"Apple admits" broke "UK boffin invented the iPod"

[tarannau]

Pish, I'm only responding to some terms you've specifically drawn out of an internet article and decided to highlight.

Why the bleeding jiminy cricket would I write to Cnet to complain? The writer's not even an employee - he's a blogger they occasionally feature. I'm not the one who's trumpeting his article second hand or claiming that Apple has acknowledged him 'as the father of the ipod,' which doesn't seem to follow.

 

[editor]

Perhaps it is, but if so the real story lies in how the lunacies and devilish detail of the "intellectual property" racket conspired to thwart Kramer.

Well, that's an area of the law that Apple certainly knows more about than many!

 

[cybertect]

Perhaps it is, but if so the real story lies in how the lunacies and devilish detail of the "intellectual property" racket conspired to thwart Kramer.

The piece completely misses that angle.

That his company failed to renew their patents and that others were then able to use the ideas after they lapsed?

 

[Jonti]

Well there's a lot more to it than that of course. Stuff like patent examiners not researching prior art very well; obvious or trivial patents being allowed; over general or vague patents being granted; patents being granted that don't give enough detail to actually build the claimed "invention"; and yes, the fact it would have cost £60,000 adequately to protect his work.

And yes, Apple (or any decent sized corporate) knows more about than any individual inventor. That's a pointer to the perverse effect of the patent system.

Surely it's not news to you that the patent system makes almost impossible for the original inventor to get protection, but remains relatively easy for the corporations to game with the help of patent lawyers and mutual "will not sue" agreements with other holders of fat patent portfolios.

Or is it?

 

[Jonti]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation run a "Patent Busting Project". This is how they describe the problem ...

Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called prior art) is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as:

• One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.)
• Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.)
• The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.)
• Video streaming (U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992.)
• Internationalizing domain names (U.S. Patent No. 6,182,148.)
• Pop-up windows (U.S. Patent No. 6,389,458.)
• Targeted banner ads (U.S. Patent No. 6,026,368.)
• Paying with a credit card online (U.S. Patent No. 6,289,319.)
• Framed browsing; (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,841 & 6,442,574.) and
• Affiliate linking (U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141.)

 

[cybertect]

Or is it?

Hardly, but I don't think this case is a particularly good example of any of those things.

- Prior art - Burst.com had obtained an out-of-court settlement with Microsoft for $60 million for the same claims before turning their guns on Apple.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/120040/microsoft_settles_with_burstcom.html

That doesn't indicate that prior art was blindingly obvious. Steve's lawyers seem to have been a bit smarter than Bill's though.

- An obvious or trivial patent? Probably not. See above.


- patents being granted that don't give enough detail to actually build the claimed "invention". I haven't seen anything to indicate that this was the case here.

- fact it would have cost £60,000 adequately to protect his work: He'd already obtained the patents in 1981, it was renewals that failed and, according to the reports I've read, internal ructions within the company's board largely brought that about. In comparison to the potential revenues, that's not a huge amount of money.

A more salient point might be that enforcing the claim in court could easily cost considerably more than that, which tips the balance in favour of those with deep pockets.

- Mutual "do not sue" agreements: no sign of this here.

You make some valid points, but hanging them on this case is a poor place to start; there are many better examples to be had.

 

[Jonti]

Oh, granted.

I'm really just trying to make the point that it looks to me like he was more the victim of the mess that is IP law and practice, rather than a victim of Apple as such.

 

[London_Calling]

You can't patent thin air, it has to so well defined it doesn't impinge other patents.

I have no idea why Apple considered him a worthy witness, their lawyers obviously had a particuar line of defence to which they thought he would bring credibility - they'd have sorted that with him far in advance.

Shame he had to let it lapse in 1988 but maybe he should also have sought out investors before then, especially Japanese ones.

 

[editor]

I'm really just trying to make the point that it looks to me like he was more the victim of the mess that is IP law and practice, rather than a victim of Apple as such.

At no point did I try and make out that he was a 'victim of Apple' at all and that was never the focus of the thread.

Although with their obscenely high profits, they could surely sling him a tasty little wad for old time's sake.

 

[Lazy Llama]

Apple’s £89billion profits

No idea where they got that figure from.

Apple are currently making record profits and have only this year hit $1bn/qtr.

Even if they'd be making $1bn per quarter for the past 20 years, it'd still only be $80bn, which is a lot less than £89bn.

Daily Mail in adding up confusion, possibly.

 

[editor]

No idea where they got that figure from.

Apple are currently making record profits and have only this year hit $1bn/qtr.

Even if they'd be making $1bn per quarter for the past 20 years, it'd still only be $80bn, which is a lot less than £89bn.

Either way, they're still one of the filthiest rich tech companies on the planet with annual sales of Apple products topping $20bn and the combined value of their outstanding shares of stock hitting $157 billion - and that's even more than Google, lucre fact fans!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20071023/ai_n21061392
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/14/0257244

 

[cybertect]

Bit of a turn around from ten years ago, when they were widely predicted to be going out of business...

 

[lobster]

Apple have a record of stealing ideas and calling it there own...

http://phark.typepad.com/phark/2004/06/apple_to_arlo_r.html

virtual desktops have been around for decades and apple have decided to include them and rename them as "spaces"

However for all their evil deeds, if i was paid ( or even not paid) to do high quality multimedia or something i may be inclined to use a mac .....

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Apple have a record of stealing ideas and calling it there own...

http://phark.typepad.com/phark/2004/06/apple_to_arlo_r.html

virtual desktops have been around for decades and apple have decided to include them and rename them as "spaces"

Oh come on, they never called widgets and spaces "their own"; they're just implementations of well-established ideas that they decided to build into the OS. I felt a bit for the Konfabulator guys to begin with because Apple's widgets were obviously going to crush Konfabulator, but they sold to Yahoo anyway (with the result that they got paid plus Yahoo got a better, cross-platform, widget system than Google's).

 

[Sunray]

That sketch misses the very thing that makes the iPod and no other device has, as Apple patented it. The scroll wheel. The essential design item that everything else flows from making the device so easy to use. Even now ease of use is often forgotten in the quest for feature lists.

That is what the iPod is and that device misses it. I think its more of the distribution and compression that make it 'Father of iPod'.

Very much a 'Very well done chap. Thanks for that, would you like a nice cake?'

 

[Cloud]

I've never understood the whole Ipod crap in the first place. It's just an mp3 player. Apple didn't invent the mp3 compression system or hard drive did they? I could be wrong but the marketing gives the impression that the Ipod is a unique object when it's not really is it? The technology has been around for ages. I was recording wav's yonks ago on a 386, even from the days of the zx81 it was pretty obvious that music was eventually going to be stored digitally on a storage device such as a hard drive or flash rom.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Well, that's the point isn't it? Everybody knew it could be done but they made it, made a mini-HD device that played music, built a top UI and of course marketed the bollocks off it. The basic concept wasn't really bizarre, it's just a box that plays digital music through headphones, but the combination of all of the factors did make it the first that could portably store all (or a good chunk of) your music.

 

[Cloud]

Yes I see your point, I guess they were right in there as soon as it was possible to create a small sized but fairly large capacity hard drive. You couldn't help but be interested in the "store your entire music collection on a portable device" marketing , it conjured up images of rooms full of records, tapes or CD's and the idea of having all that in your pocket was irresistible.

 

[editor]

Well, that's the point isn't it? Everybody knew it could be done but they made it, made a mini-HD device that played music, built a top UI and of course marketed the bollocks off it. The basic concept wasn't really bizarre, it's just a box that plays digital music through headphones, but the combination of all of the factors did make it the first that could portably store all (or a good chunk of) your music.

It was all about the slick user interface, classy design and Apple's mighty marketing clout because the company certainly didn't provide much innovation much in the hardware department - Compaq had developed the first hard drive music player a whole three years before the first generation iPod.

But, of course, it looked like a dog compared to the iPod.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Like the iphone. Nothing new about it, apple just have a knack of putting things together really well.

 

[paolo]

One of the key things Apple recognises is that, at heart, it's not a hardware manufacturer.

So many manufacturers make the mistake of thinking software is just some annoying but necessary add on, and that it's all about hardware. It's why there are alot of crap phones that 'Beat' the iPhone but in reality are also-rans. In the phone market, RIM are the other player that understood this (and so did Palm, before they inexplicably faltered).

Anyone with manufacturing experience in this kind of tech, and a reasonable sales reach, can churn out me-too products, but it's not innovation, it's assembling off the shelf stuff into an idea that is easily reproduced. Adding something genuinely unique is the key. Few hardware companies get this - or, at least - are willing to take a leap of faith and make the R&D investment to go there. Shame.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I know. I've been using nokia smartphones for years now and each model has had less and less "wow" factor, as they have done nothing to substantially improve the os in the last 5 years.

 

[editor]

Anyone with manufacturing experience in this kind of tech, and a reasonable sales reach, can churn out me-too products, but it's not innovation, it's assembling off the shelf stuff into an idea that is easily reproduced. Adding something genuinely unique is the key.

It's actually quite astonishing how dreadful the Windows Mobile interface still is.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

So what's Apple doing acknowledging him as the "father of the iPod?" He clearly didn't build a finished iPod, but it looks like the idea and some of the early concept work was his.

PR tactic?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I know. I've been using nokia smartphones for years now and each model has had less and less "wow" factor, as they have done nothing to substantially improve the os in the last 5 years.

It's amazing, that. I've said it before but (apart from screen res) the UI of my current N73 is almost exactly the same as the UI of my first smartphone, a 3650, in 2003. Except that I think the messaging is worse.

 

[editor]

It's amazing, that. I've said it before but (apart from screen res) the UI of my current N73 is almost exactly the same as the UI of my first smartphone, a 3650, in 2003. Except that I think the messaging is worse.

Despite that, Nokia are still the absolute dons of the smaprthone market, shifting a massive 15.3 million handsets in the last quarter and hogging nearly 50per cent of the market.

By comparison their nearest competitor is Blackberry with 17.4% share, then HTC with 4.1%, followed by Sharp and and Fujitsi.

 

[Sunray]

Nokia is up there with Coke. You ask someone for a Nokia in some remote African village and they will show you their prized Nokia 3310.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Despite that, Nokia are still the absolute dons of the smaprthone market, shifting a massive 15.3 million handsets in the last quarter and hogging nearly 50per cent of the market.

By comparison their nearest competitor is Blackberry with 17.4% share, then HTC with 4.1%, followed by Sharp and and Fujitsi.

Amazing, isn't it? Well, the technology works well, even if the UI is shit. This was always my hope for the iPhone, that it would kick Nokia and S-E up the arse and get them looking at UI design. Doesn't seem to have happened yet mind.

 

[ymu]

Nokia is up there with Coke. You ask someone for a Nokia in some remote African village and they will show you their prized Nokia 3310.

The one good thing about owning a Nokia is always, but always, being able to find a charger nearby in an emergency.

 

[paolo]

Despite that, Nokia are still the absolute dons of the smaprthone market, shifting a massive 15.3 million handsets in the last quarter and hogging nearly 50per cent of the market.

By comparison their nearest competitor is Blackberry with 17.4% share, then HTC with 4.1%, followed by Sharp and and Fujitsi.

Sales dons perhaps. Usage for things like say email, or browsing, would probably tell a very different story. Good news for the sales and marketing departments, bad news for product design.