Monday, July 18, 2011

Apple vs HTC (Android)

Update (18 July 2011): 
"Apple on Friday dealt a serious legal blow to HTC and the Android platform in general. A U.S. International Trade Commission judge has ruled that HTC infringed on two patents Apple submitted in a March 2010 complaint.
(...)
The two patents relate to how data is processed. The first patent is described as a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data,” which Apple says applies, for example, to tapping a phone number and being prompted options to call or look it up on the web. The second is described as a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data,” which Apple says relates to data processed in real-time applications." ~ read more...

Original post (16 March 2010):
Apple has sued Nokia and others before. It now sues HTC for its Android smartphones. Most are software related so a direct attack on Google's Android. Are they too scared to sue Google? Here is how engadget describes some of the 20 patent claims:

"According to the claims, it's a method of moving a GUI object along a path with a non-constant velocity for a period of time"
"scroll behavior: starting a scroll in a single direction locks you in that direction, but starting it at an angle lets you pan around freely"
"unlocking a touchscreen device by moving an unlock image."
"it's technical to the point where we don't feel comfortable saying exactly what it means, but it covers building graphics objects with a processor and outputting them through various means."
"a system specifically described in the abstract as presenting a context-sensitive menu on the screen."
"'983 is from 2001 and describes an OS in which apps can access native system services and those services can make use of data associated with an object."
"it covers parsing data for known structures like phone numbers, address, and dates, and then taking action with that data."
"it hits on the idea that a foreground app can direct a background process to go do some task while the foreground app remains responsive." 


Fuck, they may as well sue Microsoft for Windows. Oh wait, they already did in 1994.

2 comments:

pimp-a-lot bear said...

This sueing strategy sounds like a good idea. I wonder if apple has a patent on this strategy.

Bastards.

annom said...

The funny thing is that HTC already had a touch screen smartphone in 2002. The iphone is from 2007. Apple is not the inventor of the smartphone, GUI or the tablet computer.