David/Goliath Story Brewing Between Apple and iControlPad Makers

relliker writes "Apple has just patented a design for an iPhone gaming add-on after admitting that the iPhone is somewhat hard to use as a games machine. The catch is that the design is not theirs. It was designed by a team of gaming aficionados, one member of which, Craig 'craigix' Rothwell of OpenPandora fame, is already twittering like mad about the shot just fired by Apple in their direction. The iControlPad team are in contact with their IP lawyer, since their design is already in production. Will Apple still try to steamroll right through them?"

Mod parent offtopic

[Looce]

This article is very clearly about a hardware patent.

USPTO uses first to file rule not first to invent

[presidenteloco]

If you file at USPTO in September 2008, you get
priority over inventions revealed by others as early
as October 2007.

Wacko system. Yes. But that's the way the US patent law
works. It basically means, file your patent as soon as designed, before you reveal your invention.

I'm not supporting this system. Just saying how it is currently
defined.

Re:Adding to the list of Apple's offensiveness

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking with wisdom and reserve gets you +5 Insightful, not simple anti-Apple claptrap.

Re:The US' legal system follows the Golden Rule:

[Major Blud]

"He who has the gold makes the rules.
So yeah, Apple will try, and Apple will succeed in steamrolling through them."

Not necessarily. See BlackBerry vs. NTP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry [wikipedia.org]

Re:Apple

[Prophet of Nixon]

They used to pull this shit back in the 90s when I used them too. Back when System 7 was out, there were tons of freely available system extensions and control panels on the web, and small applications that added desktop gadgets and whatnot. Well, both System 7.5 and System 8 were nothing but Apple ripoffs of extensions and control panels stolen from the community and packaged into overpriced OS upgrades. Systems 7 and 7.5 even had compatible Finders (shells), there was practically nothing different about the OSs aside from the stolen extensions. I put up with that behavior then since at the time Apple was years ahead of the rest of the personal computer market, but I jumped ship as soon as I could get a good alternative.

Re:Whoop, whoop! Hypocrisy alarm!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are incorrect Sir. If you own the game you can download a backup (you do not have to create it yourself). If you own the ROM chip, you can download it you do not have to back it up yourself.

However the people you downloaded it from are in breach of copy write, unless they confirmed with you that you are a legit owner of said code. (and I doubt they did).

Re:Filing date?

[nathan s]

You can see this on their website: http://www.icontrolpad.com/ [icontrolpad.com]

Looks like the posts date back to May 2008.

Wrong

[Dachannien]

The US is the only country in the world that has a first-to-invent system. Resolution of this (when two applicants each believe they separately invented the same invention) is called an "interference" between the two conflicting parties, in which each inventor attempts to prove that they were the true first inventor of the claimed invention.

For publications, the one year "grace period" is only guaranteed for one's own publications of an invention. If you publish an invention on 1 September 2007, you have one year, until the first business day on or after 1 September 2008, to file your application for that invention. But if the prior art is a publication authored by someone else, the grace period does not apply unless you can prove either (a) reduction to practice of the invention before the prior art date, or (b) complete conception of the invention before the prior art date coupled with due diligence until reduction to practice or the filing date.

Any publication more than one year before the filing date always counts as prior art, even if you can prove you had reduced your invention to practice before that publication - and even if the publication was your own work. Public use or sale in the US more than a year before the filing date also counts for this.

Did anyone else notice...

[BillX]

that the product is not the only piece of IP being steamrollered? As late as Nov. 09, posts on http://icontrolpad.com/ [icontrolpad.com] have referred to the product under the shortened name 'iPad' (or Ipad, or ipad). Apple's iPad announcement probably put a formal stop to that (Jan 2010?)

Re:Apple is not a friend of FOSS

[ducomputergeek]

Really, you like printing in Linux? Well the next time you want to print something in Linux, please goto http://localhost631./ [localhost631.]

Re:Wrong

[mattack2]

The US is the only country in the world that has a first-to-invent system.

[citation needed]

The Wikipedia page says: "The United States uses a first-to-invent system, unlike most other countries in the world."

http://www.torys.com/Publications/Documents/Publication%20PDFs/ARTech-19T.pdf [torys.com]
says that the U.S. and the Philippines use first-to-invent.

Yes, I'm nitpicking the _only_ part.

Re:Apple

[mccalli]

You're definitely insulting those of us who worked on it.

Can't speak for MacOS 8 as I left the Mac at 7.5.3, to return with a 12" Powerbook when OS X 10.2 Jaguar came out. Even at the time though, a few of us in the mixed Mac/PC shop I worked at called System 7.5 'the shareware edition', because it really did just seem like what we'd already sorted our System 7 installs to be. Wikipedia seems to confirm this too: look at the System 7.5 section here [wikipedia.org] (search on 'Capone') and see the number of features which originated in shareware. 7.5 was a paid upgrade.

Can't speak for 8 and 9, but 7.5 was definitely shareware...err...'inspired'.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Adding to the list of Apple's offensiveness

[jc42]

[News] like this is bringing Apple closer to the level of Sony in my mind.

It's nothing very new. For another story similar to the Apple Records story, ask google about Mark Newton and his newton.com domain, and what Apple did to him to get control of his domain name. (This can be easily tested with your browser; just type "newton.com" into the address bar, hit Return, and see where it takes you.) Apple was already using newton.apple.com, which you'd think would have been the reasonable domain name for one of their products. But they had to have newton.com, too, even though they never actually used it for much of anything.

Re:Adding to the list of Apple's offensiveness

[erroneus]

That's not surprising. A former employer registered "next.com" named after his business. Apple stepped in and got it without a fight.

What I find suprprising (in a way) is that Apple fans can turn a blind eye to this type of behavior while worshipping everything Apple does. Interestingly enough, Apple users tend to think of themselves as good people... even "green" people quite often. Meanwhile, Apple's bullying and other horrible behaviors remain excluded from their "character."