Apple’s Patently Absurd HTC Suit

by Dan Costa, PCmag.com

“If Apple’s target is Google’s Android, why is the company going after HTC? Because HTC brought a knife to a gun fight.”

Apple’s claim that HTC’s Android phones violate at least 20 of its patents seems, at a glance, like simple corporate maneuvering. Android is, arguably, the iPhone OS’s strongest competitor, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Apple would throw up some legal hurdles. But the suit, ultimately, shows how our patent system protects large, veteran companies and punishes upstart contenders.

First, let’s examine Apple’s claims. The company filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Delaware with 20 instances of patent violations, most involving the iPhone. Apple also appealed to the International Trade Commission, whose only recourse would be to ban the import of HTC phones from the United States entirely. There are a fairly wide range of patents, but many of them are interface-related. Truly understanding the claims requires some engineering experience, a law degree, and a finely-tuned B.S. detector. I have one of the three.

Take Patent #7,657,849: For Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image. That’s right, Apple owns that sideways swipe that wakes up the iPhone—and just about every other smartphone on the market. As written, it would also apply to the Palm Pre’s Upward Thumb Swipe Unlock gesture. I suspect that the act of touching, itself, is patent pending…… Read the Blog.

DCL comment: This is only implicitly about event processing. But it shows how absurdly ignorant the patent award process has become. It can be argued that most of these patents should never have been allowed in the first place. I wonder what’s happening  with patents in CEP and event processing in general?