This week, the United States International Trade Commission finally released the long awaited (and delayed!) decision regarding Apple’s complaints against HTC. Apple had claimed that HTC was infringing on ten separate patents, and the ITC ruled that only one of those claims was valid.
So what does this mean for Apple, for HTC, and for the dozens of intellectual property lawsuits going on around the world? Cue the “dun dun” and let’s take a look.
There was no shortage of hyperbole surrounding this case, as it carried the potential to ban all HTC products from the United States and enable Apple to go after every other Android device manufcaturer. Fortunately, the ruling actually landed both companies somewhere in the middle. While it’s not the knockout blow that Apple may have sought, it’s enough of a victory to get Cupertino exactly what it was fighting for.
On the surface, it may seem like having only one out of ten patent infringement claims upheld by the court is not much a victory at all, especially because HTC is taking that position and claiming it as an actual win for its business. But, the ruling does state a ban of certain HTC products, to be enforced in April of 2012.
“Competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own technology.”
Now, it’s not Apple’s goal to ban all competing handsets. As FOSS Patents points out, since the beginning of this dispute with HTC, Apple has only issued the follwing comment on the situation:
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Steve Jobs had said. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
No company wants to see a marketplace devoid of competition. The suit was about compelling the competition to create its own original technology. Using the courts to force other companies to remove borrowed ideas and designs from competing hardware and software manufacturers is a means to that end, and that is exactly what was accomplished with this latest ruling from the ITC. There is no question Apple would have preferred a wider ruling supporting more, or all, of its claims. This decision is the beginning of a larger strategy, however, to have the competition modify its products, not obliterate them entirely.
Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to him on Facebook, if you want to.
Christmas falls on Sunday this year, which means most of us have an extended work week and are now truly feeling the “hump day” blues like never before. The good news is, you still have time to take care of everyone on your gift list, but hurry — time stands still for no one, after all. We’ve found one of the best ways to get through “hump day” is to kick back for a few minutes and catch up on the day’s news… which we just so happen to have right here for Wednesday, December 21, 2011.
Is it that time again? Just in time for some lazy holiday web browsing, Mozilla is back with Firefox 9, and this time OS X Lion gets a little love. Among the improvements are “significantly” improved JavaScript performance thanks to Type Inference, support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript, font-stretch and text-overflow support and “improved standards support for HTML5, MathML and CSS.” Oh yeah, and those OS X Lion improvements? How does “improved theme integration” and the addition of two-finger swipe navigation sound to you? We thought so. Mozilla is also rolling out the first tablet-native version of Firefox 9 for Android as well, so if you have one of them fancy Android slates you might want to visit Android Market and give it a whirl as well. In the meantime, you can download Firefox 9 for Mac, Windows or Linux directly from the company’s website.
We haven’t heard much news from the folks at Naturespace since covering them at this year’s Macworld Expo, but they haven’t been exactly sitting idle all this time. The company announced this week that the Naturespace app has hit version 3.0, bringing with it a new feature called “Visitor’s Pass,” which offers 30-second previews of the high-quality nature sounds offered in their catalog. Visitor’s Pass itself is a .99 in-app purchase, but users that have purchased five or more tracks can access it for free. Users can now review tracks right from within the app, which has been updated with 15 new soundscapes for your listening pleasure. Last but not least, Naturespace is offering a holiday deal on the entire catalog for only .99, which is a significant discount over the normal 0 price. Naturespace 3.0 is available now from the App Store as a universal build and requires iOS 4.0 or later.
The folks in Cupertino’s iTunes Connect developer portal division are shutting off the lights later tonight and going on an extended vacation until Friday, December 30, but they couldn’t help pushing out one more beta of OS X 10.7.3 so developers have something to play with over the Christmas holiday. According to MacRumors, the new build 11D36 “comes with no documented known issues” while developers are encouraged to test iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari in the meantime. The new build is available as a 986MB download for updating from OS X 10.7.2, or a beefier 1.2GB combo version for those updating from a prior build of the big cat. If we had to venture a guess, we’d say OS X 10.7.3 will be unleashed to the public sometime next month, but Apple remains mum on those details for now.
Taking a cue from Apple’s Macworld departure two years ago, The Official Microsoft Blog today announced that the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show will be the company’s last — at least where swanky booths and splashy keynote addresses are concerned. According to vice president of corporate communications Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s “product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing,” so the folks in Redmond will forego the keynote and booth after the 2012 CES, which kicks off on January 9. That rationale was almost the exact same reason Apple gave for their withdraw from the annual Macworld Expo after their January, 2009 keynote there. Like Apple, Microsoft plans to focus on their own events as well as take advantage of existing social networks and the company’s own website and retail stores (?!) for new ways to “tell our consumer stories.” The move ends a nearly two decade run for Microsoft and CES, where former CEO Bill Gates was always a lively way to kick off the festivities — big shoes that current CEO Steve Ballmer has been quite happy to step into.
Not content to simply push their own tablet and e-reader devices, Amazon today pushed out version 2.9 of their Kindle iOS app, bringing some feature parity to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users at long last. iOS users can now email documents to your Send-to-Kindle email address and have them delivered on your device, while also syncing them across hardware Kindle devices as well. The Kindle app is also now a PDF document reader with table of contents and thumbnail navigation as well. Last but not least, Amazon’s own Newsstand is now built into the app so purchases or subscriptions made on the e-tailer’s website will now sync across to the iOS app, with an all-new design on the iPad. The Kindle app is compatible with all devices running iOS 3.2 or later and available now from the App Store.
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Our pals at MacTech Magazine have just taken the wraps off their 2012 event schedule, and it’s big! How big? Let’s just say there are more events than there are months on the calendar… that kind of big! But don’t worry, the fun doesn’t kick off until the middle of February so there’s plenty of time to schedule an event near you.
MacTech Magazine has announced its event lineup for 2012, with a whopping 15 events spanning coast to coast. That’s a significant increase after only a single event in 2010 and seven events last year, including MacTech Boot Camp for small-to-medium sized business consultants, MacTech InDepth for deep dives on single topics and the three-day MacTech Conference for IT pros and developers.
“We are thrilled with the reaction from our attendees and sponsors at all of our events. We’ve found how to build community, help people learn and network, and make for an awesome experience,” said Neil Ticktin, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of MacTech Magazine. “Next month, I’ve been publisher of MacTech for 20 years. I have never gone into a year more excited than I am about 2012.”
The excitement launches on February 16 with a one-day MacTech Boot Camp in Phoenix, sweeping into Seattle on March 7 and then a MacTech InDepth event on Lion Server Administration in Austin on March 28. New York City will be home to a Boot Camp on April 18 followed by another Lion Server Administration event the following day before moving on to Boston May 17 and 18 with another pair of MacTech InDepth events. The events move on to Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Diego, Minneapolis, the three-day MacTech Conference in Los Angeles from October 17 to 19, San Jose and finally Miami on December 5. Whew!
Registration for all events is now open, with early bird pricing of 5 for one-day events (normally 5) and multiple event discounts are available (save per event when registering for more than one). MacTech Conference pricing matches last year: 99 for on-site registration or 9 for early birds. Get the complete list of events and registration information on the MacTech website.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
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