Re:When patents attack Android
by nitrogen on Wednesday August 03, 2011 @05:02PM
(#2843089)
Regarding Apple's UI claims, IIUC that's mostly against Samsung's modifications of Android. Further, how many ways can you arrange finger-sized square icons on a portrait-mode screen? If two phones have two screens of similar size, and one puts 48x48 (or whatever) pixel icons on them, they will form similar grids.
Oracle is another matter entirely, and arguing that case requires discussing whether an unoriginal programming language and associated virtual machine should be patentable. Oracle gets no sympathy from me because of the way they've treated the various communities that built up around Sun's products, but beyond that, I think a rational case can be made that Google's independent implementation of a register-based VM should not be seen as infringing patents on Java's stack-based VM, and/or that Java's patents cover things that are obvious or non-novel.
Oracle is another matter entirely, and arguing that case requires discussing whether an unoriginal programming language and associated virtual machine should be patentable. Oracle gets no sympathy from me because of the way they've treated the various communities that built up around Sun's products, but beyond that, I think a rational case can be made that Google's independent implementation of a register-based VM should not be seen as infringing patents on Java's stack-based VM, and/or that Java's patents cover things that are obvious or non-novel.