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Can someone explain to me why is this a top story on HN, and why should i care? This sounds exactly just like celebrity gossip, just substitute people with big
by weppes 17y ago
Can someone explain to me why is this a top story on HN, and why should i care?
This sounds exactly just like celebrity gossip, just substitute people with big companies. I just can't grasp why is this interesting and why people are upvoting this?
- nailer 17y agoI disagree with you for the reasons the other poster did, but could new people stop voting stuff they don't like below 1? Your post was polite, there was no reason to mod you to oblivion.
- rbanffy 17y agoI care deeply about it because we have to live in a world where companies can say they own your product because it looks like theirs. They will make broad claims and see what sticks. If the company attacking you is big enough, that usually means doom for you.
- GHFigs 17y agocompanies can say they own your product because it looks like theirs What are you referring to specifically? Is there a specific one of the patents in the Apple/HTC case that you feel is purely cosmetic, or are you referring to something else?
- rbanffy 17y agoThe most basic one is the "one-click" Amazon patent. Most of Apple's patents on forms of interaction with touchscreens or other touch-sensitive devices are little more than reflections of physical interaction with objects.
- bruceboughton 17y agoSo simple anyone could have done it, right?
- danudey 17y agoThis is the key point. Many inventions are 'obvious in retrospect'. The Amazon 1-click patent is one of those annoying things where it seems obvious, but no one had ever done it and it's a huge boon to businesses (it makes impulse buying almost automatic). For many of these patents, people will say it's obvious, but it's only obvious now that we've seen it all. No one else had ever done it before, so what's obvious about it?
- rbanffy 17y agoNobody could have done that much earlier because the pieces were not in place. No web technology was invented before the web. 1-click appeared pretty much at the same time someone had the idea of storing credit card information on a web server.
- orangecat 17y agoYes. Before Amazon, if you asked any software developer of average competence to create a one click order process, they'd have it for you in a few days. Yes it was a clever idea, but ideas by themselves are not supposed to be patentable.
- GHFigs 17y agoThe most basic one is the "one-click" Amazon patent. I'm unclear on how that relates, aside from being a patent. Most of Apple's patents on forms of interaction with touchscreens or other touch-sensitive devices are little more than reflections of physical interaction with objects. What objects? This is software. Just because an interface element behaves in a way that feels, to your senses, realistic, does not mean that there exists in the real world an obvious and patent-invalidating object of prior art. If a menu scrolls one way but not another, you might have an intuitive grasp of what it is doing, but that does not mean it is a copy of a real thing. (Or if it is, where is the real object? Where is the prior art? Where is the obviousness?) If a menu bounces, it isn't a actual thing that is actually bouncing: it's a conscious decision by the programmer or designer to make it behave in a way that happens to be read by your senses as a "bounce". And why is that, in your view, not patentable? If Apple had made physical objects that behaved the same way but via mechanical means instead of electronic, that would be patentable, too. Should that not be the case?
- Tycho 17y agoI noticed Apple's shareprice had dropped slightly yesterday. I searched for Apple news an wasn't surprised to find a story like this reported on the same day.
- hexley 17y agoSo to what do you attribute minor fluctuations every other day of the year? Talk about confirmation bias.