Difference between revisions of "Apple Inc."
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'''Apple inc.''' has [[software patents]] and has used them aggressively (such as [[Apple v. HTC (2010, USA)|against HTC Corporation]], in 2010). | '''Apple inc.''' has [[software patents]] and has used them aggressively (such as [[Apple v. HTC (2010, USA)|against HTC Corporation]], in 2010). | ||
− | ==Steve Jobs on "stealing"== | + | ==Steve Jobs on Picasso's notion of "stealing"== |
The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs has previously acknowledged that software developement requires building new ideas on existing ideas. While explaining the value of this, he called it "stealing", but he was portraying it in a positive way. It's usually called "incremental development". | The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs has previously acknowledged that software developement requires building new ideas on existing ideas. While explaining the value of this, he called it "stealing", but he was portraying it in a positive way. It's usually called "incremental development". |
Revision as of 23:00, 7 October 2010
Apple inc. has software patents and has used them aggressively (such as against HTC Corporation, in 2010).
Contents
Steve Jobs on Picasso's notion of "stealing"
The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs has previously acknowledged that software developement requires building new ideas on existing ideas. While explaining the value of this, he called it "stealing", but he was portraying it in a positive way. It's usually called "incremental development".
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. I mean, Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And, we have, y'know, always been shameless about stealing great ideas[...][1] (Date unknown but by his age, it's clearly pre-2000)
Patenting LLVM?
Apple, while contributing to the free software LLVM project, has been granted multiple patents mentioning LLVM.
The LLVM software is distributed under a licence which gives no patent protection to recipients.
Can you help? LLVM's contributor policy[1] asks contributors to give free access to necessary patents. Has Apple done this? Do Apple's patents cover code they've contributed to LLVM or are they for non-contributed extensions?
Apple was granted a patent on 17 June 2010, for "Converting javascript into a device-independent representation" including:[2]
1. A method for processing computer code, comprising:storing a device-independent intermediate representation of a source code; andin the event an indication is received that the source code has changed, using the changed source code to generate and store a new intermediate representation of the changed source code.
[...]
8. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the intermediate representation comprises LLVM intermediate representation (IR), LLVM byte code or other byte code, or another appropriate intermediate representation.
LLVM is also mentioned multiple times in the patent section titled "Detailed description".
Possible prior art includes [2], [3], [4], and the "UCSD p-System".
Another Apple patent mentioning LLVM is titled Virtual memory system that is portable between different CPU types.
Related pages on ESP Wiki
Court cases and lawsuits
- Apple v. HTC (2010, USA) - widely publicised litigation over software patents
- Elan Microelectronics v. Apple (2010, USA)
- Nokia v. Apple (2010, USA)
- Mirror Worlds v. Apple (2008, USA)
External links
- BoycottNovell: Apple Files for Junk Patents, Stifling GNU/Linux Development
- Apple patent claim threatens to block or delay W3C specification
- Slashdot: Apple Seeks Patent On Operating System Advertising
- When Apple dropped ZFS, it was possibly due to patents (see also: NetApp v. Sun (2008, USA)). Later statements from Sun and Apple referred to the core problem as being "licensing issues"[5], which could refer to patents or to something else.
- Apple claims to own patents on the HTML5 canvas tag - but they later solved this problem by agreeing to license those patent(s) under the w3c's royalty-free terms.[3]
- Apple's 200 patents on the iPhone - some are hardware patents, some are software patents
- Apple files litigation against HTC for violation of 20 patents, March 2nd 2010
- 2010-03-09: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal, by Johnathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems about patent threats from Apple and Microsoft
- Apple Sued Over Touchpad Technology at ITC, LegalTimes blog April 26, 2010 (see also US ITC)
- The Free Software Foundation alleges that Apple is distributing GNU Go without adhering to the terms of the General Public License