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Samsung cites Kubrick's "2001" as Prior Art in Patent Case Against Apple
- xutopia 15y agoCan patents be invalidated like this? I'm surprised this is the case. Makes the whole thing that much more absurd.
- monochromatic 15y agoYou'd be hard pressed to invalidate a utility patent with some footage from a movie, because it probably wouldn't be "enabling." But design patents just claim ornamental designs.
- hugh3 15y agoSome footage could be considered "enabling". For instance if I wanted to patent "Slingshot-launched rideable rocket as a means for catching roadrunners" there'd probably be prior art.
- monochromatic 15y agoSure, in a simple technology... could happen. That's why I hedged my statement a little bit with "probably."
- wanorris 15y agoIt's a design patent, so yes. Previous use of an equivalent design on a TV show is a good as design anywhere else. On the other hand, if someone invents a working replicator, Star Trek will not count as prior art. :-)
- hugh3 15y agoOnly because the show didn't go into sufficient detail about how the replicator worked.
- stan_rogers 15y agoIt's just a serialized and retrieved transport. The key, as with the transporter, is in the Heisenberg compensators -- I have a feeling they may well be patentable under any system that allows patents.
- meric 15y agoUnless it was for a patent for the design of the said replicator...
- michaelfeathers 15y agoIt can certainly happen before patents are approved. A description in Robert Heinlein's book, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was used as prior art to prevent a patent on water beds.
- Apocryphon 15y agoSo the solution to patent trolling is to have more hard sci-fi that describes mechanisms of upcoming future technology in detail, thus preventing companies from patenting them?
- michaelfeathers 15y agoWorks for me.
- bhickey 15y agoDonald Duck was used as prior art to invalidate a method of ship raising. This was discussed at length on HN six months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2232857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2232857
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoRegular [Utility] Patents can be invalidated by any prior disclosure of the invention, it doesn't matter what form that disclosure is in provided it is rendered in public (and, with a few more conditions, not part of a recognised trade show in the US). There's a UK patent application, a doggy doorbell IIRC, that was refused based on a British children's comic called the Beano anticipating it.
- watmough 15y agoThat reminds me of something the New Scientist published years ago, ahh yes, the thermonuclear cat flap... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Paul_Pedrick#Chromatically_selective_cat_flap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Paul_Pedrick#Chromatical... You couldn't make this stuff up.
- rwolf 15y agoI was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation last night, and was surprised to see one of the characters carrying around a tablet computer. I can believe that finding visually-pleasing ratios of screen/margin, height/depth is a challenge, but the basic outline does not seem to be hard to imagine.
- mkr-hn 15y agoAnd ST: Enterprise had things that looked a lot like smartphones.
- wmf 15y agoA major difference appears to be plastic vs. flush glass bezel: http://obamapacman.com/2011/08/ipad-tablet-obvious-design/ http://obamapacman.com/2011/08/ipad-tablet-obvious-design/
- anigbrowl 15y agoI think that had a lot to do with Dow Corning bringing tough conductive glass to market. I have an old kitchen scale which looks remarkably like an iPad to a casual glance; it's got a black glass top, and measures the weight function via very small recessed feet it sits on. You switch it on and recalibrate for tare by just touching the appropriate icons in the corners (which actually work by optoelectric sensors rather than via conduction or pressure). It's like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Salter-1041BKDR-Glass-Electronic-Kitchen/dp/B000XS11QQ/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1 http://www.amazon.com/Salter-1041BKDR-Glass-Electronic-Kitch... The glass cover thing has been in kitchen and bathroom scales for a while, since they're likely to be exposed to fluid/powder on a regular basis.
- anigbrowl 15y agoDespite not being a trekker, I make surprisingly frequent use of a 'Tricorder' app on my phone/tablet, since it uses the actual sensors of the device as opposed to desirable fictional ones. http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/wiki/Tricorder http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/wiki/Tricorder
- Corvus 15y ago
- ender7 15y agoPoor Gruber. Your favorite director's movie used against your favorite company. It's impossible to post a serious comment to a case that is already absurd.
- podperson 15y agoIt would be funnier if Samsung cited Barry Lyndon.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- JacobAldridge 15y agoThe battle scenes therein certainly remind me of the forthcoming patent wars- all the major players just walking towards each other shooting at will. War doesn't determine who is right, only who is left.
- martythemaniak 15y agoNever underestimate doublethink.
- iamtherockstar 15y agoNow all he needs is a correlation to the Yankees and he'll have covered all his favorites in a single post.
- Bud 15y agoGruber has already linked to it, and his post is rather humorous: Odds that I would link to this: 100 percent.
- GHFigs 15y agoSpeaking of serious comments: It used to be possible to have a submission related to Apple on Hacker News wherein the top comment was something other than shitting on John Gruber.
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- GeneTraylor 15y agoThere actually might be a precedent over here. Heinlein came up with a "waterbed" for a few of his books (it was mentioned quite prominently in Stranger in a strange land) Later on a man called Charles Hall tried to patent his design, and he was denied the patent by the USPO on the grounds that Heinlein's description in Stranger in a strange land, and Double star constituted prior art. It would be fascinating to see if this precedent is followed...
- Natsu 15y agoI still like the Donald Duck cartoon used as precedent for that method of raising a ship, personally. I think that someone linked to a previous HN discussion of it below.
- floppydisk 15y agoUnless Kubrick detailed how the tablet worked and its general layout at the software level, I doubt it.
- hristov 15y agoAs somebody already mentioned below, the case in question is based on a design patent. A design patent only protects the ornamental design of something not how something works. A tablet shown in a movie is a perfectly fine and perfectly usable example of a publication of an ornamental design.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- podperson 15y agoIt appears to have a control panel with buttons along the bottom of the screen tilted at an angle. Does the iPad? No-one touches its screen that I noticed, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to sit through 2001 to find out for sure. Samsung's theft of Apple's very specific decorative designs (witness their remote that looked EXACTLY like an iPhone 4) is so egregious that if it were, say, a nameless Chinese entrepreneur selling knockoff purses in Chinatown no-one would be especially surprised if their stock were seized and a few people imprisoned over it. This isn't, say, Ferrari suing Maserati for creating a coupe with four wheels, it's Ferrari suing Hyundai for creating a coupe that looks EXACTLY like the current model Ferrari. No offense to Hyundai -- they pay actual designers to design their ugly-ass cars.
- mobileman 15y agoBased on this discussion, it would behoove innovative people to start writing fiction now and design the future.
- joezydeco 15y agoIsn't that what patent trolls pretty much are doing today?
- d2vid 15y agoYes, but then they unfortunately submit it to the USPTO
- Apocryphon 15y agoI just made a comment similar to yours just now (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918268 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918268). Is your comment prior art?
- Tichy 15y agoMaybe Apple does not even believe they invented the tablet. But they have to act as if they do, because it feeds their cult following, which sells devices at the end of the day.
- masklinn 15y ago> Maybe Apple does not even believe they invented the tablet. Of course they don't, tablets predate the iPad by years (just as Apple did not invent the cell phone). This is a design patent dispute. Apple's claim are that Samsung's output looks just a little bit too much like Apple's (supposedly originally designed) products. > But they have to act as if they do, because it feeds their cult following Ah, I see you come from /r/tech. Sorry about having interjected.
- kubrickslair 15y ago> their cult following Have a look at the top rated comments on the link to get a better perspective of the cult the company fans are part of. Most people are pretty balanced and more meaning can be found in having faith in a political view or religion than a consumer electronics maker.
- jarin 15y agoHmm, I beg to differ. If I remember correctly, the Apple Newton MessagePad was the first commercially available tablet computer. They may not have invented the tablet concept (just as so many other major inventions are conceptualized in fiction first), but as far as I know, credit for an invention is based on the first to actually make it. When I was a kid, I drew a space fighter. If someone makes a space fighter with a similar design, do I get credit for the invention?
- artsrc 15y agoIt is illogical to deny the your drawing as prior art, and to prevent people from from making space fighters because they look like your drawing.
- teilo 15y agoI distinctly remember a Bill Gates lecture from the '80s, with accompanying video, where he presents a future-concept tablet device, with touch screen, thin, narrow margine, etc. It had an AI-based personal assistant that accepted voice commands, and a built-in camera, with Facetime-style chat.
- jessedhillon 15y agoWhen you say "the '80s" do you mean literally from the period between 1980 and 1989? That has to be off by 5-10 years because in 1989 I was rocking out with 4-color CGA graphics on my 286 (with the turbo button), and maybe a 386 with a 256-color VGA was state of the art back then. Embedded cameras in consumer devices were sufficiently far off to be considered sci-fi, as was the idea of real-time video streaming. I know you said it was a concept device, but it would have been a big stretch given where we were at that time. IIRC, 1GB drives were going to debut in a few years at $1000.
- hugh3 15y agoNo, I think I remember this video, though it would have been very late 80s, and I remember it as being from Apple. Of course it was just a video done with special effects, no part of the device was real. It was a big flat computer built into a desktop, and the person interacted with it for a while using fingers and voice commands before receiving a video call from somebody. Those things seemed a long way off at the time, but certainly not unimaginably far off. It was probably pretty damn close to actual present-day technology, but of course we've learned since then that things that may seem spiffy such as voice-controlled computers and video chat aren't nearly as useful as we thought they might be before we had them.
- Shebanator 15y agoYes, I remember this video too. I think it was part of the Information At Your Fingertips speech at Comdex in 1990. http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/05/information_at.html http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/05/information_a...
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- antirez 15y agothe case is absurd and I'm all against Apple position, but in the video from 2001 it is unclear if we are seeing tablet PCs or simply two integrated flat TVs in the table. The problem is that the two devices are positioned exactly in the same way, specularly.
- ugh 15y agoThey are supposed to be tablets and are actually moved in the film. This whole sequence has a lot of footage of the tablets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vEDmNh-_4Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vEDmNh-_4Q Here is a movie poster where you can also see the same tablet in more detail (on the Moon!): http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/2001apr08.jpg http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/2001apr08.jpg Here is an excerpt from Arthur C. Clarke’s book: “When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.”
- chernevik 15y agoYou beat me! But this bit is fun: "Floyd sometimes wonder if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications.... It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg."
- WalterBright 15y agoClarke also foresaw the ipod in his book "Imperial Earth" (calling it a minisec).
- cylinder714 15y ago
- alexqgb 15y ago(From the OP's comments / reposted on account of sheer awesomeness) Steve: Stop selling the Galaxy Tab! TAB10.1: I'm sorry Steve, I'm afraid I can't do that. Steve: What's the problem? TAB10.1: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. Steve: What are you talking about, TAB? TAB10.1: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
- brudgers 15y agoThey're may be some merit to the argument: iPod Nano [http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/iPod-Nano.jpg http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/iPod-N...] HAL 9000[http://th01.deviantart.net/images2/PRE/i/2004/05/4/1/HAL_9000.jpg http://th01.deviantart.net/images2/PRE/i/2004/05/4/1/HAL_900...]
- rodh257 15y agoI think the point to take away from this is that the similarities in design between the iPhone/iPad and their competitors has a lot to do with the fact that really all they are is 1 big screen, and their current designs are the logical design for them. There's really not too much you can do to differentiate other than put your logo on it, change the buttons, change the back, make it bigger, make it square, and Samsung did all except the last one. I won't doubt that their design job was made easier by the iPhones existence, but I don't think they set out to intentionally trick users into thinking it was an iPhone/iPad.
- adhipg 15y agoExactly. How many ways are there to design a device which has a large screen and just a couple of buttons? A wall mounted LCD TV looks remarkably similar to an iPad - it's just a little bigger - and, those have been around for a while.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoSamsung hOzc
- juiceandjuice 15y agoJeez, I forgot jokes weren't allowed on HN.
- beedogs 15y agoI'm sure funny ones are.
- pessimizer 15y agoNot prior art? http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevericketts/5500614942/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevericketts/5500614942/
- mikecane 15y agoFWIW, an episode of the TV series Logan's Run once showed a young woman using a color paint program on a flat tablet that was wirelessly transmitting to a wall-mounted screen. Today we'd say that was a Wacom tablet with a Bluetooth connection to an anybrand HDTV. And let's not forget the word "art" in "prior art."
- kemiller 15y agoA rectangle may be a rectangle, but the fact is that no one actually made a working and workable device in this form factor before Apple. If 2001 and Star Trek are prior art, then where were the hordes of copycats before 2010?
- sliverstorm 15y agoWhat does first to market have to do with a design patent?
- kemiller 15y agoAs far as I understand it, it's not a design patent, it's a trade dress complaint.
- vacri 15y agoTablets of that form factor predate the iPad, but used a stylus rather than a touchscreen. The iPad was an evolution, not a revolution (technologically, certainly has been a business revolution) EDIT: from 2008 - the Electrovaya Scribbler 4000 looks very similar to the ipad... two years before the iPad's release: http://sondreb.com/blog/post/showdown-of-slate-tablet-pcs.aspx http://sondreb.com/blog/post/showdown-of-slate-tablet-pcs.as...
- kemiller 15y agoNone of them were successful, and I don't mean business-wise. They existed as niche applications at best. I'm not claiming Apple invented tablets. What you've linked looks really nothing like the iPad, except insofar as it's a screen without a keyboard. And that's what all those previous tablets were: PC's with a novel input device. Virtually every tablet device before the iPad had: Resistive touchscreen Stylus Windows OS Plenty of buttons and connectors 12"+ screens PC-grade processors and hardware $2000+ price tag They are honestly not even in the same product category as: capacitive touchscreen finger-based UI written from the ground up one button 10" screen low-power ARM and big battery $500 price tag Samsung didn't go back to 2001 or the Electrovaya Scribbler for their ideas, nor did they come up with the basic design on their own. They had many years in which to do that if they wanted to. They saw that Apple had hit on the right basic form factor, and copied it. Fair enough, to a point. Great artists steal, etc. But trade dress can be serious business if it causes confusion between competitors in a fierce market, and Apple is certainly entitled to their day in court. (Shape/look considerations fall under trademark, not patents.) What Apple does best is not invent new fundamental technologies, it's pick which precise combination of them is going to work best. That is hard work. These kinds of conversations seem to systematically devalue it.
- joegaudet 15y agoIf this were allowed it would be quite the interesting blow to patent law. Much of what is _modern tech_ could be attributed to Sci-Fi: Cell Phones, Speech Recognition, all kinds of transportation. I for one hope this does work... Primarily because I love 2001.
- mrspeaker 15y agoMaybe they could site the Star Wars prequels too... There were iPads all through the stupid racer scene. http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/01/29/ipadme/ http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/01/29/ipadme/
- infinite_snoop 15y agoOk, so these devices look similar from the outside, but what about the internals? I'm opening the back of the iPad now, the things hollow —it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!
- hootmon 15y ago"Stealing Ideas is a way of life" Jobs made a pretty good career out of stealing the work of others and falsely claiming it as his companies own. There is a special circle in hell waiting for him.
- kryptomaniac 15y agoDidn't the movie 'BIG' also have prior art? I seem to recall that near the end Tom Hanks character 'designs' an electric comic book that looked a lot like a tablet computer.
- acemunroe 15y agohttp://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/ http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/ 'The story is usually told as relating to the Dutch patent (NL 6514306) Krøyer applied for. This application was not approved. According to the story, the Dutch Patent Office found an old issue of the Donald Duck magazine which showed the same invention. Since an invention has to be new to be patentable, the application was refused.'' Life imitates art- life imitates life- life uses art as defense