Finally, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does their job correctly and rejects a ridiculous patent. Hopefully only one of many ambiguous patents denied in the coming months and years. Gestures should not be patentable whatsoever and Apple are deluded for thinking so. I guess when you have billions of cash at your disposal your imagination knows no bounds as to what you think you are entitled to.
US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
81–90 of 108 posts
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#82Interesting that it was rejected because of 7,724,242, by Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren. Both of them are "Senior Inventors" of Intellectual Ventures, the patent uber-troll company. I wonder if one of IV's shell companies is prosecuting '242?
Given Danny Hillis's history (per Wikipedia) isn't it possible that there is some legitimate R&D going on that is reasonable to protect? I'm not really familiar with Intellectual Ventures but he has done some fascinating things in the past, Thinking Machines being a prime example.
I got to play with a working pinch-to-zoom map table at Hillis's company around 2004 or 5, before the iPhone came out. (It was not Intellectual Ventures; I forget the name of the company.)
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you had a functioning time machine you could travel back in time and file the patent before any prior art was created.
Not necessarily. I have, in fact, seen a potential design for a time machine which violates no known laws of physics and could take you back in time only as far as the point where the machine itself was built. This would prevent the "patent filing leapfrog" that you are talking about. Before anyone wonders why this machine has not been built, it requires a rapidly rotating rod, several light years long, about the dia…
This is probably the most interesting comment I've read on this entire article.
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
[Edit: deleted parent asked: "May I ask why you include the word \"temporarily\" regarding prior art? ... Am I wrong? Does prior art now somehow not invalidate a claim/patent?"] Usually a patent applicant can claim a narrow distinction between his claim and existing prior art. Consider gp's list of available distinctions from the Minority Report zoom feature; it's a litany of distinctions without any actual differenc…
> it's a litany of distinctions without any actual difference as far as the actual nature of the 'invention.'
So then, what, in your opinion, is "the actual nature of the invention"? Could you provide some legal reasoning behind what you consider "the actual nature of the invention"?
> In the most recent "When Patents Attack" episode, This American Life found 5,000 patents that covered the exact same 'invention.'
Oh lord, was that American Life episode a bad piece of reporting about patent-related things! In the entire show, the word "claims" appeared not once! Amongst the worst reporting I've seen, and I say this having read stuff on techdirt!
But since you bring up the "5000 patents on the same thing" claim, allow me to talk about that.
The guy who made that claim works for a firm called M-CAM, who provide a service to find similar patents based on content similarity. I looked through all of the "similar" patents they mentioned in that episode. Each and everyone one covered specific implementations of various aspects of cloud backup such as load-balancing, availability, de-duping, I/O performance for high-latency connections, etc. They were "on the same thing" inasmuch that they related to the broad area of online backup, but none had any claims that overlapped. If M-CAM had any good examples of patents covering "the same thing", they didn't mention a single one on that show.
Furthermore, M-CAM issue reports about the strength of various patent portfolios. I looked through some of the "reports". They were absolutely worthless. They considered two patents to "cover the same invention" if they had some keywords in common. To them, "Alice is taller than Bob" and "Alice is less tall than Bob" would be a claim on the "same thing".
Oh, but look! M-CAM also sell a "patent-risk management service" [1]! Strange that their claims on that show would lead some to think the patent system as something that is overly "risky", no?
(BTW, I am not the only one who thought M-CAM was full of crap [2].)
> They eventually invalidated it another way, after trolls collected hundreds of millions of dollars.
Interestingly, as described in the second episode, that patent was found invalid only because the inventor did not name all his co-inventors on it. He sneakily filed the patent alone, sold it to IV, and raked in millions of dollars as a cut of the royalties.
Leaving aside the fact that the inventor was a sleazebag, that throws the whole "patent trolls pay actual inventors very little" narrative -- one that the previous American Life episode played up -- right out the window. Oddly, nobody seems to report that.
[1] http://www.m-cam.com/sherwood-patent-risk-management-service...
[2] http://gametimeip.com/2012/04/13/q-why-was-mdb-capital-right...
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#85Pinch to zoom absolutely should have been rejected. Watch the 2002 movie Minority Report for what I consider prior art on the 2007 patent filing at http://www.google.com/patents/US7844915 .
I don’t understand that reasoning. If that’s valid prior art, then patents for functioning time machines won’t hold up either. I think you’d have a point if it pertained to a design patent. If some movie used a tablet that looked exactly like an iPad, 10 years before Apple produced it, then surely Apple’s design patent for it would be worth zilch. However, the pinch-to-zoom patent describes an implementation in minut…
Wouldn't you simply go back and file the patent before the movies? If you've invested a time machine, then regardless of the patent status you'll instantly become extremely wealthy and capable of pretty much anything. worrying about the USPO would be very low on your list of things to worry about.
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#86Pinch to zoom has become such a standard in interface interaction that I didn't question it until switching to google's map app on the iPhone. Their double click and drag behaviour is superior in that you don't need two hands. You know something is wrong with your UI when users sometimes resort to putting their nose on the screen of their phone.
Not to defend pinch to zoom, but If you need two hands you may want to change how your holding your phone. Index and thumb on the screen, other three fingers to hold the back.
Tired that, my palm will touch the lower edge of the screen activating menu buttons. The only befit to the pinch and zoom method is the ability to rotate the map.
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
[Edit: deleted parent asked: "May I ask why you include the word \"temporarily\" regarding prior art? ... Am I wrong? Does prior art now somehow not invalidate a claim/patent?"] Usually a patent applicant can claim a narrow distinction between his claim and existing prior art. Consider gp's list of available distinctions from the Minority Report zoom feature; it's a litany of distinctions without any actual differenc…
In addition to your response to the deleted parent, I just wanted to clarify the procedural reasons why this rejection is temporary: Basically this rejection was a result of an "ex parte" re-examination. The catch is that not only does a 3rd party (typically the alleged infringer) get a shot at invalidating the claims, the patent owner also gets to argue back, and if unsuccessful, even to redraft them to be valid again in light of the new prior art. Typically they will be redrafted to sidestep prior art, yet still cover the allegedly infringing products.
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand that reasoning. If that’s valid prior art, then patents for functioning time machines won’t hold up either. I think you’d have a point if it pertained to a design patent. If some movie used a tablet that looked exactly like an iPad, 10 years before Apple produced it, then surely Apple’s design patent for it would be worth zilch. However, the pinch-to-zoom patent describes an implementation in minut…
Patents are supposed to be on mechanisms, not effects. If you figure out a way to travel through time, your patent only applies to that particular way. Pinch to zoom is something with almost no behind-the-scenes mechanism to it, and what mechanism might be valid for a patent existed in the movie.
As an exercise, should you get a chance, could you read claim 1 and explain how it differs from a mechanism?
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#89But I presume the companies that have been paying royalties for half a decade won't get their money back.
Well, most large companies are probably not directly paying royalties, but instead bartering by cross-licensing their own just-as-presumptuously-valid patents :-)
Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent
#90I want to patent The Wave. You know, when you see someone you know, and you raise your arm with your palm facing out, moving your hand in a horizontal motion. Yea, that wave. No one has patented it yet, so I'm going to claim it.
This type of snark comes up whenever the patent system is discussed. However, isn't the fact that this would (presumably) not be approved an argument in their favour?
In a world where the USPTO approves such things as "Method of swinging on a swing" [1], I wouldn't take any bets on what they won't approve.