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

It was apparently novel enough that a number of companies and open source projects have now implemented similar UI feedback where they didn't have it before.

Can someone explain to me (like I'm 5) exactly what, besides the general concept of list scrolling with bounce-back to indicate end of list reached, it was that Samsung copied from the 7,469,381 patent? The Apple fans here get pissed when someone argues that Apple is trying to patent an obvious "idea" and they claim that the general idea of bounce-back scrolling isn't patented, but instead it's a very specific implementation. And yet I've never heard an explanation of what the technical details are that specifically are patented. I've tried reading the patent, but my head exploded.

So please, for the love of god, can someone explain the non obvious implementation details that were copied?

If I were to see someone use bounce-back scrolling, or if I saw it in a movie, or even if I heard someone explain the idea, I'd go off and code something up. My amateur implementation would use the general principles of inertia and physics. Is there a way to do that without violating this patent? Because I'm tired of people yelling about how the idea of intertial bounce-back scrolling isn't being patented, only a specific implementation is, and yet I have no idea how that's possible. If that's true I should be able to implement the same general idea without violating the patent, right? How?

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

Since the patent itself cites prior art, obviously the patent isn't patenting the same thing as the prior art.

>All Apple did was jumble these same longstanding .... was at best modestly different from prior implementations

You have provided no evidence or reason to believe this. In fact, I've seen this claim hundreds of times, and never seen anyone even attempt to provide a defense for this assertion.

Yet the evidence at hand shows the opposite- the patent was reviewed for a significant period of time by the patent office. Further, this isn't Apple's rodeo. After the Microsoft loss, Apple has a great deal of incentive to make sure that their patents are solid.

So despite evidence to the contrary, you just repeatedly assert this position because it helps your ideological position. But we need more than mere assertion.

In fact, your assertion isn't really consistent with history. To make this obvious lets change the context. Imagine it is motorola being sued by Bell:

Graham demonstrated and patented the telephone, therefore phones are longstanding and the cellphone is just "modestly different from prior phones".

The iPhone doesn't have cameras three feet behind the screen taking photos of your fingers. But you would have us believe that a patent on using that method of touch interface means that apple didn't invent nothing for the iPhone.

You're relying on the ubiquity of copies of Apples devices to make an emotional appeal claiming these things were obvious.... yet this is post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Before 2007, Android was working on a blackberry ripoff, not a touch UI.

And your argument fundamentally misrepresents what patents are.

As a minimum test for whether something is non-obvious enough to be patented, I like to think of whether it could have been published in a computer science or UI journal. Similarly, if it has already been published in a journal, then it should be off limits for being patentable.

Let's consider multitouch. This invention has already had numerous articles written about it [1]. Thus it is patentable, but Apple is decades too late. That it can be used with any input device that supplies multiple touch inputs is obvious. You cannot write a paper about that.

Can you write an HCI paper about the disappearing scroll bars? I would be a bit surprised, although possibly. I imagine if you did, it wouldn't be a very prominent paper or in a very good journal.

In any case, I think that an invention being publishable is a minimum. There are also many publications that do not represent techniques so innovative as to deserve a short term monopoly.

Also, your distinction of ideas vs invention is not shared by books that describe good patent drafting. On the contrary, the book Invention Analysis and Claiming [2] opens with:

"Part I - Identifying the Invention - takes as its central premise that an invention is not a thing, but a concept."

[1] http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html [2] http://books.google.ca/books/about/Invention_Analysis_and_Cl...

>so that patents are routinely granted for designs, devices, and methods that are already effectively commoditized

You are confusing utility patents and design patents. They are very different things, and design patents are intended for "designs" and the designs of devices. This is not a perversion, this is just you not understanding what patents are!

Secondly you guys constantly claim that these things are not novel, yet you are never able to provide good prior art. Yes, here, 11 years later, this stuff is commoditized. Mostly because android ripped off the work Apple demoed in January 2007 and brought it to market.

That doesn't mean in January 2007 it wasn't novel. I have constantly seen you guys claim that other people did this before, but I've never seen a single instance of genuine prior art. You guys cite movies (not understanding what prior art is, or what patents are) and you cite demos of completely different technologies (like microsoft's surface which uses cameras.)

So, you're projecting a completely false characterization of the situation and then saying its "bad" or has been perverted.

This feels like political propaganda to me. I notice that the anti-Patent movement started with google's lawyers letter and in defense of android which is a blatent ripoff of Apple technology.

So, lets see google donate Pagerank to the public domain, eh? They only have 6 years or so left on it anyway.... why haven't they?