USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
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Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#2If you want to see the prosecution history and documentation of a patent, you can go to the PAIR portal of the uspto[1]. After going through a Captcha, you can then search for a patent# or application #, and then click on the "image wrapper" tab.
It's very enlightening to see patents go through rejections and resubmittals, and what the explanations are for rejection or why a rejection should be reconsidered.
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#3If you want to see the prosecution history and documentation of a patent, you can go to the PAIR portal of the uspto[1]. After going through a Captcha, you can then search for a patent# or application #, and then click on the "image wrapper" tab. It's very enlightening to see patents go through rejections and resubmittals, and what the explanations are for rejection or why a rejection should be reconsidered. [1] http…
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Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#4detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command.
So literally the function of every touchscreen device ever? Touchscreens have been around since 1970; this was filed for in 2006.
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#5If you want to see the prosecution history and documentation of a patent, you can go to the PAIR portal of the uspto[1]. After going through a Captcha, you can then search for a patent# or application #, and then click on the "image wrapper" tab. It's very enlightening to see patents go through rejections and resubmittals, and what the explanations are for rejection or why a rejection should be reconsidered. [1] http…
If you look the patent up on Google Patents, you can download all the "Public PAIR data". It's 56MB for this patent.
Inside of the zip there is a file located at: 12101832-image_file_wrapper/12101832-image_file_wrapper.tsv
It's a tab-delimited version of the table on the USPTO site for "image file wrapper". It also has all the PDFs in that directory.
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#6Maybe the USPTO finally decided to look for prior art?
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#7I find this an interesting side effect of patent-a-geddon. The government looks stupid, and politicians are only human and don't like to be associated with 'stupid' so they react.
The result has been a tremendous amount of "light" being shown on the patent process, the people who run the process, the goals of the process, the effects of the process, and perhaps most importantly the stuff that makes it through that process.
There is a lot of stuff that could use some "light" therapy. The danger is that Congress is a blunt instrument at best and a complete disaster at worst. So one has to hope that enough tension is created such that the good people are empowered to fix things, but not so much that the bogus people can use it to do more harm than good.
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#8detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. So literally the function of every touchscreen device ever? Touchscreens have been around since 1970; this was filed for in 2006.
Once again, reading snippets from a patent does nothing. You might as well read a copyrighted story and exclaim in horror "Well this is rich, he's trying to claim 'Once upon a time' for himself!"
A patent does not claim every single thing that is listed. An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in the claims.
Claim 7 is my favorite: "The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the one or more heuristics, a contact comprising a simultaneous two-thumb twisting gesture corresponds to a 90.degree. screen rotation command."
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#9detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. So literally the function of every touchscreen device ever? Touchscreens have been around since 1970; this was filed for in 2006.
Once again, reading snippets from a patent does nothing. You might as well read a copyrighted story and exclaim in horror "Well this is rich, he's trying to claim 'Once upon a time' for himself!" A patent does not claim every single thing that is listed. An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in the claims. Claim 7 is my favorite: "The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the…
Sorry, I know, and I invite all the downvotes I can :)
Its just the pure stupidity of it all that takes ahold of me when reading this stuff.
Re: USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
#10detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. So literally the function of every touchscreen device ever? Touchscreens have been around since 1970; this was filed for in 2006.
Once again, reading snippets from a patent does nothing. You might as well read a copyrighted story and exclaim in horror "Well this is rich, he's trying to claim 'Once upon a time' for himself!" A patent does not claim every single thing that is listed. An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in the claims. Claim 7 is my favorite: "The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the…
> An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in the claims.
An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in at least one of the claims. If you infringe on any single claim, then you infringe.
Usually what happens is that claim 1 is really broad, and then there's a sort of tree of claims with claim 1 at the root and more specific claims further down the tree. The early claims may well get invalidated when an infringement case goes to court, but the patent-holder hopes that the later more specific ones will survive and still be broad enough to cover what their rivals are doing.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I agree with the general point brian_cloutier is making.)