Line ordered to pay ¥14 mil over patent infringement

This is getting ridiculous. There needs to be a complete overhaul of patent laws.

Line just goes from strength to strength, from a huge data release to China to patent infringement. Hey if I am to believe the wags here Korean tech is supposed to be so much better than Japanese tech. Could the, cough cough, experts here be wrong? Stay tuned kids!

This is getting ridiculous. There needs to be a complete overhaul of patent laws.

Why? Line stole the idea from a Japanese company without paying them for its use.

I asked LINE about the “nearby contacts” feature not working for me. They said it was not available in Japan. I asked why not and they said they couldn’t disclose the information. I asked why was it sensitive information and they said they were not prepared to discuss it ?? Why is it so secret ? Is there another patent case looming, or was it connected to this one ? Does anyone know any reason why being able to reach out to users who are local to you should be restricted and confidential ?

was patented by the Kyoto-based Future Eye Co on Sept. 15, 2017

What exactly does it mean when they say exchange account details? LINE already allowed people to add others to their contacts by shaking your phone in 2013. There is even a video on YouTube caleld [LINE] Adding friends with Shake it! from Mar 12, 2013 showing this feature. Since an at least similar feature in LINE already existed years before this company patented it, I'm quite curious to know what exactly is different here.

LINE revenue for third quarter last year was around $340 million. This 14 million Yen judgment is a joke.

What exactly does it mean when they say exchange account details? LINE already allowed people to add others to their contacts by shaking your phone in 2013. There is even a video on YouTube caleld [LINE] Adding friends with Shake it! from Mar 12, 2013 showing this feature. Since an at least similar feature in LINE already existed years before this company patented it, I'm quite curious to know what exactly is different here.

Exactly… the feature was available way before it was patent by another company…a bit odd!

desert

Line is a Japanese company..... And it was invented in Japan, in response to 311.

Exactly… the feature was available way before it was patent by another company…a bit odd!

Where in the article does it say that? Patent cases can take years to work their way through a nation's courts before a decision is reached. How do you know the tech involved in the dispute wasn't developed before its use by Line?

Where in the article does it say that? Patent cases can take years to work their way through a nation's courts before a decision is reached. How do you know the tech involved in the dispute wasn't developed before its use by Line?

Never mind I found it. D'oh.

Some IT patents are a nightmare, imagine a patenting the notes played upon a piano... its somewhat akin to that.

When whats behind the User Interface is a "Blackbox" then that, certainly is Copyrightable, however the interactions on the User Interface itself... that, sadly is the contentious bit... yet still ... Companies will argue that they have spent Millions of $ determining that Control-C / Control-V is Copyrightable.... and moving a mouse up to scroll a page up, and down to scroll a page down.... is Copyrightable...

We should collectively do a Robinhood trading style of copying flood, and flood the market with all sorts of imaginable things to copyright and thus blockade all IT Corporations .. lets start with the Sneeze, and the AI response to that...

Where in the article does it say that? Patent cases can take years to work their way through a nation's courts before a decision is reached. How do you know the tech involved in the dispute wasn't developed before its use by Line?

Unfortunately I was not able to find the patent in question on the Japan Platform for Patent Information. From what I was able to gather, once you have applied for a patent you have to hand in a request for examination within 3 years or the application is considered withdrawn. After handing in this request it takes usually around 9.5 months until you receive the result of the examination. So even if you wait until the very last day you should get a result in under 4 years (or roughly 45.5 months/3 years 9.5 months). In this case they patented such technology in September 2017, about 4 years and 6 months after LINE put a video on YouTube showing the feature the president of Future Eye is especially referring to. Even if we assume that the date given here means they were granted the patent and they took their sweet time handing in their request for examination, that would put the date of application at around middle of November 2013, or 8 months after LINE released the video.