not patent trolling because Apple is suing to defend its design as implemented in an actual product.[1] Moreover, I'm going to guess there is more to the patent than just "autocomplete for touch devices" considering Apple is just seeking bans on old Samsung Galaxy devices. Samsung did some very shady ripping off the iPhone in those models, so it wouldn't be surprising if they managed to infringe on Apples' patent even taken very narrowly and specifically.

The usual arguments against patent trolling don't apply to Apple v. Samsung, in my opinion. There is nothing "innovative" about Samsung's early Android devices: they were copy-cat designs that ripped-off Apple in order to get quickly to market and take advantage of the mindshare around Apple's product. That's not a business tactic that should be encouraged.

[1] "Trolling" means to lie in wait for an unsuspecting passer-by, like a bridge troll. There was nothing "unsuspecting" about what Samsung did. This document was damning in the original suit: http://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit-inter....

harryh• 13 years ago

That's not a business tactic that should be encouraged.

Why not?

Fuxy• 13 years ago

Lol, old Nokia 'brick' phones had auto-complete this is completely ridiculous.

Does that mean that now that every phone uses a touch screen no other phone can have auto-complete functionality?

shaneofalltrad• 13 years ago

Another reason to support open source projects, with goals of taking away power and money from the companies who monopolize the market. I was "thinking" about going MAC/iOS recently for development and this just helped me change my mind.

coob2• 13 years ago

Yes yes, software patents are ridiculous. But they are a part of the current legal and business system and until that changes (and it should), Apple or anyone else would be idiotic not to play the game as it exists.

For those complaining that autocomplete is obvious and this patent is 'disgusting', they quite clearly have not read it [1].

The patent describes exactly how Apple's autocomplete implementation works, specifically on a touch screen device with a soft keyboard, right down to when things should appear depending on what punctuation is typed in and how new words not in the dictionary should be added. This is not a 'hurr-durr we invented autocomplete' patent, this is 'this is exactly how our autocomplete works' patent.

[1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

specifically on a touch screen device with a soft keyboard

But also rather ambitiously includes the use of autocomplete using a physical keyboard.

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the keyboard is a physical keyboard that is not a part of the touch screen display.

Which appears to describe a nearly identical system to the one used on www.google.com and in many other places; also for which examples of prior usage almost certainly exist. At first glance, I don't see anything that would prevent this patent from being asserted against a laptop manufacturer.

podperson• 13 years ago

The physical keyboard refers to claim 2, basically implying that the system for responding to suggestions (with gestures) applies whether the initial typing was done on the glass or virtual keyboard. So it's not making such a sweeping claim.

In any event, specific claims can be thrown out as appropriate.

gcb0• 13 years ago

Specificity != innovation.

The job of parent trolls is exactly to write specific patents for common sense things or things they didn't invent, and then file some 200 other patents changing one detail. Now you have a broad net of specific patents.

White hat trolls, like Apple, just skip the last step to not be blatant. But they are still just describing common sense. Which is all patents are in the end. You just have subjective rules to draw a line on how common is the common sense being described. And using punctuation while predicting text is not that clever, sorry to break that out to you.

ZeroGravitas• 13 years ago

I've read it, claim 1 is, in plain English, ”auto-complete on a touchscreen keyboard". All the extra detail they provide adds on to that, to provide defense in depth, but they're claiming the whole enchilada too, just in case they get away with it, because there's no real downside for them to do something so immoral. (You might think that's inflammatory language, but Apple itself talks about theft of IP, yet they'll happily try to steal this from me and you)

josephlord3• 13 years ago

Note that from my understanding the infringement aspect has been decided but the validity of the patent still needs determination by the court. Apple needs to prevail on both to get an injuction or damages.

Also note that it isn't for all auto-complete systems but a particular approach for touchscreens. See the patent http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... or other comments on this thread.

Finally as others point out it is not trolling even if you still think it is abusive use of patents. Patent trolls are companies that have patents that they don't practice themselves that they wait and hide until a juicy target adopts it then they wait under their bridge a little more until it is hard for the target to stop using it then they jump out.

Edit: The BBC op seem to have mangled this article in an attempt to make it accessible (or because the journalist didn't fully read it): http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/us-court-finds-samsung-to...

asadotzler• 13 years ago

Giant US corporation vs giant Korean corporation in a U.S. court. Yeah, that'll be totally fair.

A US judge rules Samsung 'infringed' Apple's auto-complete text patent

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