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US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

pcworld.com

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Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#91

Post by maskedinvader »

btilly wrote: post #77
mrpdaemon wrote: post #61

Earlier 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…

I am not an expert but I believe this is BS, would you care to cite any references or paper that talks about this so called potential design ?

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#92

Post by thefever »

hugoc wrote: post #69
baddox wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried it on a Galaxy Nexus (4.65 inch display) and it's still extremely awkward, unless there's some way of doing this I'm not thinking of.

iphones before the 5 had 3.5 in displays even the 5 has just a 4 in display, so they are even smaller (and thinner and lighter) than a Galaxy Nexus

FYI, all iPhones before the 5 are thicker than a galaxy nexus and their weight was between 2 grams lighter and 5 grams heavier.

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#93

Post by girvo »

angersock wrote: post #19
aidos wrote: post #17

Pinch 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.

I'm not ashamed to admit that my usual tablet browsing right before bed has my left hand holding the tablet, my right hand and thumb scrolling, and sometimes my nose pushing on links. I regret nothing.

Here I was, thinking I was the only one who did that.

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#94

Post by tvtime15 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #46
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #35

Earlier 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.

But for subject matter to be patentable, the patent must be sufficient to reduce to practice. In the movie it was just special effects, which is not sufficient to meet the reduce to practice threshold.

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#95

Post by btilly »

maskedinvader wrote: post #91
btilly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am not an expert but I believe this is BS, would you care to cite any references or paper that talks about this so called potential design ?

It was a paper I was shown by a professor over 20 years ago. Said professor is now long-retired and I do not have the paper.

As he described it to me then, the paper presented an exact solution with an infinite bar, and then heuristic arguments that a very long but finite bar would demonstrate the same effects. The underlying mechanism is, of course, the result of a form of frame dragging.

The professor who showed it to me said that he was convinced that the math in the infinite model was correct, and was still deciding if he was convinced by the heuristic argument.

Googling quickly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett describes a similar scheme, which might even be the same one. Whether or not it is the same, the 1992 paper from Hawking that was discussed would show that the heuristic argument is wrong. However since I was shown this paper while I was in undergrad, Hawking's paper would not have come out yet, and the professor who showed it to me can not be faulted for not having found the necessary flaw.

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#96

Post by WildUtah »

throwawaykf wrote: post #84
WildUtah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

So then, what, in your opinion, is "the actual nature of the invention"?

There is no invention. Bounce back and pinch to zoom are creative interaction designs, not inventions at all. They are not processes, machines, or compositions of matter. It's purely harmful to the industry and innovation to assign monopolies on them.

Not that that will stop the PTO.

In the entire show, the word "claims" appeared not once!

From the transcript[1]:

"prove that he has this idea and here's how the idea works and to draw the figures for the patent and to come up with the claims."

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/t...

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#97

Post by wnoise »

maskedinvader wrote: post #91
btilly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am not an expert but I believe this is BS, would you care to cite any references or paper that talks about this so called potential design ?

Tipler, "Rotating cylinders and the possibility of global causality violation" Physical Review D, vol. 9, Issue 8, pp. 2203-2206

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974PhRvD...9.2203T

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#98

Post by wnoise »

abecedarius wrote: post #82
jauer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Applied Minds?

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#99

Post by throwawaykf »

WildUtah wrote: post #96
throwawaykf wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So then, what, in your opinion, is "the actual nature of the invention"? There is no invention. Bounce back and pinch to zoom are creative interaction designs, not inventions at all. They are not processes, machines, or compositions of matter. It's purely harmful to the industry and innovation to assign monopolies on them. Not that that will stop the PTO. In the entire show, the word "claims" appeared not once! From…

Are you saying bounce back and pinch to zoom solve no practical problem? Are you absolutely sure? If so, you could:

1. Look at the Background section of the patents for a hint. Pretty much all patents have them.

2. If you don't trust the patents (and I won't blame you), ponder why Apple put those interactions in there. Or, even if they weren't just copying it, why Android had it too.

3. Or you could try to use a mobile device without those features to find the value in them. Would you want to use a smartphone on which you have to manually distinguish between scrolls and pinches every time? Or one without bounceback? Let me tell you, I have a Galaxy S2 without bounceback, obviously due to Apple's enforcement. It has that blue glow workaround. Personally I find it pretty inferior.

Heck, even Windows Phone has a better workaround, the "elastic" over-scroll, one that does not seem to infringe Apple's claims. Look at that! Forced innovation through workarounds! And of course, MS went ahead and patented that too, so Android was out of luck for a while.

Furthermore: are you sure that their implementation does not count as a process? And are you sure those implementations can do anything without machines?

I'm curious, because these are questions the Supreme Court itself struggles with. (Not to mention the perennial flame wars on patentlyo.)

BTW, that quote is from the second episode. Can you find a single mention of the word "claims" in the original episode, the one I was talking about in the context of "5000 patents on the same thing"?

Re: US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

#100

Post by abecedarius »

wnoise wrote: post #98
abecedarius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Applied Minds?

That was it, thanks.
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