What is a Patent Apple’s iOS and Smartphone Patent War Dr. Tal Lavian UC Berkeley Engineering, CET

2 Innovation: long-term health You need a healthy root system for the tree to flourish! Innovation! Patents Software Ideas Knowledge Work Processes Creativity Skills Trade Secrets Inventions Secret sauce Concepts

What is a Patent? A form of intellectual property A grant of an exclusionary property right to an inventor by the government Prevents the use of an invention by others for the duration of the patent In return, the inventor must fully disclose the details of the invention to the public (the quid pro quo)

Patents Protects an idea, not an implementation Patent owner can keep others from using the invention (they would be infringing) or license it Patent ownership (assignment) can be bought, sold or traded

What is a Patent? (Cont.) ‏ Right to exclude the making, using, selling, offering for sale or importation of an invention (may not “infringe”) Limited time (typically 20 years from the date of filing with USPTO) ‏ Limited geographic territory (issuing country) ‏ Monopoly awarded by the government for sharing the invention with the public

What Can Be Patented? “Everything under the sun made by man.”  Products: things  Processes: ways to make things  Methods: ways to do things Improvements: better things Defined Classes  Article of Manufacture  Machine  Composition  Process Some more:  Business Methods  Services  Software

What Is Not Patentable Laws of nature (wind, gravity) ‏ Physical phenomena (sand, water) ‏ Abstract ideas (mathematics, a philosophy) Algorithms (e.g., abstract math) Anything not useful, novel and non-obvious (perpetual motion machine) ‏ Inventions which are offensive to public morality or designed for an illegal activity Inventions that cannot be implemented using current technology (enablement) ‏

Types of Patents Design  The distinctive look Plant  New or discovered asexually reproduced plant Utility Patent  Process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, improvements

Types of Patents TypeIs forTerm#s UtilityFunction, use20 years6,214,874 DesignAppearance14 yearsD202,331 PlantAsexually reproduced 20 yearsPP10123

Design Patent Example

Utility Patents Most applicable to electronics and software engineers Usually the most valuable, complex and difficult to obtain Must satisfy key criteria:  Invention must be  Useful  Novel  Non-obvious

Patents Must Be Useful Useful – process, method  Meets a need or solves a problem  Fills current or anticipated need  Can be “reduced to practice”, operated or enabled (e.g., can be built, is functional) ‏  Can be an improvement (better mousetrap) ‏

Utility Patents Must Be Novel 13 o Must be new o Not done before in substantially the same way o No “Prior Art” o Not known to the public before it was invented  Not described in a publication (*) ‏  Not used or offered for sale publicly (*) ‏ o Includes your own work * more than one year before filing patent application

Novelty Considerations How “broad” is the invention What problem(s) it solves How it solves the problem(s) If the structure is known, are elements used in a new way? If the function is known, is a new problem solved?

Utility Patents Must Be Non-Obvious Would not have been obvious to one “skilled in the art” to do this  Includes combining different prior art Must not be trivial or insignificant  Examples  Substituting one material for another  Changing the size (miniaturization) ‏  Changing implementation (software or hardware, custom ASIC) ‏

How Much Prior Art For Anticipation  A single piece of prior art practices all the elements of a claim (e.g., the claim “reads on” this single reference) For Obviousness  Usually more than one reference used to practice the claim  Could be one reference PLUS the knowledge of the “Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art”, aka PHOSITA

Secondary Considerations In Addition to Prior Art The invention's commercial success Long-felt but unresolved needs Previous failure of others Skepticism by experts Praise by others Teaching away by others Solves an unrecognized problem Solves an insoluble problem Copying of the invention by competitors Omission of an element Crowded art Not suggested modification Unappreciated advantage

Mobile OS The major mobile operating systems which are in practical use are Android (Google’s), iOS (Apple’s), BlackBerry OS (RIM’s) and Windows Mobile OS (Microsoft’s).

iOS iOS’s main features include: o Home screen o Folders o Notification Center o Default APPs o Multitasking o Switching applications o Game Center Cisco has the trademark for ‘IOS’; Apple licenses the usage of ‘iOS’ from Cisco

iOS iOS is a Unix based OS. iOS uses four abstraction layers namely: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer.

iOS First version of iOS is released in 2007 with the mane ‘OS X’ and then in 2008 the first beta version of ‘iPhone OS’ is released. In 2007 September Apple released first iPod Touch that also used this OS. In 2010 iPad is released that has a bigger screen than the iPod and iPhone

iOS iOS is Apple’s proprietary mobile operating system initially developed for iPhone and now extended to iPAD, iPod Touch and Apple TV. Initially known as iPhone OS, in June 2010 it is renamed as iOS. iOS is not enabled for cross licensing, it can only be used on Apple’s devices. The user interface of iOS is based on the concept of usage of multi touch gestures. Apple’s App store contains close to 550,000 applications as of March It is estimated that the APPs are downloaded 25B times till now.

Smartphone Patent War – Apple Apple has had major litigation over patents with:  HTC  Motorola  Samsung  Nokia

Smartphone Patent War – Apple Reasons Apple can pursue such extensive litigation:  Almost $100B in cash available  Patent litigation is very expensive  Large patent portfolio  Makes it easier to claim competing products are infringing something

Smartphone Patent War – Apple & Samsung Interesting relationship  Dependent upon one another  Samsung enables Apple’s manufacture of tens of millions of units by providing semiconductors  Apple provides Samsung with lots of business

Smartphone Patent War – Apple & Samsung (cont.) In litigation over the similarities between iDevices and Samsung’s Galaxy line  Has resulted in product bans in multiple countries  Still not over Nonetheless, effort to keep legal battles and business dealings separate due to interdependency

Smartphone Patent War – Apple What are Apple’s motivations?

Smartphone Patent War – Apple What are the costs to Apple for litigating so much over smartphone and tablet technology?

Smartphone Patent War Next week’s topic – MICROSOFT, ANDROID