Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

litigationandtrial.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#11

Post by SteveArmstrong »

twoodfin wrote: post #5

...with a patent application granted after a year-long review by the patent office that apparently didn’t include watching this scene from 2002’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise does all of those things and more with a spiffy 3D interface. This is silly, as is the Gates analogy. I assure you, if anyone manages to develop a practical holodeck, they will be able to patent the hell out of it. Star Trek is not prior ar…

They shouldn't be able to patent the idea of a holodeck, which I thought was the main argument in this article. The mechanics of using force fields (or whatever) would still be the subject of the patents if they were novel.

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#12

Post by danielweber »

twoodfin wrote: post #5

...with a patent application granted after a year-long review by the patent office that apparently didn’t include watching this scene from 2002’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise does all of those things and more with a spiffy 3D interface. This is silly, as is the Gates analogy. I assure you, if anyone manages to develop a practical holodeck, they will be able to patent the hell out of it. Star Trek is not prior ar…

The depiction of a holodeck would not stop someone from getting a utility patent for a holodeck.

But the appearance of an identical work in fiction should stop a design patent. So if you wanted to get a design patent on a duplicate of a PADD, Star Trek would count as prior art.

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#13

Post by felipeko »

twoodfin wrote: post #5

...with a patent application granted after a year-long review by the patent office that apparently didn’t include watching this scene from 2002’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise does all of those things and more with a spiffy 3D interface. This is silly, as is the Gates analogy. I assure you, if anyone manages to develop a practical holodeck, they will be able to patent the hell out of it. Star Trek is not prior ar…

You don't need to develop neither have a pratical thing to have a patent over it on USA.

You can read a time machine patent here: http://www.google.com/patents?id=hNHIAAAAEBAJ&printsec=f...

If you ever happen to develop this machine, this person who just imagined it can ban you from selling. So tell me, who do you think worked harder on this invention? And why would this paper (the patent) be worth more than the real invention?

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#14

Post by twoodfin »

MaxwellKennerly wrote: post #9
twoodfin wrote: post #5

...with a patent application granted after a year-long review by the patent office that apparently didn’t include watching this scene from 2002’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise does all of those things and more with a spiffy 3D interface. This is silly, as is the Gates analogy. I assure you, if anyone manages to develop a practical holodeck, they will be able to patent the hell out of it. Star Trek is not prior ar…

How hard do you think it is to implement scrolling, the rubber band effect, and pinch-to-zoom on a display screen? Answer: not hard at all. In fact, it has been trivial for years. The hard part is implementing it in a cost-effective, reliable manner — something that Apple did with industry-leading industrial design/manufacturing efforts, not through patented technologies. But that's not what this case was about. If t…

How hard do you think it is to implement scrolling, the rubber band effect, and pinch-to-zoom on a display screen? Answer: not hard at all.

So surely there were dozens of devices with these features (I assume you mean inertial scrolling) prior to the patents being granted?

This stuff is not trivial: Only a handful of multitouch devices even existed prior to the iPhone, and exploiting that technology, along with improvements in mobile hardware generally, was hard, or smartphones prior to 2007 wouldn't have sucked so very badly.

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#15

Post by MaxwellKennerly »

Cushman wrote: post #10

These articles are getting a bit tiring. > On December 14, 2007, Apple laid claim to the supposed novel invention of “list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display,” the formal title of United States Patent 7,469,381 B2 For those of you who just joined us, you do not get patents for ideas , you get patents for inventions. The named patent is not for "List scrolling and docum…

But it had occurred to other people, and lots of them. You can even watch Tom Cruise pinch-to-zoom, and scroll by waiving his hands.

Look at the prior art in the patent itself, e.g.:

US5844547 May 9, 1995 Dec 1, 1998 Fujitsu Limited Apparatus for manipulating an object displayed on a display device by using a touch screen

US6567102 Nov 25, 2001 May 20, 2003 Compal Electronics Inc. Touch screen using pressure to control the zoom ratio

US20050168488 Jan 31, 2005 Combination tool that zooms in, zooms out, pans, rotates, draws, or manipulates during a drag

All Apple did was jumble these same longstanding into some arguably-new form, and, viola, they had a patent for something everybody was doing.

I doubt you really contend that, in late 2007, Apple invented scrolling and zooming with your fingers, or that you contend that Apple's implementation was substantially different (and both novel and useful) from those prior forms. If you don't contend either of those, then why, exactly, should Apple have a patent over their implementation, which was at best modestly different from prior implementations?

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#16

Post by twoodfin »

danielweber wrote: post #12
twoodfin wrote: post #5

...with a patent application granted after a year-long review by the patent office that apparently didn’t include watching this scene from 2002’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise does all of those things and more with a spiffy 3D interface. This is silly, as is the Gates analogy. I assure you, if anyone manages to develop a practical holodeck, they will be able to patent the hell out of it. Star Trek is not prior ar…

The depiction of a holodeck would not stop someone from getting a utility patent for a holodeck. But the appearance of an identical work in fiction should stop a design patent . So if you wanted to get a design patent on a duplicate of a PADD, Star Trek would count as prior art.

I'm fairly certain most of the posting's examples center around the utility patents under dispute.

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#17

Post by otterley »

MaxwellKennerly wrote: post #15
Cushman wrote: post #10

These articles are getting a bit tiring. > On December 14, 2007, Apple laid claim to the supposed novel invention of “list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display,” the formal title of United States Patent 7,469,381 B2 For those of you who just joined us, you do not get patents for ideas , you get patents for inventions. The named patent is not for "List scrolling and docum…

But it had occurred to other people, and lots of them. You can even watch Tom Cruise pinch-to-zoom, and scroll by waiving his hands. Look at the prior art in the patent itself, e.g.: US5844547 May 9, 1995 Dec 1, 1998 Fujitsu Limited Apparatus for manipulating an object displayed on a display device by using a touch screen US6567102 Nov 25, 2001 May 20, 2003 Compal Electronics Inc. Touch screen using pressure to contr…

Are you honestly contending that if anything depicted in a sci-fi movie cannot qualify as patentable subject matter when actually implemented? E.g., if someone invents a matter transporter as depicted in Star Trek, the inventor cannot patent it?

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#18

Post by eddieplan9 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #3

The verdict was a monumentally stupid decision and I hope it won't prove to be too harmful in the long run. One way to look at innovation and progress is that all inventions must eventually become a commodity. Something which is novel, hard, expensive and rare today must become a cheap and ubiquitous commodity tomorrow. It is this process that allows you to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and easily leverage past…

I am all for all inventions must eventually become a commodity. However, if you look at the long term instead of just getting innovation to become cheap commodities available to everybody as soon as possible, some protection should be provided to the inventor so while cool new progressive "stand on the shoulders of giants" changes can keep coming, risky groundbreaking innovations can also emerge once in a while. Without effective patent protection, everybody will resort to do safer small-step improvements instead of spending years and billions to build (and market) something vastly different from what people are familiar with. In other words, with zero patent protection, you will still see cars getting better mileage, but you won't see an electrical car.

If we want to argue for patent reform, we need to focus on the true patent trolls. Apple is not a patent troll and arguing against this will push many people to the other side of patent reform debate.

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#19

Post by MaxwellKennerly »

twoodfin wrote: post #14
MaxwellKennerly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard do you think it is to implement scrolling, the rubber band effect, and pinch-to-zoom on a display screen? Answer: not hard at all. In fact, it has been trivial for years. The hard part is implementing it in a cost-effective, reliable manner — something that Apple did with industry-leading industrial design/manufacturing efforts, not through patented technologies. But that's not what this case was about. If t…

How hard do you think it is to implement scrolling, the rubber band effect, and pinch-to-zoom on a display screen? Answer: not hard at all. So surely there were dozens of devices with these features (I assume you mean inertial scrolling) prior to the patents being granted? This stuff is not trivial: Only a handful of multitouch devices even existed prior to the iPhone, and exploiting that technology, along with impro…

Look at the prior art cited by the patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381

Read the file wrapper and the notice of allowability. Here is Apple's great triumph in claiming an invention as compared to prior art:

"The following is an examiner's statement of reasons for allowance: In regards to the independent claims 1, 19 and 20, the prior art found does not teach in response to an edge of the electronic document being reached while translating the electronic document in the first direction while the object is still detected on or near the touch screen display: displaying an area beyond the edge of the document, and displaying a third portion of the electronic document, wherein the third portion is smaller than the first portion; and in response to detecting that the object is no longer detected on or near the touch screen display, translating the electronic document in a second direction until the area beyond the edge of the electronic document is no longer displayed to display a fourth portion of the electronic document, wherein the fourth portion is different from the first portion; in combination with all of the other claim limitations."

Do you consider that extremely narrow tweak to a user interface a novel and useful invention worthy of patent protection?

Re: Apple v. Samsung Verdict: Could Bill Gates Have Patented The iPhone in 1995?

#20

Post by mcantelon »

otterley wrote: post #17
MaxwellKennerly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it had occurred to other people, and lots of them. You can even watch Tom Cruise pinch-to-zoom, and scroll by waiving his hands. Look at the prior art in the patent itself, e.g.: US5844547 May 9, 1995 Dec 1, 1998 Fujitsu Limited Apparatus for manipulating an object displayed on a display device by using a touch screen US6567102 Nov 25, 2001 May 20, 2003 Compal Electronics Inc. Touch screen using pressure to contr…

Are you honestly contending that if anything depicted in a sci-fi movie cannot qualify as patentable subject matter when actually implemented? E.g., if someone invents a matter transporter as depicted in Star Trek, the inventor cannot patent it?

Of course the inventor can patent the implementation details of a matter transporter, but patenting the idea of a matter transporter, when the idea's been floating around, seems unduly restrictive.
Post reply on HN