Legally I’m not sure the small developer has a chance. Not because the courts are unjust, it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here. It’s not to say they didn’t, it just doesn’t seem like there’s any slam dunk legal argument about wrongdoing (despite who this might feel morally).
>it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here
Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?
IIRC the Winklevoss twins got paid handsomely as a settlement for Zuckerberg stealing their idea for Facebook. Granted, they were very rich and well connected so that helped.
Ideas are not worth much, and there is no law against executing someone else’s idea. Winklevoss twins (or Connect U rather) got paid to shut up and go away at a time when it was obvious $65M was going to be pocket change for Facebook and their lawsuit was going to cost more in time for people at Facebook than $65M.
Thanks for clarifying, although $65M for Apple is pocket change they can scrape from between the couch cushions in Cupertino so they could get the author to shut up immediately if they wanted to.
A lawsuit about equity while a company is on the road to the biggest IPO in history in 2009 is different circumstances than a guy arguing against an established company in 2021.
Apple could pay this guy off, but apparently their executives have decided he is not a sufficient PR problem or time expense to merit a payoff yet.
> there is no law against executing someone else’s idea
Are you sure about that? Obviously, you mean outside of the patent framework and the concept of infringement, so never mind that.
There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.
What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.
>There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.
What is this law? I am pretty sure flying cars, underwater cities, space travel, etc are ideas that someone else has had, but no US court is going to stop you from executing an idea just because someone else fantasized about it.
>What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.
The theft itself would be a crime, but an entity not involved in the theft would be able to take advantage of the trade secret without any legal liability. That is the tradeoff for not registering a patent to gain exclusivity for 20 years via legal mechanisms.
Short answer is no, unless a patent or copyright is stolen. I believe the Winklevoss allegations stemmed from a belief that there was some sort of agreement or contract that was violated.
Winklevoss twins won because MZ was actively telling them he was working on the app in order to prevent direct competition from them while he worked on his own version (in the movie at least, who knows what's really real). If he had just told them to f-k off and ripped them off from the start, everything would have been fine legally. There's tons of prior art for social networks and domain restricted logins before FB came around.
Connect U obviously did not have proper documents stating Zuckerberg was working for them, or a non compete or anything since they were willing to settle. Hence it seems like a he said she said situation where Connect U got lucky that Facebook was going to be so huge that their agreed upon settlement amount was inconsequential to Facebook.
> Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?
This makes the assumption that apple hasn’t been putting deep thought into the keyboard design since before the first watch was physically built. I think it’s safe to assume there’s a 30 slide keynote filled with different designs and user study results.
A lawsuit will result in the "discovery" process, and very well might show that Apple had wanted to do this thing for a very long time and at some point they realized that a 3rd party had just introduced something similar to what they wanted to do. And people inside Apple proposed buying the company to save time and money. But when he said no, Apple just decided to continue on their plan.
Or the discovery may uncover evidence of poor behavior. You just don't know.
Seriously folks, consumer devices are being used internally for a long time before they become known to the public. UI improvement ideas are being thrown around constantly and are logged, discussed, prioritized, etc. Just because something isn't there on launch day, or v2, v3 or v4 of the software, doesn't mean they didn't think of it or didn't plan to do it.
I’d be surprised if it was that nefarious. Apple is releasing a free OS update that has this feature. What do they stand to gain by removing a third-party app users need to learn about and install? Absent some explanation about an advantage Apple gains I’m willing to believe this has something to do with app store policies than something else.
