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I was on a team designing for new a form factor of device, solving problems that had never been solved. In retrospect, much of what we did may have looked obvi

I was on a team designing for new a form factor of device, solving problems that had never been solved. In retrospect, much of what we did may have looked obvious, but it wasn't. It was the result of countless hours of design sessions, user studies, and working through multiple on device implementations to see what worked. Just as much work was put into the design as into any other invention. When the iPhone came out, people were amazed at how well everything worked, at how obvious everything was. A lot of that was due to the focus on design, making everything just right. Slide to unlock was genius in it's simplicity! Soon those design elements became "the obvious way to do things" and people then got upset at Apple for "patenting the obvious". It wasn't obvious. Ask Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft about it. They all made smartphones for years before iPhone came out. I get that patents in general irritate people, but I'll argue that if a company has spent a lot of resources researching how to do something properly, that having a way to protect that investment isn't a bad thing for society. It also helps prevent stagnation, as other ways of accomplishing the same goal now have to be researched. It can be a bad thing if there is exactly "one true ultimate design" that a single company gets a lock down on, but do any of us think that is really likely given the incredibly narrow scope of design patents?

willio58 8y ago
Interesting perspective. I was pretty solid in how I felt about the topic before and after reading the article, but I’ve never thought about the whole iPhone unlock and similar things seeming obvious. It’s weird, I can almost totally agree that the “slide to unlock” should have been patentable, but at the same time I feel that the “swipe right/left” shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s because the original iPhone slide to unlock felt almost mechanical, since you had to do it to open your phone. The tinder one is a fun way of choosing between binary options. Or maybe it’s just how I hold to two companies in my head, it’s hard to say.
Latteland 8y ago
I think there's huge potential for patented ui patterns to follow the same problematic sequence as regular patents - patent trolls, and the "it's like xyz, but on a computer". yes, there were brilliant ideas in the original iphone, but there were also repurposed things from other domains. If I am a super rich person like the founder of intellectual ventures (world's greatest patent trolls), I could just have a team of 100 people iterate through many different design possibilities (there are some things with only so many solutions) and patent them all, and then they could get a tax on the whole industry. Need a file chooser control, we own all potential ones.
- com2kid 8y ago
  IV actually has an interesting methodology where inventors can license their patents out to IV and IV will licence those patents out to larger companies to make actual products. That, for awhile at least, was their core business model. As part of that agreement, they have to fight to defend the patents of small inventors who have literally entrusted their life's work to Intellectual Ventures. I went to a public presentation by IV awhile back where they talked about their reputation as a patent troll and how they've tried to back off on the lawsuits and do more and more to work with partners to get products to market. IV also does a lot of original research in hard sciences. If you remember that mosquito laser thing, they've spent a lot of time trying to make an actual product out of that. Turns out making a death laser that only kills harmful species, and is safe around people is rather hard, and involves a lot of original engineering work, and then a ton of work going through the government regulatory process. (Rather strict rules about lasers and all that!) One of the coolest things they talked about was putting that laser tech to use on farm lands to zap bugs that harm crops! How they described their bug species recognition tech was incredibly cool! Obviously it doesn't take care of all types of bugs, but it is the coolest way I've ever heard of to reduce pesticide usage, and to do so in a way that is hyper-targeted at only harmful insects! Anyway, they make cool tech, and if anyone ever gets a chance to see them talk about what they do, I'd recommend it. tl;dr Hacker News meetups have some cool speakers.
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willio58 8y ago

Interesting perspective. I was pretty solid in how I felt about the topic before and after reading the article, but I’ve never thought about the whole iPhone unlock and similar things seeming obvious. It’s weird, I can almost totally agree that the “slide to unlock” should have been patentable, but at the same time I feel that the “swipe right/left” shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s because the original iPhone slide to unlock felt almost mechanical, since you had to do it to open your phone. The tinder one is a fun way of choosing between binary options. Or maybe it’s just how I hold to two companies in my head, it’s hard to say.

Latteland 8y ago

I think there's huge potential for patented ui patterns to follow the same problematic sequence as regular patents - patent trolls, and the "it's like xyz, but on a computer". yes, there were brilliant ideas in the original iphone, but there were also repurposed things from other domains. If I am a super rich person like the founder of intellectual ventures (world's greatest patent trolls), I could just have a team of 100 people iterate through many different design possibilities (there are some things with only so many solutions) and patent them all, and then they could get a tax on the whole industry. Need a file chooser control, we own all potential ones.

com2kid 8y ago
IV actually has an interesting methodology where inventors can license their patents out to IV and IV will licence those patents out to larger companies to make actual products. That, for awhile at least, was their core business model. As part of that agreement, they have to fight to defend the patents of small inventors who have literally entrusted their life's work to Intellectual Ventures. I went to a public presentation by IV awhile back where they talked about their reputation as a patent troll and how they've tried to back off on the lawsuits and do more and more to work with partners to get products to market. IV also does a lot of original research in hard sciences. If you remember that mosquito laser thing, they've spent a lot of time trying to make an actual product out of that. Turns out making a death laser that only kills harmful species, and is safe around people is rather hard, and involves a lot of original engineering work, and then a ton of work going through the government regulatory process. (Rather strict rules about lasers and all that!) One of the coolest things they talked about was putting that laser tech to use on farm lands to zap bugs that harm crops! How they described their bug species recognition tech was incredibly cool! Obviously it doesn't take care of all types of bugs, but it is the coolest way I've ever heard of to reduce pesticide usage, and to do so in a way that is hyper-targeted at only harmful insects! Anyway, they make cool tech, and if anyone ever gets a chance to see them talk about what they do, I'd recommend it. tl;dr Hacker News meetups have some cool speakers.
- deleted 8y ago
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