“Android fans, especially those of you who love your Samsung devices, might have something to cheer about today as it looks like Chinese phone maker GooPhone have already patented the design of the new iPhone 5 before Apple have had chance!” This is just… Wow.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal”
—-edit—-
“or patent leaked designs.”
Edited 2012-09-07 15:59 UTC
Especially in a standoff like the patents have been in for decades. Things only work out so long as no one breaks the stalemate and everyone works together for their common good rather than start lobbing bombs and possibly losing everything. It wasn’t the best situation but to a degree it was working.
Now Apple comes along and starts tossing around patent nuclear bombs, is it any surprise then that an affected bystander would decide to launch a preemptive sneak attack?
Considering the completely different approaches taken culturally between Western and Eastern companies I’d say that this situation is only about to get worse and be a fount of unintended consequences far beyond what we’ve already seen here….
–bornagainpenguin
[q]Especially in a standoff like the patents have been in for decades. Things only work out so long as no one breaks the stalemate and everyone works together for their common good rather than start lobbing bombs and possibly losing everything. It wasn’t the best situation but to a degree it was working.
Companies working together for their common good is a nice definition of a trust, illegal under US law. Adam Smith pointed this out long ago.
Nice to see I’m not the only one who thought that. When he said “working together” all i could think of was the DRAM and LCD price fixing…yeah large corps working together? NOT a good thing.
bassbeast posted…
Yeah, not what I meant there. Was talking about cross-licensing, not cartel behavior or price fixing.
–bornagainpenguin
yeah cross licensing…which just like price fixing lets you lock new guys out of the market. Did you think about it before you posted?
Would you care for an example? Loongson Dragon chip. Its a MIPS chip that has hardware accelerated X86 emulation, cool huh? Think about that for a second, battery life like ARM, yet the ability to run the X86 apps you need at 80% of native speed thanks to hardware X86 instructions.
Problem is thanks to cross licensing only 3 companies on the planet are allowed to use those instructions, Intel, AMD, and Via. And the odds of YOU or Loongson getting a license? Try zip, zilch, nada.
So you see the problem with cross licensing is it lets the big boys, who have enough patents in their warchests to make MAD a real possibility, cover their own behinds, while at the same time locking little start ups like Loongson from getting a foot in the door.
bfr99 replied…
Errr… when I said these companies were working together for their common good, I meant agreeing to cross-license to avoid breaking the patent stalemate the way Apple is now, not price-fixing or cartel behavior. I was talking about agreeing to “work together” in the sense of I’ll let you use my patent if you let me use yours. Which was the intention of the patent system as I understand it, to encourage use, not lock inventions up for decades so no one would use them!
Of course no one really saw a situation coming where a company was willing to Kamikaze if it meant knocking out the competition….
–bornagainpenguin
About time the Patent troll of the century got what was coming. Suckers!
Apple is certainly doing some crappy things with patents, but I’m really getting sick of the term patent troll being misused. Apple is not a patent troll, which is a company that acquires large patent portfolios and then does absolutely nothing with them until they can bring in a large chunk of cash by suing other companies that actually create products. Acasia technologies, for example, is a textbook patent troll and I believe they’ve come up on here at least once. Let me be clear: I do not like patents at all. I hate them, and I absolutely despise what Apple is currently doing with them, but you cannot call them a patent troll. They actually bring products to market which use the patents they have. A patent tyrant perhaps, but not a troll.
Well in some cases a patent tyrant is fitting. What would you call Steve Jobs who goes to a R&D company and sees what they are working on, and sees the future of graphical interfaces, and the mouse, and then run over and make his own graphical interface right after. And patent most of the basic concepts? What would you call that person?
A gambler. That could have just as easily backfired on him if GUIs didn’t end up being the future in the way he believed they would. He was a risk taker and won more often than he lost, and now his company has become arrogant because of their success. I hope a few market failures prick that over-inflated corporate had before Apple becomes a patent troll. They aren’t at the moment, but it wouldn’t be difficult to slide into it.
For now. But history shows patent litigation is a difficult habit to kick. It has a tendency to completely overtake a company’s core business – probably because the promise of reward for little creative effort is alluring.
Quite true, and if Apple become a patent troll I’ll be more than happy to call them such. Until then, I’d suggest we use that label for the companies that actually deserve it.
Couldn’t agree more.
But how are they able to patent a design with such a striking resemblance to the iPhone 4/S? I mean, the iPhone 5 leaks look exactly like the iPhone 4/S, save for a few minor details…
Yeah, but the minor details change everything … again.
You guys are so desperate for Apple bashing stories that you are posting stuff like this?
Unsubstantiated, plus even if its fact and stands what do you think will happen? Proview got 60 million and they actually owned the iPad name in China for years. Lol.
Must be a boring news day.
Edited 2012-09-07 17:17 UTC
Well, its not unsubstantiated as there are multiple sources, some of which are Chinese. Further more, you can read the article and see the actual phone the patents are based on.
As for what could happen? Delays, bad press, possibly injunctions. Isn’t that enough to warrant some attention?
Having a story in the news does not substantiate it. Example Bruce Willis suing over his iTunes music rights. It’s was all over the world news, mostly in the US, totally wrong.
The story says the company says it got a patent? Even in China how do you get a patent in a few weeks when in most places it takes some time of patent pending before you get a patent. On top of that do we even know that you can get design patents in China? Lol.
So the patent application or patent award would at minimum substantiate it not just a companies word.
Well, you are free to argue that fact. Just like OS News is free to run the story. Even if it doesn’t support the rainbows and unicorns view of Apple that you would like, it is still news worthy. And the article does link to its source, which includes a Chinese company publicly saying that they patented the design of their knock off. This is no different than Apple claiming Samsung copied its iPhone. And no one suggested that OS News not cover that article, not even you.
Edited 2012-09-07 19:29 UTC
Ummmm, difference is Apple has patents they applied for, received legally and are valid till a court or the patent office says otherwise, that Apple is saying that Samsung violated. You can go look them up.
Lets see if you can find a patent application or number for this “patent”
When Apple first sued Samsung, this site ran the following:
“Apple Sues Samsung for Patent Infringement”
http://www.osnews.com/story/24650/Apple_Sues_Samsung_for_Patent_Inf…
The article does not list any patent numbers. Its just as unsubstantiated as the current article is. So lets be fair. Yes, the Chinese maker could be full of crap. But they have just as much of a claim as Apple did. The company does have a working phone that looks very much like what the iPhone 5 is purported to look like. Considering they actually sell the phone, its not that far of a stretch to believe they filed patents on it.
Edited 2012-09-07 23:07 UTC
? If you read the OSnews story you linked to above you will see that the original story that OSnews quotes from and links to DOES include several of the patent numbers.
In this case all that we have to make a story is someone from the company in question saying they patented their product and that they could sue Apple. Good marketing for them I must admit cause their site crashed from all the hits after this was said, but its not news.
I could make the same claim. Would I be news?
It will be actual news the day they pull out the patent and actually sue.
Edited 2012-09-07 23:27 UTC
I can think of worse traits… like taking fanboism to such an extreme that when a news site so much as posts a link that you don’t like, your default reaction is to start throwing out accusations of bias.
Of course, I would never suggest that you, personally, would do something like that. I’m sure you must have written a thorough critique of the original article, addressing the specific points that make it not-newsworthy, and just forgot to include that in your comment.
Apple is one of the largest, most-influential IT-companies of the decade, why shouldn’t OSNews post articles about it? Please, do tell us.
Looking at the news it does seem very much substantiated.
Edited 2012-09-07 19:03 UTC
“The most intriguing part of the GooPhone i5′s design is the fact that GooPhone claim they have patented it in China, which could effectively block Apple from selling their next generation iPhone in the Chinese market, and may even mean GooPhone have the right to block iPhone 5 exports completely!”
That equals very much substantiated? Really?
Claim… could… may even… Yes, those are the words of definitive journalistic confirmation.
? Looking at the news is just repeating the companies statement.
And my point is that every Apple post is negative.
Post some positive articles then? I don’t see the problem.
Good idea, didn’t know I could.
Good idea, didn’t know I could. [/q]
Make sure each pro-Apple point is balanced out by one anti-Apple/pro-Microsoft/pro-Google/pro-Samsung. Because as we all know, everything is ALWAYS in absolute balance – ALWAYS – and when discussing a certain thing about Apple that’s bad (because you don’t want to seem like you think everything done by Apple is good because Apple is doing it), you must point out that “well, other companies have done bad things unrelated to the current subject as well”. Because in the interest of UNBIAS, you must conclude that a murder is okay because other people are doing it, but your choice of murderer is charismatic and that makes it even more okay and that other murderers are just copy cat murders.
Apple gets the taste of their own medicine.
What goes around, comes around, Apple
So what we have learned is that the many anti-patent folks on this site aren’t actually against patents, but against Apple.
I’m not sure. It is funny to see a serial rapist being sent in the hospital after being brutally kicked in the nuts with a baseball bat by an informed victim who could just have told the police about him, but that doesn’t make such violent self-defense actions okay.
Edited 2012-09-09 19:21 UTC
I’m overly emphatic and I have a very well developed imagination. Please do not bring up examples involving nuts.
The point is that a number of people claim to be against patents, but when their favorite company uses them we get all these work-arounds to make it okay. Defensive patents, pre-emtive strikes.
Now it turns out that in the patent claiming chart of 2011 Samsung ranked #2, while Apple came in at 39. So when people accuse Apple of patenting EVERYTHING it seems 38 companies patented EVERYTHING and then some.
If one is truly against (software) patents one should be against any use of them. But it turns out people aren’t Ghandi’s, they are only against them when they are used by Apple/Microsoft. Patent trolls get a pass and even a cheerful thumbs up when Apple is the intended target.
And just think about it. Apple has the highest customer satisfaction, Microsoft and Nokia try to do something different. They are the evil ones. Samsung, which doesn’t give a damn about customers, and patent trolls are cheered.
It seems like you’ve just compared the numbers and not actually remember WHO are actually against patents, and WHO are cheering, and WHAT those cheerers are actually cheering for.
Many kids don’t consider bullying others. But bullies exist and if a bully gets their comeuppance by a bigger bully, those same kids will feel the bully deserved it, even if they won’t take part in the bullying themselves. And they’re not all part of the same set of people, yet you’re treating them as the same set.
Nice try at manufacturing a hypocrisy. I guess you’re right: you do have a really good imagination.
Last I checked, the anti-patent crowd would wish this whole Apple/Samsung and Google/Oracle thing stopped RIGHT NOW. However, we’re realistic and so a lawful, ethical and moral outcome is better than nothing.
What are we sinking to? A balance sheet of good deeds vs bad? Is “customer satisfaction” much more important than patent abuse, which has far reaching SOCIAL implications?
This is the level we sink to. “It doesn’t matter if we fuck up liberty for future generations, as long as customers get their shiny rounded rectangles!” Libertarians seem to fear government but it turns out the biggest enemy of freedom are those more concerned about their gadgets.
I just think you should make up your mind, you can’t be against (software) patents and cheer if they are used in a situation you do like.
And don’t forget it’s a patent troll that announced it will: it hasn’t done it. Yet people cheer as if it has already happened. This kind of proves these people aren’t actually against patents, but just hate Apple and patents are just a way of labeling them evil.
If you are not one of these people that there is no need to take any offense.