Apple to appeal five-year-long patent battle after $439.7 million loss - Sensationalist Headlines

[url]https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/16/16482568/apple-virnetx-facetime-patent-battle-loss-appeal-planned[/url] [QUOTE]Apple has been ordered to pay $439.7 million to the patent-holding firm VirnetX for infringing on four patented technologies that were apparently used in FaceTime and other iOS apps. While this is the final judgement from the US District Court the case is being argued in, Apple tells The Verge that it plans to appeal the ruling — continuing this long-running patent battle, which began back in 2012. VirnetX first filed suit against Apple in 2010, winning $368 million just two years later. It then sued again in 2012, which is the suit that’s being ruled on today. Apple initially lost the suit, then filed for a mistrial. It won a new trial, lost that trial, was ordered to pay around $300 million, then lost some more and is now having that amount upped even further. That’s because a judge found Apple guilty of willful infringement, bumping its payment amount from $1.20 per infringing Apple device to $1.80 per device. Those include certain iPhones, iPads, and Macs. VirnetX says the ruling is “very reasonable.”[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]The US Patent and Trademark Office recently invalidated all four of the patents that VirnetX is suing over. But VirnetX can appeal that decision; and until all appeals are decided, the patents remain enforceable, which is why Apple is still on the hook.[/QUOTE]

Doesn't seem to mention what they're actually infringing on?

[QUOTE=Enola;52785411]Doesn't seem to mention what they're actually infringing on?[/QUOTE] This source lists the actual patents: [url]http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/24/apples-facetime-subject-of-renewed-voip-patent-infringement-lawsuit[/url]

[QUOTE=Enola;52785411]Doesn't seem to mention what they're actually infringing on?[/QUOTE] [quote]As described in various patent embodiments, a first user might open a VoIP app to place a call to a second user. When that program connects to the internet, it transmits its current IP address to an offsite server, which simultaneously logs that IP information and marks the first app as "online." The server determines whether the second user is also online using the same method. If the second user is marked as "online," the server forwards their IP address information to the first user, who can then send a request to communicate. Importantly, when a user logs off, the database is updated to reflect their current status. [/quote] I don't know how you patent storing an IP address, but there you go, apparently they have a patent on that.

[QUOTE=Gbps;52785955]I don't know how you patent storing an IP address, but there you go, apparently they have a patent on that.[/QUOTE] Because the US patent office never caught up with technology

[QUOTE=C0linSSX;52786003]Because the US patent office has never caught up with technology[/QUOTE] Well it says in the OP that they've recently taken that patent away from them, probably because of this reason. Although, that doesn't stop them from appealing, so who knows where that can go.

just thinking about that amount of money is insane imagine having even like a trillion, jfc

Funny how apple wants to appeal patents while they have ridiculous ones of their own.

this is exactly why excessively vague software patents are fucking dumb.

[QUOTE=Sableye;52787110]this is exactly why [b]software patents[/b] are fucking dumb.[/QUOTE] ftfy

There's a reason why the EPO doesn't allow patents for software by itself. Doing something with a computer isn't automatically inventive. It's just obvious.

[QUOTE=Morgen;52787588]Doing something with a computer isn't automatically inventive. It's just obvious.[/QUOTE] How's it any different from a patent on, well, anything else? Patents have always been allowed on things that seem obvious in retrospect but were genuinely novel for their time. If you look at manufacturing patents they're chock-full of these extremely minor or broad-reaching claims but they never seem to draw ire the way software patents do. Apple was granted some bullshit patents and the courts are rightly taking them away, but I don't understand this idea that software patents in general shouldn't exist.

[QUOTE=Morgen;52787588]Doing something with a computer isn't automatically inventive. It's just obvious.[/QUOTE] Not gonna lie, I respect you less for legitimately holding that view. How can you actually think that all software development is obvious?

[QUOTE=phygon;52788220]Not gonna lie, I respect you less for legitimately holding that view. How can you actually think that all software development is obvious?[/QUOTE] I think the "automatically" is key here. The program needs to actually be inventive to warrant patenting.

[QUOTE=phygon;52788220]Not gonna lie, I respect you less for legitimately holding that view. How can you actually think that all software development is obvious?[/QUOTE] I lost my list on why software patents suck, so i'm going to quote RMS: It is not about patenting software. That is a very bad way, a misleading way to describe it, because it is not a matter of patenting individual programs. If it were, it would make no difference, it would be basically harmless. Instead, it is about patenting ideas. Every patent covers some idea. [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20150329143651/http://progfree.org/Patents/patents.html"] Software patents[/URL] are patents that cover software ideas, ideas which you would use in developing software. That is what makes them a dangerous obstacle to all software development. Copyrights last tremendously long. In some cases they can last as long as 150 years, where patents last 20 years, which is long enough that you can outlive them but still quite long by a timescale of a field such as software. Think back about when a PC was a new thing. Imagine being constrained to develop software using only the ideas that were known in 1997. So, what is the first thing you are going to do after you have had an idea of what kind of program you are going to write? The first thing you might want to try to do to deal with the patent system is find out what patents may cover the program you want to write. This is impossible. The reason is that some of the patent applications that are pending are secret. After a certain amount of time they may get published, like 18 months. But that is plenty of time for you to write a program and even release it not knowing that there is going to be a patent and you are going to get sued. This happened in 1985 when a patent regarding LZW was given, a program called compress used this algorithm (compress dates back to 1984) Now, people used to say to me, “Well, there are patents in other fields, why should software be exempt?”. Note the bizarre assumption in there that somehow we are all supposed to suffer through the patent system. It is like saying “Some people get cancer. Why should you be exempt?” As I see it, each person who doesn't get cancer is good. But there is, behind that, a less biased question, which is a good question which is: Is software different from other fields? Should patent policy be different in different fields? If so, why? Let me address that question: patents relate to different fields differently because in various fields patents relate to products differently. On one extreme we have pharmaceuticals where a given chemical formula would be patented, so that patent covers one and only one product. Some other product wouldn't be covered by the existing patent. If there is to be a patent for this new product, the patent holder would be whoever developed the new product. That fits in with the naive idea of the patent system that we have, that if you are designing a new product, you are going to get “The Patent”. The idea that there is one patent per product and that it covers the idea of that product. In some fields it is closer to being true. In other fields it is further from being true. This is because software packages are usually very big. They use many different ideas in a new combination. If the program is new and not just copied, then it is probably using a different combination of ideas combined, of course, with newly written code, because you can't just magically say the names of these ideas and have them work. You have to implement them all. You have to implement them all in that combination. The result is that even when you write a program, you are using lots of different ideas, any one of them might be patented by somebody. A pair of them may be patented as a combination by somebody. There might be several different ways of describing one idea which might be patented by various different people. So there are possibly thousands of things, thousands of points of vulnerability in your program, which might be patented by somebody else already. This is why software patents tend to obstruct the progress of software—the work of software development. If it were one patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the development of products because if you developed a new product, it wouldn't be patented by somebody else already. But when one product corresponds to many different ideas combined, it becomes very likely your new product is going to be patented by somebody else already. In fact, there is economic research now showing just how imposing a patent system on a field where there is incremental innovation, can retard progress. You see, the advocates of software patents say “well yes, there may be problems but more important than any problems, the patents must promote innovation and that is so important it doesn't matter what problems you cause”. Of course, they don't say that out loud because it is ridiculous but implicitly they want you to believe that as long as it promotes progress, that outweighs any possible cost. But actually, there is no reason to believe it does promote progress. We now have a model showing precisely how patents can retard progress. The case where that model can fit describes the software field pretty well; Incremental innovation.

[QUOTE=eirexe;52789188]I lost my list on why software patents suck, so i'm going to quote RMS: It is not about patenting software. That is a very bad way, a misleading way to describe it, because it is not a matter of patenting individual programs. If it were, it would make no difference, it would be basically harmless. Instead, it is about patenting ideas. Every patent covers some idea. [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20150329143651/http://progfree.org/Patents/patents.html"] Software patents[/URL] are patents that cover software ideas, ideas which you would use in developing software. That is what makes them a dangerous obstacle to all software development. Copyrights last tremendously long. In some cases they can last as long as 150 years, where patents last 20 years, which is long enough that you can outlive them but still quite long by a timescale of a field such as software. Think back about when a PC was a new thing. Imagine being constrained to develop software using only the ideas that were known in 1997. So, what is the first thing you are going to do after you have had an idea of what kind of program you are going to write? The first thing you might want to try to do to deal with the patent system is find out what patents may cover the program you want to write. This is impossible. The reason is that some of the patent applications that are pending are secret. After a certain amount of time they may get published, like 18 months. But that is plenty of time for you to write a program and even release it not knowing that there is going to be a patent and you are going to get sued. This happened in 1985 when a patent regarding LZW was given, a program called compress used this algorithm (compress dates back to 1984) Now, people used to say to me, “Well, there are patents in other fields, why should software be exempt?”. Note the bizarre assumption in there that somehow we are all supposed to suffer through the patent system. It is like saying “Some people get cancer. Why should you be exempt?” As I see it, each person who doesn't get cancer is good. But there is, behind that, a less biased question, which is a good question which is: Is software different from other fields? Should patent policy be different in different fields? If so, why? Let me address that question: patents relate to different fields differently because in various fields patents relate to products differently. On one extreme we have pharmaceuticals where a given chemical formula would be patented, so that patent covers one and only one product. Some other product wouldn't be covered by the existing patent. If there is to be a patent for this new product, the patent holder would be whoever developed the new product. That fits in with the naive idea of the patent system that we have, that if you are designing a new product, you are going to get “The Patent”. The idea that there is one patent per product and that it covers the idea of that product. In some fields it is closer to being true. In other fields it is further from being true. This is because software packages are usually very big. They use many different ideas in a new combination. If the program is new and not just copied, then it is probably using a different combination of ideas combined, of course, with newly written code, because you can't just magically say the names of these ideas and have them work. You have to implement them all. You have to implement them all in that combination. The result is that even when you write a program, you are using lots of different ideas, any one of them might be patented by somebody. A pair of them may be patented as a combination by somebody. There might be several different ways of describing one idea which might be patented by various different people. So there are possibly thousands of things, thousands of points of vulnerability in your program, which might be patented by somebody else already. This is why software patents tend to obstruct the progress of software—the work of software development. If it were one patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the development of products because if you developed a new product, it wouldn't be patented by somebody else already. But when one product corresponds to many different ideas combined, it becomes very likely your new product is going to be patented by somebody else already. In fact, there is economic research now showing just how imposing a patent system on a field where there is incremental innovation, can retard progress. You see, the advocates of software patents say “well yes, there may be problems but more important than any problems, the patents must promote innovation and that is so important it doesn't matter what problems you cause”. Of course, they don't say that out loud because it is ridiculous but implicitly they want you to believe that as long as it promotes progress, that outweighs any possible cost. But actually, there is no reason to believe it does promote progress. We now have a model showing precisely how patents can retard progress. The case where that model can fit describes the software field pretty well; Incremental innovation.[/QUOTE] I know what a software patent is, but it's important to take a step back, and a big one. The thing is, when you're talking about full stack development, the meaningful line between a piece of of software and a subsystem inside a piece of software blurs to the point of being completely arbitrary. Defining 'a program' as a separate entity from patents on more 'internal' systems is ill-defined, primarily because the distinction is pretty much invented and often isn't applicable. Let's say that I make a piece of navigation/map software. This uses a commonly algorithm in a novel, inventive, and new way, allowing users to bypass traffic entirely. The patent spec is a patent for tech that "Applies [algorithm] to predictive user data mangled with [some other data set] in computer systems to allow faster travel". Assuming the actual spec truly was inventive and new, that would be a valid patent for a program. But then, consider if Apple or Google were to take this tech and then make it a sub-module in their systems. If the patent only applied to whole programs, it no longer protects me. Or, what if I initially created this thing as a sub module to sell to another company? Do I no longer get copyright protection because I decided to produce a library instead of a standalone application? I'm not saying that patent trolls are valid, nor am I really offering a solution to this issue, because I can't think of any good ones at the moment- but it is important to realize that software patents can be used for protecting legitimate innovation as well as for frivolous lawsuits, and it's not solidly black or white. I think that instead of addressing the patent awarding system directly, we should probably be looking at solutions to this problem that rely on the actual handling of patent law enforcement-side, since it seems like a much more manageable point at which to try to fix this mess. I think that Software Patents reveal a larger issue with the concept of patent enforcement the way that we handle said enforcement more boldly than other industry, because we're more closely interacting with the tech so we have a deeper understanding of it. However, patents remain important so long as capitalism is a thing, and they are intrinsic to keeping private research as a thing that exists.

[QUOTE=eirexe;52789188] Now, people used to say to me, “Well, there are patents in other fields, why should software be exempt?”. Note the bizarre assumption in there that somehow we are all supposed to suffer through the patent system. It is like saying “Some people get cancer. Why should you be exempt?” As I see it, each person who doesn't get cancer is good. But there is, behind that, a less biased question, which is a good question which is: Is software different from other fields? Should patent policy be different in different fields? If so, why? Let me address that question: patents relate to different fields differently because in various fields patents relate to products differently. On one extreme we have pharmaceuticals where a given chemical formula would be patented, so that patent covers one and only one product. Some other product wouldn't be covered by the existing patent. If there is to be a patent for this new product, the patent holder would be whoever developed the new product. That fits in with the naive idea of the patent system that we have, that if you are designing a new product, you are going to get “The Patent”. The idea that there is one patent per product and that it covers the idea of that product. In some fields it is closer to being true. In other fields it is further from being true. This is because software packages are usually very big. They use many different ideas in a new combination. If the program is new and not just copied, then it is probably using a different combination of ideas combined, of course, with newly written code, because you can't just magically say the names of these ideas and have them work. You have to implement them all. You have to implement them all in that combination. The result is that even when you write a program, you are using lots of different ideas, any one of them might be patented by somebody. A pair of them may be patented as a combination by somebody. There might be several different ways of describing one idea which might be patented by various different people. So there are possibly thousands of things, thousands of points of vulnerability in your program, which might be patented by somebody else already. This is why software patents tend to obstruct the progress of software—the work of software development. If it were one patent-one product, then these patents wouldn't obstruct the development of products because if you developed a new product, it wouldn't be patented by somebody else already. But when one product corresponds to many different ideas combined, it becomes very likely your new product is going to be patented by somebody else already. In fact, there is economic research now showing just how imposing a patent system on a field where there is incremental innovation, can retard progress. You see, the advocates of software patents say “well yes, there may be problems but more important than any problems, the patents must promote innovation and that is so important it doesn't matter what problems you cause”. Of course, they don't say that out loud because it is ridiculous but implicitly they want you to believe that as long as it promotes progress, that outweighs any possible cost. But actually, there is no reason to believe it does promote progress. We now have a model showing precisely how patents can retard progress. The case where that model can fit describes the software field pretty well; Incremental innovation.[/QUOTE] When I saw this big post I was a little excited to see if maybe someone had explained why software is different, but you've given basically nothing factual of substance. You described why it's different from pharmaceuticals, but engineering works [I]exactly[/I] the way you describe software. You do not patent 'the product'. You patent the process, the method, the design, the features, all the little individual components that make up not only the product but the way the product is made, packaged, and distributed. Every engineer of historical note has had projects where they design around existing patents rather than license them. Most have had products which involve filing multiple or even [I]dozens[/I] of patent applications to cover the specific, unique concepts involved in their development. And virtually every new product is incremental progress, not revolutionary, which commonly involves licensing existing patents used in the design. We have almost two centuries of evidence that the basic system works in major industries, and countries that failed to recognize patent law did not demonstrably enjoy a competitive advantage ostensibly by removing arbitrary barriers to innovation. Every argument I've seen dealing with failures in software patent law has concerned granting of overly-broad patents, allowing rightsholders to quash or extract undeserved royalties from wholly unrelated work. It's a corruption of the original purpose of patent law, which was to cover novel technologies in their specific application, not to cover ideas. But that's a far cry from saying that patents aren't applicable to software at all due to inherent differences in the industry, which you haven't demonstrated.

[QUOTE=phygon;52788220]Not gonna lie, I respect you less for legitimately holding that view. How can you actually think that all software development is obvious?[/QUOTE] Because under EPO patent law it needs to have a technical effect. It being on a computer doesn't automatically make it so. It can be patentable if it has a technical effect such as improving memory management for computers, or reducing disk access times and such. Having an invention that does that would be fine to patent, however implementing it as software sepetately wouldn't be and would be considered obvious. You can have software patents but over here in Europe they are much harder to get: [url]https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines/e/g_ii_3_6.htm[/url]

[QUOTE=Morgen;52791471]Because under EPO patent law it needs to have a technical effect. It being on a computer doesn't automatically make it so. It can be patentable if it has a technical effect such as improving memory management for computers, or reducing disk access times and such. Having an invention that does that would be fine to patent, however implementing it as software sepetately wouldn't be and would be considered obvious. You can have software patents but over here in Europe they are much harder to get: [url]https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/guidelines/e/g_ii_3_6.htm[/url][/QUOTE] I don't understand the meaningful differentiation between something that is software-only and something that interfaces with hardware as far as innovation goes. I also in no way understand how software innovations could be considered to be "obvious" as an entire set. That is, assuming that I'm understanding your post and your source correctly, which I might not be.

[QUOTE=phygon;52792753]I don't understand the meaningful differentiation between something that is software-only and something that interfaces with hardware as far as innovation goes. I also in no way understand how software innovations could be considered to be "obvious" as an entire set. That is, assuming that I'm understanding your post and your source correctly, which I might not be.[/QUOTE] It's not specifically about it being software. Does it have a technical effect? If you can patent a technical method it shouldn't matter if you do it with software, or created some super complex analogue circuit board to do the same thing. Doing it with software is just the obvious approach.