If you're a frequent visitor to the site, you know that we love a good patent-based slap-fight. From the looks of things, so does Apple: to date, the company's battle to stop Android handset manufacturers from infringing on their patents has cost the Cupertino-based tech manufacturer over $100 million. That's small change to them, but an awful lot of money to the rest of us. So what are all the lawsuits about, anyway? We've put together a list of four patent lawsuits that focus on technology most iOS users take for granted every day.
1. Slide to Unlock
iOS device users have been benefitting from Patent #7,657,849 since the iPhone and iPod touch went on sale back in 2007:
A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture.
While the patent covers the "Slide to Unlock" gesture iOS users utilize to bring up the Home screen, the blanket nature of the language used in the patent also covers just about every other touchscreen smartphone and tablet in the universe. No wonder Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola and Apple are constantly suing each other.
2. Graphics Rendering
Your smartphone and tablet does a lot of cool stuff. The games, movies, web content and apps that they're able to display arguably are made possible in part thanks to patent #8144158:
A floating point rasterization and frame buffer in a computer system graphics program. The rasterization, fog, lighting, texturing, blending, and antialiasing processes operate on floating point values. In one embodiment, a 16-bit floating point format consisting of one sign bit, ten mantissa bits, and five exponent bits (s10e5), is used to optimize the range and precision afforded by the 16 available bits of information. In other embodiments, the floating point format can be defined in the manner preferred in order to achieve a desired range and precision of the data stored in the frame buffer. The final floating point values corresponding to pixel attributes are stored in a frame buffer and eventually read and drawn for display. The graphics program can operate directly on the data in the frame buffer without losing any of the desired range and precision of the data.
The patent, which was originally owned by Silicon Graphics Inc., is now owned by Graphics Properties Holdings. They're a non-practicing entity--better known as a patent troll in some circles. These types of companies don't make their own products, but hold on to the patents and make a profit from suing major players like HTC, Apple, RIM, Sony, LG and Samsung for building devices that appear to use technology similar to that covered in the patent. Classy.
3. List Scrolling
You're seeing patent #7469381 in action, every time you scroll through a document or pull down on a list to refresh it in an app:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: at a device with a touch screen display: displaying a first portion of an electronic document; detecting a movement of an object on or near the touch screen display; in response to detecting the movement, translating the electronic document displayed on the touch screen display in a first direction to display a second portion of the electronic document, wherein the second portion is different from the first portion; in response to an edge of the electronic document being reached while translating the electronic document in the first direction while the object is still detected on or near the touch screen display: displaying an area beyond the edge of the document, and displaying a third portion of the electronic document, wherein the third portion is smaller than the first portion; and in response to detecting that the object is no longer on or near the touch screen display, translating the electronic document in a second direction until the area beyond the edge of the electronic document is no longer displayed to display a fourth portion of the electronic document, wherein the fourth portion is different from the first portion.
Unlike other patents that Apple owns, the company has offered to license #7469381 to a number of its competitors. Samsung didn't like the terms Apple was offering, so Apple sued Samsung for violating the patent. Nokia, who had been in court to fight over a different patent disagreement with Apple was awarded a license for the use of #7469381 as part of a settlement package. HTC? They've been sued for using it too. All the cool kids are suing HTC.
4. Playing Music
Whenever you load a playlist on your iOS device, you're rocking a little bit of awesome that comes to use as a result of the juice contained in patent #6199076:
An audio program and message distribution system in which a host system organizes and transmits program segments to client subscriber locations. The host organizes the program segments by subject matter and creates scheduled programming in accordance with preferences associated with each subscriber. Program segments are associated with descriptive subject matter segments, and the subject matter segments may be used to generate both text and audio cataloging presentations to enable the user to more easily identify and select desirable programming. A playback unit at the subscriber location reproduces the program segments received from the host and includes mechanisms for interactively navigating among the program segments. A usage log is compiled to record the subscriber's use of the provided program materials, to return data to the host for billing, to adaptively modify the subscriber's preferences based on actual usage, and to send subscriber-generated comments and requests to the host for processing. Voice input and control mechanisms included in the player allow the user to perform hands-free navigation of the program materials and to dictate comments and messages which are returned to the host for retransmission to other subscribers. The program segments sent to each subscriber may include advertising materials which the user can selectively play to obtain credits against the subscriber fee. Parallel audio and text transcript files for at least selected programming enable subject matter searching and synchronization of the audio and text files. Speech synthesis may be used to convert transcript files into audio format. Image files may also be transmitted from the server for synchronized playback with the audio programming.
Sounds like something Apple would have come up with, right? Wrong. The patent is owned by a patent licensing company/troll called Personal Audio LLC. In 2009, they sued Apple for $84 million, due to their perceived infringement on patent #6199076 as well as patent #7509178, which covers 'Audio Program Distribution and Playback System'. Apple ended up paying $8 million in damages.
No comments:
Post a Comment