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I think this should apply generally to touch screen gestures. Once someone invented a good enough touch screen display(capacitive) , the gestures are not that b

by minthd 11y ago

I think this should apply generally to touch screen gestures. Once someone invented a good enough touch screen display(capacitive) , the gestures are not that big of a step. All Apple did was to acquire the inventors of the capacitive touch - and worked a bit on the UI. And while it's valuable to be the first company who recognize the importance of a capacitive touch screen - that isn't a basis for a patent - and Apple did get enough benefits anyway.

mtgx 11y ago
Like the bounce-back effect patent, which is even sillier than the slide-to-unlock one. The main problem by far is still having these patents granted in the first place, and then either having multiple companies getting harassed by others to pay them money for the bogus patents (like what Microsoft does) or spend millions and years in Courts to resolve just a handful of them. Sounds like a terribly inefficient system to me. Not to mention that because the US Patent Office has such low standards for accepting patents, that also means lawyers will file just about any crazy idea they can come up with, backing up the USPTO for 4 years. If the USPTO took a stance to reject 80% of the filed patents while still charging them a few thousand dollars per application, I think the quality of the patents would significantly improve in a few years. so if there are some good patents in there, perhaps from a startup, that startup will have to wait 4 years to get it. That sounds like ages for a small company and it could be long dead by then, especially if it doesn't get funding because of the lack of an approved patent. http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overscroll-bounce-patent-claim-is-valid-us-patent-office-says.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overs... http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declared-invalid-in-germany-thanks-to-steve-jobs-video/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declar...
- AndrewStephens 11y ago
  I remember watching the original iPhone presentation thinking "this looks OK but touch screens suck" then having the UI-design-oriented part of my brain completely blown by the bounce-back effect. No other touch screen software worked that way and it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that (unlike the swipe-to-open metaphor). I am not a lawyer and I have no opinion on the validity of the bounce-back patent (although the German court rejected it based of publication date rather than merit), but from a business point of view I can see why Apple was so keen to hog bounce-back for itself. I didn't buy a iPhone for a few years but they won a customer that day.
  - jasonkester 11y ago
    It wasn't novel though. I had personally implemented a drag-to-scroll interface with momentum and bounce-back for a Web 1.0 startup in 1999. Just substitute mouse pointer for finger and it's exactly the interface that mobile devices use today. I can't think it even remotely conceivable that I invented that. It's just one of the first things you think of.
  - Retra 11y ago
    >it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that Have you never quickly opened a drawer with stuff in it?
    - talmand 11y ago
      I think a better example would be a drawer with rubber stops that causes the drawer to bounce back if you open it too quickly. Or a door with a rubber stop on the wall. Or even a door with a soft spring that prevents it from opening too far. Or a car with good bumpers. Or a chair that springs forward if you rock back too far. Or bungee jumping. Nope, can't see any evidence of that action in the physical world at all.
      - AndrewStephens 11y ago
        Good examples, but I would be willing to bet that at some point all those things have been covered by different patents. The company who patented a chair rocking mechanism would not be affected by the inventor who made a door with soft springs (although I have never seen a door that works exactly that way).
        gamblor956 11y ago
        The difference is that those patents would cover the specific mechanisms by which the bounce-back effect was achieved. In this case, the Apple patent covered the bounce-back effect itself, without regard to the code or other specific mechanisms used to achieve the effect.
        11y ago
- davidy123 11y ago
  I had a Sony Ericsson P800 (an early full touchscreen device), it implemented a bounceback effect.
- harywilke 11y ago
  Clearly only rich people should get patents! /sarcasm
paulojreis 11y ago
Making UI elements big enough to be minimally tappable wasn't really that big of a step. Yet Windows Mobile was horrible in that regard. While I don't agree with awarding strong protection via IP to UI patterns such as the "slide to unlock", I think we should acknowledge the merits which exist in these "leaps" forward. If everything was that obvious, why all of the other mobile UI alternatives started to look "pre-historic" in a span of a few months?
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  One reason why we award patents is so that inventors won't have an incentive to keep trade secrets locked away forever. Touchscreen gestures are trivial to implement, with no conceivable trade secrets that wouldn't become obvious to anyone skilled in the art after a few minutes' thought. So that's not a good reason in this case. Another reason is to incentivize innovation by awarding a temporary monopoly. Apple will continue to make more money from the iPhone and iPad than many entire countries' GDP, patents or no patents. They don't need any additional artificial "incentives." Another reason is to reward those who finance expensive long-term R&D efforts. No lengthy R&D efforts are involved in touchscreen gesture processing. Again, the market is doing just fine at rewarding Apple on its own. So what exactly do we gain, as a society, by awarding patents on things like slide-to-unlock? Exactly how is the "progress of science and the useful arts" being promoted?
  - bostonpete 11y ago
    I don't think paulojreis was defending patenting things like slide to unlock.
  - avar 11y ago
    I think most patents are silly, but isn't the system working exactly as it should here? The patent was awarded, then it was challenged in court and overturned for many of the reasons you cite. If we were a lot more thorough about awarding patents wouldn't that increase the overall cost to society to exhaustively audit patents from the outset, instead of auditing only the small subset that's troublesome enough to be challenged in court?

by minthd 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago

Like the bounce-back effect patent, which is even sillier than the slide-to-unlock one. The main problem by far is still having these patents granted in the first place, and then either having multiple companies getting harassed by others to pay them money for the bogus patents (like what Microsoft does) or spend millions and years in Courts to resolve just a handful of them. Sounds like a terribly inefficient system to me. Not to mention that because the US Patent Office has such low standards for accepting patents, that also means lawyers will file just about any crazy idea they can come up with, backing up the USPTO for 4 years. If the USPTO took a stance to reject 80% of the filed patents while still charging them a few thousand dollars per application, I think the quality of the patents would significantly improve in a few years. so if there are some good patents in there, perhaps from a startup, that startup will have to wait 4 years to get it. That sounds like ages for a small company and it could be long dead by then, especially if it doesn't get funding because of the lack of an approved patent. http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overscroll-bounce-patent-claim-is-valid-us-patent-office-says.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overs... http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declared-invalid-in-germany-thanks-to-steve-jobs-video/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declar...

AndrewStephens 11y ago
I remember watching the original iPhone presentation thinking "this looks OK but touch screens suck" then having the UI-design-oriented part of my brain completely blown by the bounce-back effect. No other touch screen software worked that way and it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that (unlike the swipe-to-open metaphor). I am not a lawyer and I have no opinion on the validity of the bounce-back patent (although the German court rejected it based of publication date rather than merit), but from a business point of view I can see why Apple was so keen to hog bounce-back for itself. I didn't buy a iPhone for a few years but they won a customer that day.
- jasonkester 11y ago
  It wasn't novel though. I had personally implemented a drag-to-scroll interface with momentum and bounce-back for a Web 1.0 startup in 1999. Just substitute mouse pointer for finger and it's exactly the interface that mobile devices use today. I can't think it even remotely conceivable that I invented that. It's just one of the first things you think of.
- Retra 11y ago
  >it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that Have you never quickly opened a drawer with stuff in it?
  - talmand 11y ago
    I think a better example would be a drawer with rubber stops that causes the drawer to bounce back if you open it too quickly. Or a door with a rubber stop on the wall. Or even a door with a soft spring that prevents it from opening too far. Or a car with good bumpers. Or a chair that springs forward if you rock back too far. Or bungee jumping. Nope, can't see any evidence of that action in the physical world at all.
    - AndrewStephens 11y ago
      Good examples, but I would be willing to bet that at some point all those things have been covered by different patents. The company who patented a chair rocking mechanism would not be affected by the inventor who made a door with soft springs (although I have never seen a door that works exactly that way).
      - gamblor956 11y ago
        The difference is that those patents would cover the specific mechanisms by which the bounce-back effect was achieved. In this case, the Apple patent covered the bounce-back effect itself, without regard to the code or other specific mechanisms used to achieve the effect.
      - 11y ago
davidy123 11y ago
I had a Sony Ericsson P800 (an early full touchscreen device), it implemented a bounceback effect.
harywilke 11y ago
Clearly only rich people should get patents! /sarcasm

paulojreis 11y ago

Making UI elements big enough to be minimally tappable wasn't really that big of a step. Yet Windows Mobile was horrible in that regard. While I don't agree with awarding strong protection via IP to UI patterns such as the "slide to unlock", I think we should acknowledge the merits which exist in these "leaps" forward. If everything was that obvious, why all of the other mobile UI alternatives started to look "pre-historic" in a span of a few months?

CamperBob2 11y ago
One reason why we award patents is so that inventors won't have an incentive to keep trade secrets locked away forever. Touchscreen gestures are trivial to implement, with no conceivable trade secrets that wouldn't become obvious to anyone skilled in the art after a few minutes' thought. So that's not a good reason in this case. Another reason is to incentivize innovation by awarding a temporary monopoly. Apple will continue to make more money from the iPhone and iPad than many entire countries' GDP, patents or no patents. They don't need any additional artificial "incentives." Another reason is to reward those who finance expensive long-term R&D efforts. No lengthy R&D efforts are involved in touchscreen gesture processing. Again, the market is doing just fine at rewarding Apple on its own. So what exactly do we gain, as a society, by awarding patents on things like slide-to-unlock? Exactly how is the "progress of science and the useful arts" being promoted?
- bostonpete 11y ago
  I don't think paulojreis was defending patenting things like slide to unlock.
- avar 11y ago
  I think most patents are silly, but isn't the system working exactly as it should here? The patent was awarded, then it was challenged in court and overturned for many of the reasons you cite. If we were a lot more thorough about awarding patents wouldn't that increase the overall cost to society to exhaustively audit patents from the outset, instead of auditing only the small subset that's troublesome enough to be challenged in court?