I trust Apple's commitment to privacy as much as I do Google's, but when they both remove a product over a stupid patent rather than pay the patent holder (Sonos' sued Google with their multiroom audio patent), we can see that it's possible for corporations to hold principled views about things.
Google doesn't do business in China because they won't agree to the privacy violating terms of doing so, that is at least a $1T principle if you compare it to the amount of hardware and services that Apple sells there.
They faced internal pressure from employees as I remember it. They shutdown their Chinese sites after the PLA was caught hacking Gmail accounts in Hong Kong, but this was when Paige and Sergey were more involved (being from formerly authoritarian communist countries).
You didn’t bother to search, so let me paste the relevant content for you here:
> The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions.
> The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project.
> […]
> However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it.
> In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated.
The only things that prevented Google from returning to the China market, were public pressure and an employee revolt.
> Google employees are calling on the company to cancel Project Dragonfly, an effort to create a censored search engine in China.
“Many of us accepted employment at Google with the company’s values in mind, including its previous position on Chinese censorship and surveillance, and an understanding that Google was a company willing to place its values above its profits,” an open letter signed by Google employees published Tuesday on Medium says. “After a year of disappointments including Project Maven, Dragonfly, and Google’s support for abusers, we no longer believe this is the case.”
Google’s Chinese search app would have reportedly complied with demands to remove content that the government ruled sensitive and linked users’ searches to their personal phone numbers.
I find this dubious. Google is not known for respecting privacy, and large corporations in general are not known for voluntarily passing on trillion dollar markets on moral grounds. Is there perhaps an alternative explanation that isn't as far fetched?
> They refused to censor the search engine to China’s liking.
Google had no problem with censoring the search results in China. They exited the country after it began hacking into their data centers.
> Since arriving here in 2006 under an arrangement with the government that purged its Chinese search results of banned topics, Google has come under fire for abetting a system that increasingly restricts what citizens can read online.
Google linked its decision to sophisticated cyberattacks on its computer systems that it suspected originated in China and that were aimed, at least in part, at the Gmail user accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Google have a history of censorship in western countries, as evidenced by the scrubbing of all C19 alternative information which didn’t align with TPTB narratives.
Only after they were hacked by China, before that they had no problems with censorship. They also had a plan to return. Doubt there were any principles in play when making decisions on their China operarions
Apple's mobile "privacy" features are about monopolizing advertising on their mobile products so that Apple is now the number one iOS advertising company.
Id go the whole way and say that their entire walled garden ecosystem is designed to do this as well. Most Apple device users that I have spoken to have absolutely no idea how much it makes from advertising inside its own services.
Principled is defined as “acting with morality and showing recognition of right and wrong.”
How is abiding by the decision of a court not following a principled view? Wouldn’t going against the rule of law be non-principles behavior? Apple is not required to license the patent nor is the holder required to ever license their patent. They can tell Apple to go pound sand as this isn’t the seemingly typical cell phone FRAND dispute.
Trying to find a way to build an Apple Watch 9 that doesn’t infringe on a patent is a valid and principled way of behaving, even if it’s perhaps a bad business choice. If it takes them a week or two and stands in court it’ll be seen as a good decision. If they can’t and pony up anyway it’ll be seen as a poor choice of action. We’ll certainly know soon enough.
Selfishly* principled. There's no exclusively abstract benefit here the way there is with e.g privacy rights; there's both the benefit of not having to pay royalties if they prevail as well as the second order benefit of deterring others from submitting patent litigation because other plaintiffs will know that Apple would rather burn cash reserves on litigation than on paying.
It's precisely for that reason that Apple should lose.
This isn't a principled stand. Or rather it is but not a principle that matters to you: it's about not setting a precedent that they'll cave to patent trolls to avoid future patent trolls seeing them as an easy target. So they have to fight every patent suit to make it eceonomically unviable for patent trolls to sue them.
As for privacy, as an aside, Apple's track record is substantially better than Google's.
I can't decide if I'd be a fool to buy an Apple Watch right now. I'm ready for an upgrade, but I fear what happens long term if hardware changes are necessary.
Apple has increasingly moved towards a disposable tech paradigm. They seem to want, expect, and maybe even contrive a reason for you to throw away your device and buy a new one every year.
Exactly. I don't know where people get this about Apple. There are so many things that one could criticize Apple about, but older hardware support is not one of them
Saying that it's physically possible to build and service a desktop that lasts a quarter century has no relationship to the length of support a consumer electronics company should offer.
I can still boot my white clamshell Macbook from almost 20-years ago. It didn't disintegrate at the 5-year or 10-year mark.
That doesn't mean Apple must continue to support it.
Oh I don't disagree with that! I should have specified that, at least in the mobile world, Apple is much better about supporting their hardware for the average person than the alternatives
Patents. The classical government-granted monopoly. Incidentally the only type of undefeatable monopoly. Created with the best intentions, of course: to “encourage innovation”.
Most initiatives are not purely good without any downsides. A principle to consider is: Just because there are some negative aspects sometimes, do those outweigh the good? In this case, how many negatives actually come from patent law? (Btw, a monopoly most often is not the result - there are often many solutions to a similar problem/need.). And consider the side of the creator (which I’ve been finding is surprisingly rare in hn) - creating a company and product is already incredibly hard, how much harder do we want to make that? What and who are we sacrificing?
Maybe we just adjust the patent law some. Decrease the number of years? I’m sure it could be better.
There are many problems with software patents and patents that are "_____ but on a phone/watch" but I'm curious of what your solution is? What is a better system?
Patents have been a thing in the US since 1790 (even earlier, technically, as they are specifically called out in the constitution). What period of unencumbered free markets are you referring to?
Who's that? Last I checked the US has a sizeable homeless population, a vast amount of people in precarious working conditions and most Americans would be financially ruined by a single major accident or health issue. I don't think people "just a few generations ago" would consider them to have unimaginable wealth unless you want to focus on the reduced costs of consumer goods rather than access to food, shelter and social spaces.
Also patents already existed "a few generations ago". If you want to cut down on IP protections be my guest but framing that in the same language as cutting back on labor protections or social welfare seems a bit questionable. Especially if you're implying we had unencumbered free markets before and no longer do now but our supposed present wealth is owed to those free markets of the distant past not the "encumbrance" of the more recent past - sorry, you'll have to give a bit more of a timeline and explanation of cause and effect than just a snappy one-liner.
The great majority of people living today. We currently have the historically lowest percentage of people living in poverty ever. Check out the statistics. Of course it’s not 100% but it’s never been better.
Sure, depending on how you define poverty, how you measure it and how you interpret the numbers. For the record, the poverty line defined by most of the statistics you're likely thinking of is below starvation levels, even in many underdeveloped countries.
Show me statistics that don't make the basic mistake of considering moneyless hunter-gatherer societies equivalent to homeless people without money and we can maybe begin to have a conversation about the development of poverty and wealth over the ages.
In the meantime you're dodging the bulk of my question. When did things improve as drastically as you claim and what changed in terms of patent law that makes you think this improvement is being reversed or how do you see any suggestion of a causative link between market regulations and this decline? Also, how does your argument that we live in the best of times fit into this argument?
If we live in the historically best of times in terms of wealth and poverty but the current regulations and IP laws are making all of us worse off, that suggests you can point at some points where these laws and regulations were introduced or tightened followed by a decline in metrics you consider significant. I'd like you to spell out what you think these are (patents only seem to be part of it and even that is unclear as patents aren't new) and explain which metrics you think they had an impact on and what the scale of that impact was.
BS patents are bad, and patents lasting 20+ years are bad, but if someone's gonna get maimed by them… I can hardly think of a more deserving victim than Apple.
I can't answer about the intent of the person you responded to, but my reading was that they were commenting on Apple's history of patent lawsuits, both as a defendant and a plaintiff. Particularly the prolonged IP slapfights between Apple and pretty much every other mobile device company, aka the Smartphone Patent Wars.
When smartphones became ubiquitous they patented multi-touch, meaning those of us with early android phones had to spend hours hacking the capability into out devices.Pretty sure the original XDA threads are still up.
Then there was the previously mentioned rounded corners etc.
This is all the end result of allowing businesses to perform regulatory capture.
'Bout time it bit apple in the ass
We live in a world where companies want us beholden to them and not the other way around.
That and patenting the finger swipe are two of the most egregious hypocrisies of Apple's patent lawsuits. However it's really the USPTO that is to blame. IIRC if you're big enough you can just bully the patent office until they acquiesce. USPTO needs to learn how to say no, even to big corporations.
Which makes me wonder: Imagine if USPTO published statistics that enumerated patents that a company applied for and were turned down. My guess is Apple has never been told no.
> Are you intimating Apple has been litigious with patents? Or just saying you have no sympathy for companies with lots of money?
This is a false dichotomy. Apple can be evil, and deserve to have bad things happen to it, without performing its evil through the medium of patent lawsuits.
Do you disagree with the idea that patents promote innovation? Or do you think that 20 years specifically is too long, and if so, based on what analysis?
I’m holding judgement until the case is investigated further. It’s my understanding that so far everyone has basically said, “there’s enough evidence to proceed in court.”
Patent reform is something that is sorely needed (and more funding for the USPTO).
>> As a small shop, I am particularly afraid of trolls shutting us down overnight with basically no recourse.
I be more scared of non-trolls who own giant catalogues of patents. The giant companies will shut you down just as fast as any "troll". Try to invent any device with a touchscreen and an internet connection. It won't be trolls knocking on your door, but lawyers from Samsung, Apple and Microsoft.
Patents can't be circumvented with the "Chinese wall" idea that happens with copyright-based reverse engineering. There is no alternative to licensing if you want to use a technology.
Oh it’s for copyright only. So what legal standing does Apple have and why didn’t they just pay the licensing fee? Unless they wanted litigation to go after these type of patents being sealed off?
Don't play the game of building products that are subject to other people's patents. If in doubt, buy them out. Pay for the international rights regardless of whether you think a patent invalid in some market. Apple isn't exactly struggling for cash at the moment. It can afford to pay for the patent rather than stage what is starting to look like a PR event.
When has Apple ever sued over patent infringement? There was the Samsung case [1] but that was a design issue.
Apple, Google, Meta and other big tech companies have used patents defensively not offensively. That is, as mutually-assured destruction.
The real villains in this story are the patent holding companies that sue in East Texas to get in front of one judge that, at a time, heard a quarter of all US patent cases, all brought by NPEs (non-practicing entities aka patent trolls). IIRC there was at a time another judge and I heard a story that a popular law firm employed a relative to conflict out the second judge so they could get the judge they wanted.
Since the article is about patents I, too, limited the scope of my comments--quite deliberately--to patents so these are really out-of-scope. I mentioned Apple v. Samsung because of the confusing language ie "design patent".
The first case you mention is against third-party repair and parts. This isn't a simple issue. At one end of spectrum people have died from fake accessories (eg [1]). So while I trust (and use) Anker devices that are sold in the US, would I buy and use a charger in Cambodia? Probably not. So I support the idea of third-party repair but you have to deal with the question of quality and the parts being suitable.
The second relates to, again, design (and trademark). This is less defensible. I mean they do look like Airpods but really how many ways can you make an earpod?
Happened back in '11 when they were going after Android OEMs, despite the fact that the actual devices weren't infringing they still tried to get them blocked.
> Masimo CEO Joe Kiani told CNN he believes Apple deliberately infringed on his company’s patents. But the companies have been at loggerheads for years. In October 2022, Apple filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Masimo.
While not "sue-ing" but instead the other way - being trying to avoid paying for patented tech. They tried to stop paying licenses for their PowerVR-derived GPUs, which they were explicitly developed from so no "convergent evolution" excuses. Announcing it to the market then caused a massive abandonment of PowerVR and stock price drop, and purchase at fire sale prices by a Chinese "Strategic investment" group.
It never even made it to court - and they have since scrubbed all statements about that, and to this day still pay for the architecture license. Just too late for PowerVR as an independent IP vendor.
Never be a supplier to Apple - they will screw you over.
I might expand this to "Being a Tech supplier to Apple is a mistake" - they seem quite happy with exporting their labor-intensive costs, and whitewashing themselves of any "questionable" activities in the process.
TSMC is an interesting one, as they're pretty much the only person who have made that business model work, and even Apple's total business in that area is smaller than their scale seems to require.
That was, I believe, they judge they wanted to get in front of. At one point there was another judge in that district that they didn't want to get in front of and a law firm just so happened to employ the second judge's son (? IIRC).
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley didn't recuse herself from hearing the Microsoft-Activision FTC case just because her son works at Microsoft (and ruled in msfts favor!)
So are recusals for such conflicts really optional?
I have been doing the thought experiment about fair pricing of patents. My current values are like:
A patent holder declares the value he is willing to license the patent to any entity. Inventor can consider their EXPANSES while declaring the value, but not the approach “my idea cost me 0$ but is worth a billion “. Society should be willing to compensate for monetary investment, not just imagination. You deposit 1% of the declared value annually to maintain the patent. This one to discourage arbitrary value declaration. Any company wishing to license, pays you the declared amount. If 10 companies pay you declared value, I.e You have earned 10x return on your actual expense of innovation, patent becomes public domain. Society doesn’t need per product patent pricing sh*.
The numbers , 1% and 10x can always be debated. Overall seems good enough to encourage innovation and discourage trolling.
Why doesn't Apple enter into a deal with Masimo for a small percentage of the watch? Unless I missed it, the news article didn't go into more detail on why a deal couldn't be made.
> “If they don’t want to use our chip, I’ll work with them to make their product good,” Mr. Kiani said. “Once it’s good enough, I’m happy to give them a license.”
It sounds like they didn't just want some money. They wanted them to use their chip or partner with them.
I am no Apple fan, but telling them to politely fuck off seems reasonable to me.
The way I read this is, Masimo does not have confidence in the way Apple has implemented the technology and they don't want their name attached to a bad implementation.
So they are giving Apple the choice of either buying a turnkey solution or partner with them to fix Apple's flawed implementation.
That would be the obvious solution, but it’s not surprising they couldn’t agree on a price when they operate in very different industries. Masimo makes medical devices, ones whose prices are probably both high and skewed by insurance. Apple is a consumer devices company and may not be able to justify a high royalty price and still meet certain consumer price points. Another possibility is that Apple’s watches may be an alternative to Masimo’s expensive, high-margin devices, so a licensing deal could destroy Masimo’s entire business in the long run. So, coming to an agreement on price may have been impossible.
Apple isn’t going to go into medical devices that are certified for diagnostic use unless they’re nuts. There’s a lot of money there, but it’s hard to get and way outside their core businesses.
That $8 pulse oximeter from aliexpress is better than nothing, but it’s a long way from what Masimo or Medtronic (Nellcor) sell.
And the prices for oximeters aren’t really affected by insurance, as individuals almost never get them at diagnostic grade. They’re durable, have screens that convey more than just a number, electrically isolated from the patient… there’s a lot going on there that is not, at first glance, obvious to the layman.
(I’m an anesthesiologist; pulse oximetry with a good waveform display is a critical monitor for us. I would rather have a good pulse ox than any other non-invasive monitor, if I could only have one.)
As a follow-up, it looks like Masimo is trying to make a consumer watch-like device (or possibly just pretending to so they look like a competitor to Apple). https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com/
> Apple is a consumer devices company and may not be able to justify a high royalty price and still meet certain consumer price points.
Do we know the total BOM cost plus the amortized cost of development & other expenses for an Apple watch ?
While I don't think one patent holder should get a major share of the available margins, I find it hard to believe that margins for Apple on smart watches are anywhere close to "thin".
Your best bet would be to follow the court filings and look for the words "unwilling licensor" and "unwilling licensee".
Though I suspect this is more on Apple. Going to be blunt for a bit, but Apple has a habit of assuming only it produces innovation worth paying for. Apple usually doesn't wind up actually taking the import ban in the end, but there's a whole host of patent litigation that has targeted Apple. It's kind of funny, though - I remember the days where Steve Jobs insisted that them owning a swipe-to-unlock patent meant basically any phone with a touchscreen and a not-ass operating system was infringing them. "Zero-length swipe" my ass.
Probably would cost them more than waiting them out in court, or would encourage or make it easier for other patent holders, however legitimate, to go after them.