There have been a bit of commotion online concerning a new Apple’s patent request. The company is reported to create a new patent intended to stop jailbreaking. Around a month ago, DMCA review put forth the option for someone to jailbreak the phone without violating anti-circumvention legislation (still can be committed only under specific circumstances). It was also ruled by the court that the act of circumvention itself is not an infringement.
The Apple was reported to patent the power to remotely disable jailbroken phones. However, the reports made online by third party services were not purely true. One of them sent readers to the patent application, mentioning a jailbroken phone only by telling whether the one was stolen or not. Apparently, this seems to do nothing about the company’s intention disabling jailbroken iPhones. However, the report discusses what Apple is planning to do with devices that have been stolen and later used by “illegal” users. Meanwhile, the second report also barely touches the topic of Apple trying to patent the option to disable jailbroken phones remotely, as the patent was filed over a year ago. Still, it doesn’t make the idea of the patent uninteresting. The statements of the claim include methods for identifying an illegal user of a device, gathering data related to their operations, and sending an alert warning to a responsible party.
As it has been said above, the patent was filed in the early 2009, so the overview of the prior documents might be interesting in terms of putting this patent into question. For example, a 5-year-old article in Forbes details similar ideas to those described in the claims, with the emphasis given to the point where it says about detecting an illegal user of an “electronic device,” which is obviously not a phone specifically, but rather any device. As for the Forbes article, it was devoted to laptop theft and included the same claims: identifying an IP address of the stolen device, if it is used in unauthorized hands, and creating notifications about it. The part of sending an alert to the responsible party was also fulfilled by informing local law enforcement of a place where the stolen device was located.
What all this leading to is the fact that the prior art to a patent has already been filed previously, which can put the validity of the Apple’s patent in jeopardy.
The Apple was reported to patent the power to remotely disable jailbroken phones. However, the reports made online by third party services were not purely true. One of them sent readers to the patent application, mentioning a jailbroken phone only by telling whether the one was stolen or not. Apparently, this seems to do nothing about the company’s intention disabling jailbroken iPhones. However, the report discusses what Apple is planning to do with devices that have been stolen and later used by “illegal” users. Meanwhile, the second report also barely touches the topic of Apple trying to patent the option to disable jailbroken phones remotely, as the patent was filed over a year ago. Still, it doesn’t make the idea of the patent uninteresting. The statements of the claim include methods for identifying an illegal user of a device, gathering data related to their operations, and sending an alert warning to a responsible party.
As it has been said above, the patent was filed in the early 2009, so the overview of the prior documents might be interesting in terms of putting this patent into question. For example, a 5-year-old article in Forbes details similar ideas to those described in the claims, with the emphasis given to the point where it says about detecting an illegal user of an “electronic device,” which is obviously not a phone specifically, but rather any device. As for the Forbes article, it was devoted to laptop theft and included the same claims: identifying an IP address of the stolen device, if it is used in unauthorized hands, and creating notifications about it. The part of sending an alert to the responsible party was also fulfilled by informing local law enforcement of a place where the stolen device was located.
What all this leading to is the fact that the prior art to a patent has already been filed previously, which can put the validity of the Apple’s patent in jeopardy.
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