“Boy, have we patented it!”
–Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone at WWDC 2007
It’s easy to forget that the things you do every day are built on patented technology. Whether it is the patent you build on to make your own product or the patent standards you rely on, such as WiFi, patents are a part of the devices and platforms on which you’re building apps. ACT’s members tell us—and studies confirm—that small, independent developers are patenting their innovations to protect the investment they have made and provide an incentive for new and better products and services. This protection allows small companies a foothold in a fast-moving and competitive industry and provides a stable platform upon which businesses can grow and create jobs.
In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the first generation iPhone and boasted of the IP protections Apple had secured. Since that historic WWDC, Apple has built upon that technology to create a device and platform that is faster, more secure, robust, and functional. And while it wasn’t a line in the keynote, patents are still a crucial part of the new offerings showcased at WWDC 2014 — each new invention Apple announced is built on previous patents.
And it wasn’t just Apple thinking about patents yesterday. What you may have missed in the excitement of WWDC was that the Supreme Court announced two unanimous patent decisions which required patent claims to be unambiguous and prevented mass filings against a group of defendants by combing their actions to meet infringement requirements.
The first was Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., where the Court overturned a lower court decision allowing a patent owner to assert their patent claim as long as its construction was not “insolubly ambiguous.” The Supreme Court, however, said that allowing such claim construction to go forward would “foster the innovation-discouraging ‘zone of uncertainty,’” and struck the ambiguous standard. What’s this mean and why is it important? It means that courts will be able to invalidate vague patents, the kind often used by patent trolls.
The second was Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies Inc. Akamai sued Limelight, saying that putting together Limelight’s patented technology and Limelight’s users’ use of that technology amounted to patent infringement. The Court asserted that a method “patent is not infringed unless all the steps are carried out.” What does this one mean? It means that a patent owner cannot sue a group of defendants by combining all their actions to equal infringement.
The decisions by the Supreme Court work to strengthen our industry by restricting bad patent litigation. It paves the way for continued innovation from developers, large and small, and makes us excited to see what new technologies will run in and on our mobile devices in the years to come.