I guess this is what some people would call “karma”. Apple may shout off the rooftops that it invented multitouch, and that anyone else using it is clearly stealing it from them – but another company has taken offence to that, and has slapped the Cupertino giant with a patent infringement suit over multitouch.
The company in question is Taiwanese chipmaker Elan Microelectronics, and they are suing Apple over patent no. 5,825,352, filed in February 1996, and granted in October 1998. The patent calls for a “method and apparatus for detecting an operative coupling between one or more fingers or other appropriate objects and a touch pad includes processes for detection of multiple maxima with intermediate minima in appropriate sequences to emulate the operations of cursor control and button actuations in a pointing and control device”.
In other words, multitouch. In 1996. More than ten years before Apple released the iPhone.
“Multi-finger applications are becoming popular in smartphone and computer applications, particularly with support for multi-finger gestures integrated into the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating system,” the company states, “The 352 patent is a fundamental patent to the detection of multi-fingers that allows for any subsequent multi-finger applications to be implemented.”
This is not some obscure patent that surfaced only recently. In 2008, Elan Microelectronics sued Synaptics over this very same patent, and the courts found that indeed, Synaptics and its products were in violation of this patent. In the end, the two companies settled the matter.
Elan Microelectronics has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission, seeking a ban on imports of several Apple products (MacBook, iPhone, iPod Touch, Magic Mouse), including the iPad once it’s released.
“We have taken the step of filing the ITC complaint as a continuation of our efforts to enforce our patent rights against Apple’s ongoing infringement. A proceeding in the ITC offers a quick and effective way for Elan to enforce its patent,” the company said in a statement.
Seeing Apple’s and its followers’ arrogance over multitouch, it’s hard not to snicker a bit over this one. Wie kaatst kan de bal verwachten.
i could help but do that
Im very happy and excited about this for two reasons:
1) The only way of getting rid of patents, is having more lawsuits. Its really ridiculous and it becomes more obvious until someday it will end. Someday, when companies have shot each other ‘enough’.
2) Apple, oh you damn company. The most evil company in whole IT industry. I would love to see you paying a huge amount of money for patents. How it feels like? huh?
I don’t mind the patents however waiting for a company to make billions on a product before enforcing it is despicable.
Not doing proper research and stomping into someone else’s intelectual property is despicable too. Apple, a company that seems to pay great attention regarding its own intellectual bull… err… property portfolio, should be more careful.
Oh, WTH, this is great news. I love the irony of the entire situation ๐
Oh, WTH, this is great news. I love the irony of the entire situation ๐
Dear sir, you sure aren’t the only one! Apple has been suing people over multitouch, they’ve been threatening, they’ve been bullying, they’ve been doing everything they can to piss other people and companies off..and now they are getting sued themselves over the EXACT same thing. Oh god, this is wonderful!
FWIW: Apple is defending their patents after several companies ignored them and went ahead and chose to produce products and see if Apple will sue.
HTC will lose. Google is already in talks with Apple at the top brass to figure out how to diffuse the situation and Nokia is going to fall on its face with it’s request while having to deal with Apple’s counter.
Whether you like it or not, Apple has amassed nearly 4000 patents since 2004 for their latest products.
They’ve learned from the past. They won’t repeat that mistake.
There’s a difference between patenting new technology and patenting a fairly standard idea.
Most of Apples patents were so absurdly run-of-the-mill that short of all smart phones defaulting to a CLI, there was bound to be infringements.
For example: “using a gesture to unlock a phone” is hardly innovative. Gestures to unlock devices have been standard practice whether it’s a hardware switch to flip open a laptop lid to a key you turn to open a door. Apple wasn’t pioneering a revolution there, they were patenting the bloody obvious.
Thanks for that legal insight, however I think I’ll wait for the real lawyers and judges to have their say before jumping to any conclusions.
If history has taught us anything, it’s usually hard to predict just who will win in these cases (hence why so many of them are settled out of court).
That is standard practice. Not proof of a possible result.
See point #2
Furthermore what makes you think Nokia’s GSM -for example- patents (technology Nokia did develop) are less relevant than Apples patents.
Surely by stating that Apple has a right to uphold their patent portfolio but Nokia’s patents are worthless is employing a huge dose of double standards
See point #1
This is the american patent system at it’s best: permitting companies like Apple to patent general ideas and obvious things. Tomorrow we will hear that Apple has patented the wheel, and we must pay royalties to Apple if we own a car, a bike or even a wheelchair.
It’s hardly obvious when no other cell manufacturer is doing it… and now all of a sudden several are building it in.
These things are only obvious once you’ve seen it in action.
The problem is they did exist before the iPhone.
The iPhone wasn’t the 1st multi touch cell phone let alone non-phone multi-touch interface and gestures have existed in software years before the iPhone too.
Edited 2010-04-02 20:12 UTC
You seem to be missing the fact that Elan has been making touch sensitive screens since the late nineties. I know, I have several of them. Not to mention that Nokia invented most of the cell technology that Apple is conveniently using without paying for. Regardless of anything else, they will still owe Nokia for the license fee, whatever that ends up being. Google may cross license, but they will NOT back down and remove touch from Android. Apple is going to have to take its knocks. They may get knocked a little or knocked hard, the courts will determine.
I guess what goes around comes around.
I can’t understand how apple is doing so well, at least commercially, by taking so many from its customers.
It is somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to be sure that there are no existing patents that apply to your work. I can’t ever fault someone for developing a product without knowing it infringes on an existing patent, unless a trivial search would confirm that it does.
So is using someone else’s technology (Nokia) for three years, making billions, without paying the license fee. But then, I guess thats not a problem if you are Steve Jobs.
No, but if you are Steve Jobs you see a big problem when someone install Os X on non-Apple hardware (Psystar) or when someone (HTC & Google) tries to sell a better alternative to iPad.
” I know, I know – I mean look at the evil stuff they have done for me – given me a totally stable desktop computer with a wonderful interface in a tasteful and well constructed enclosure, a beautifully designed music player that means I can take my whole music collection anywhere I want and is a dream to use, a phone thats almost as powerful as a desktop computer with a finely engineered touch interface that does stuff that literally makes my friends gasp in admiration and which has a vast library of inexpensive apps that I can easily download and safely install and – oh wait a minute – uh?”
If think Apple is “evil” you really need to get out more.
I’m going to bed now, so I’ll leave the list-making to someone else.
Take it away, people.
“a totally stable desktop computer with a wonderful interface in a tasteful and well constructed enclosure, a beautifully designed music player that means I can take my whole music collection anywhere I want and is a dream to use, a phone thats almost as powerful as a desktop computer with a finely engineered touch interface that does stuff that literally makes my friends gasp in admiration and which has a vast library of inexpensive apps that I can easily download and safely install and – oh wait a minute – uh?”
I’m sure you believe that the ipad is magical too
Apple. There was a brief period of time earlier this decade, that they were a really nice combination of form and function, with function preceding form. I think they’ve really lost their way. Many of my friend’s who bought Mac’s during this time period are migrating away. The useful tech hasn’t kept pace.
To be fair, the latest generation of Macbook is quite nice and it gets battery life I’ve never seen in a typically-designed PC laptop with as much computing power. Of course that form and battery come at a price, namely that you can no longer change it yourself unless you want to void your warranty.
Yes, the form (of the mac book) detracts from the function (of changing the battery). That is correct. That is what I do *not* like about apple 2010.
Dell Vostro V13 N0113002 built in battery so not just Apple does that
Yeah, didn’t say I liked dell any better. I judge products on an absolute scale, not a relative one.
If a quality system vendor like Dell does it, how could it be a bad thing?
bad quality system vendor (what i think)
What the hell? I didn’t say Dell was a quality system vendor. Plus, that has nothing to do with the price of tea in Australia.
Lets suppose Dell is a quality system vendor. By your axium nothing they do could be a bad thing?
I should have made it more clear. Original comment was that Dell also ships a notebook with a non-replaceable battery then someone should not be so quick to criticize Apple for devices without replacable batteries.
My point was that if a quality vendor like Dell does it also, how could anyone find reason to complain about non-repleacable batteries in mobile devices. The sarcasm was in “quality vendor like Dell” encase it’s not more evident in this second post.
In plain words, a second, third or fourth vendor shipping mobile devices without replaceable batteries does not justify or reduce the validity of criticism in Apple or those other vendors. Battery technology is simply not advanced enough for the power storage outlasting the rest of the device. Shipping it back for battery replacement under warranty is also not a long term solution.
To add some; it’s also a security risk. It’s already been shown that devices “powered off” but with batteries in place can be remotely activated. At higher security levels, one is required to remove the battery and place it beside the mobile device on the table in front of them during meetings. While most won’t be privy to such high-security experiences; it does demonstrate that remote power-on is a real potential risk.
I wouldn’t suggest letting Apple off the hook because there is a second vendor who’s done similar designs. I also wouldn’t suggest everyone focus on Apple and ignore the other vendors; they should all be questioned for delivering such a shoddy design as to include consumable components like batteries in a user non-repleacable/removable way.
Is that really true anymore? I am getting 11+ hours from the [better speced] ASUS UL30.
Just to clear things up, what do you get out of a MBA with moderate use?
I wasn’t referring to the Air, at least that’s what I assume you meant by MBA. I was referring to the $999 Macbook in its latest edition. I agree, the Air is pathetic when you put it against other subnotebooks like the UL30, but I was talking about full-powered laptops. The UL30 and the Macbook are in completely different categories, and the Macbook is speced much higher than the UL30 as a result. So far, I’ve gotten the battery life advertised on the units I’ve used, a good 7 hours. I was even able to run it for five hours with OS X and a Windows XP virtual machine running at the same time. I’d actually like to know, is there a full-powered PC laptop that can match the Macbook when it comes to battery? Note that I’m only talking about the latest generation with the new battery.
I’m glad Apple’s stuff is working out so well for you…
The OS is hardly ‘totally stable’. It suffers from bugs like anything else. We’ve had our mac pro at work kernel panic once and the UI has locked up (beach ball of death) me times than I can count.
The phone is hardly as powerful as a desktop. Claiming so is laughable and just shows ignorance. It IS a fairly powerful handheld device. But there have been as/more powerful phones for awhile now.
I’ll give you the iPod one. It is designed pretty well. Too bad I despise iTunes :p
I think I was, as they say, gilding the lilly for sarcastic effect. The main point is that when people talk about Apple being evil it just sounds silly. Saddam Hussein was evil, children molesters are evil. At best all one could say about Apple is that you don’t like their products (which is fine as they are not a monopoly so you are always free to buy some other companies products) or that their corporate image irritates you.
Endless hyperbole just degrades the language and hinders communication.
Except they sue any competitor that use anything remotely related to multitouch. So that makes them a monopoly in multitouch devices. I can’t buy competing products because they don’t allow it. They are control freaks.
I actually like their product but their policy sucks. I’ll never buy anything from them and I’ll urge everyone not to buy from them. Their policy does not only affect their customers. It is detrimental to society at large and should be condemned as such. The public must know. They are using their marketing machine to hide their behaviour. If you don’t think their policy is a problem, I’ll debate you and I’ll try to convince you.
sarcasm has a tendency to not come across well on the comment sections of this site :p Since your post sounded perfectly normal for quite a few users here.
Im not judging Apple by its products. Apple produces nice products. But their policy and actions is what makes them so damn evil.
Hey, Dell gave me the same thing, and I also have the choice of peripherals and upgrades.
To paraphrase…. “Oooh!… Shiny!”
I suspect you underestimate the ability of one group of lawyers (those who profit by filing suits–not winning them, mind, but filing them) to influence another group of lawyers (those who legislate).
“Wie kaatst kan de bal verwachten” may be obscure to Thom’s non-Dutch speaking readers, so this is offered by way of assistance….
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=