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> The judge said that HTC's "arc unlock" feature - which also involves a predefined gesture along a path shown on-screen - would have infringed Apple's technolo

by azakai 14y ago

> The judge said that HTC's "arc unlock" feature - which also involves a predefined gesture along a path shown on-screen - would have infringed Apple's technology had it not been for a device released in 2004. No, no, no. It is clearly obvious, the fact that there happens to also be prior art just adds insult to injury. If there had not been prior art, it would still be a frivolous, trivial patent. This is exactly what's wrong with the patent system - you don't need prior art to tell you something is obvious and should be unpatentable.

vibrunazo 14y ago
I perfectly agree. But how do you prove in court that it was obvious? Most countries do have that paragraph in their legislation stating patents need to be non-obvious to someone of similar skill. But you almost never see that being tested in court, because how the hell do you prove it? One of the big problems with the patent system is that it tries to implement solutions that are not viable in practice. There's no good, plain, clear, and unbiased way to prove a patent is indeed trivial. Even if we us hackers look at each other and agree that it's trivial. I'd love to live in a world where innovators of non trivial solutions were rewarded money from others, without punishing these other innovators. But that's not possible to implement in practice!
- azakai 14y ago
  I don't think this is so difficult. Something has to be nontrivial to practitioners in the relevant field, so just survey a few random software engineers - not some clerks at the patent office. Pay them for their time, obviously, and that cost should come from the patent application fee. If this were done the vast majority of software patents existing today would not have been granted. Which is probably why the system wouldn't do it.
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    I really don't think it would be that simple to make sure that process in unbiased. And that the additional costs wouldn't make patenting exclusive to billionaire companies. But I very sincerely hope you're right :)
  - backprojection 14y ago
    1. I think the obviousness of an idea might change throughout time. 2. What if one industry is dominated by two companies, in the sense that all the experts are employed by one or the other, then how could they be unbiassed?
    - drcube 14y ago
      Simple. Monopolies and duopolies shouldn't be awarded patents, which are just monopolies themselves. Why award monopolies to monopolies?
      - rcthompson 14y ago
        First you have to prove in court that they are a monopoly.
      - taligent 14y ago
        Nothing wrong with being a monopoly so long as you don't use that monopoly to restrict competition.
        tikhonj 14y ago
        There's nothing illegal with being a monopoly. That doesn't mean it isn't wrong. I think in most cases (with exceptions like utilities), not having monopolies leads to a healthier market than having them.
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      1. I think the obviousness of an idea might change throughout time. Sounds like an excellent reason not to allow someone to own the idea for 20 years.
      - darkarmani 14y ago
        Yes, or changing it from a binary system to a continuum that maxes out at 20 years. Software patent? 5 years. New drug - 20 years. New algorithm (can't patent math of course) 10 years.
  - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
    You just described a patent lawsuit - both sides bring experts who vouch for their perspective in light of a judge who moderates and then rules on the debate from a general legal perspective.
    - sses 14y ago
      It's significantly different from a patent trial. In this scheme the patent is not granted - and can't meaningfully affect the market - until it has passed some level of technical scrutiny by a (hopefully) neutral third party. In a trial the patent has already been granted, it's already affecting the work done by engineers, licensing fees may have been paid, and so on. And the evaluation by experts in the trial seems less likely to be neutral.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Imagine someone patenting the vague "drop down menu" for websites. Even if others would put a new twist on the drop down menu, they could still be infringing on the person who had the original patent for a drop down menu, according to the current patent system. That's kind of how Apple's slide to unlock patent is now. Even if they twist the heck out of that method, it might still fall within Apple's description for a "slide to unlock" method for which they got a patent. Stuff like this shouldn't be allowed to be patented. But I think people tend to give Apple the benefit of the doubt much more than they deserve, because they were the ones changing the mobile industry in 2007, and now they somehow believe that anything that even remotely resembles what Apple has needs to belong to Apple and only to Apple. But that's not how things should work. Apple should just compete and try to stay 1 step ahead. That's how it's done in all the other industries. They don't try to squash every single one of their competitors with bogus lawsuits because they "compete" i.e. making something "similar".
cheez 14y ago
I think the problem is that it's impossible to determine what is obvious post-hoc. The next best thing is "hey, was someone thinking of this at the same time?" Prior art is the easiest way to prove it. It sucks :(
- femto 14y ago
  I'd suggest that any independent invention between filing and grant, that is, during the period when the patent is still secret, should automatically render the subject of the application to be obvious and unpatentable.
idspispopd 14y ago
I agree a patent on simple gestures is simply not logical, but working within the constrains of the existing (and in my view, broken) system, I'd like to explore the idea of swipe to unlock, really how obvious is it? This is a legitimate question, and I'm looking for real answers because these can be useful later on. What is natural about swiping to unlock? The closest historical analogy I can think of is moving a bolt sideways on a door, but this is tenuous and certainly wouldn't extrapolate as the most natural/expected method of signalling to an electronic device that I'd like it to no longer ignore my touch gestures. Would the closer analogy be the 'hold' slider as present on music players, including apple's own ipods? (And earlier devices.) Again, why is this the natural choice in lieu of a hundred other ways of telling the device that I'm ready to work with it. Apple's love of skeuomorphs present many seemingly 'obvious' analogies, but they were usually rare or non existent before, so I'm curious to understand what is the line of innovation.
- Zak 14y ago
  really how obvious is it? I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?
  - idspispopd 14y ago
    I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here. The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?
    - Zak 14y ago
      Given that the Neonode N1 had it first, I suspect that we would. I think it probably would have come about not long after capacitive touchscreens became the standard input device for phones no matter what. It's the easiest gesture to make that is fairly unlikely to happen by accident when the phone is in a pocket.
megaman821 14y ago
What is the patent office's mandate? It is not to grant trivial patents so companies can sue each other. Patents are supposed to be preferable to trade secrets because they make knowledge public in exchange for certain protections, and they encourage innovation in fields that require heavy investment. It would not matter if slide-to-unlock remained a "trade secret" and the investment in making that feature is low enough that they would do it, even if they were never granted patent protection.

by azakai 14y ago

vibrunazo 14y ago

I perfectly agree. But how do you prove in court that it was obvious? Most countries do have that paragraph in their legislation stating patents need to be non-obvious to someone of similar skill. But you almost never see that being tested in court, because how the hell do you prove it? One of the big problems with the patent system is that it tries to implement solutions that are not viable in practice. There's no good, plain, clear, and unbiased way to prove a patent is indeed trivial. Even if we us hackers look at each other and agree that it's trivial. I'd love to live in a world where innovators of non trivial solutions were rewarded money from others, without punishing these other innovators. But that's not possible to implement in practice!

azakai 14y ago
I don't think this is so difficult. Something has to be nontrivial to practitioners in the relevant field, so just survey a few random software engineers - not some clerks at the patent office. Pay them for their time, obviously, and that cost should come from the patent application fee. If this were done the vast majority of software patents existing today would not have been granted. Which is probably why the system wouldn't do it.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  I really don't think it would be that simple to make sure that process in unbiased. And that the additional costs wouldn't make patenting exclusive to billionaire companies. But I very sincerely hope you're right :)
- backprojection 14y ago
  1. I think the obviousness of an idea might change throughout time. 2. What if one industry is dominated by two companies, in the sense that all the experts are employed by one or the other, then how could they be unbiassed?
  - drcube 14y ago
    Simple. Monopolies and duopolies shouldn't be awarded patents, which are just monopolies themselves. Why award monopolies to monopolies?
    - rcthompson 14y ago
      First you have to prove in court that they are a monopoly.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Nothing wrong with being a monopoly so long as you don't use that monopoly to restrict competition.
      - tikhonj 14y ago
        There's nothing illegal with being a monopoly. That doesn't mean it isn't wrong. I think in most cases (with exceptions like utilities), not having monopolies leads to a healthier market than having them.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    1. I think the obviousness of an idea might change throughout time. Sounds like an excellent reason not to allow someone to own the idea for 20 years.
    - darkarmani 14y ago
      Yes, or changing it from a binary system to a continuum that maxes out at 20 years. Software patent? 5 years. New drug - 20 years. New algorithm (can't patent math of course) 10 years.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  You just described a patent lawsuit - both sides bring experts who vouch for their perspective in light of a judge who moderates and then rules on the debate from a general legal perspective.
  - sses 14y ago
    It's significantly different from a patent trial. In this scheme the patent is not granted - and can't meaningfully affect the market - until it has passed some level of technical scrutiny by a (hopefully) neutral third party. In a trial the patent has already been granted, it's already affecting the work done by engineers, licensing fees may have been paid, and so on. And the evaluation by experts in the trial seems less likely to be neutral.
mtgx 14y ago
Imagine someone patenting the vague "drop down menu" for websites. Even if others would put a new twist on the drop down menu, they could still be infringing on the person who had the original patent for a drop down menu, according to the current patent system. That's kind of how Apple's slide to unlock patent is now. Even if they twist the heck out of that method, it might still fall within Apple's description for a "slide to unlock" method for which they got a patent. Stuff like this shouldn't be allowed to be patented. But I think people tend to give Apple the benefit of the doubt much more than they deserve, because they were the ones changing the mobile industry in 2007, and now they somehow believe that anything that even remotely resembles what Apple has needs to belong to Apple and only to Apple. But that's not how things should work. Apple should just compete and try to stay 1 step ahead. That's how it's done in all the other industries. They don't try to squash every single one of their competitors with bogus lawsuits because they "compete" i.e. making something "similar".

cheez 14y ago

I think the problem is that it's impossible to determine what is obvious post-hoc. The next best thing is "hey, was someone thinking of this at the same time?" Prior art is the easiest way to prove it. It sucks :(

femto 14y ago
I'd suggest that any independent invention between filing and grant, that is, during the period when the patent is still secret, should automatically render the subject of the application to be obvious and unpatentable.

idspispopd 14y ago

I agree a patent on simple gestures is simply not logical, but working within the constrains of the existing (and in my view, broken) system, I'd like to explore the idea of swipe to unlock, really how obvious is it? This is a legitimate question, and I'm looking for real answers because these can be useful later on. What is natural about swiping to unlock? The closest historical analogy I can think of is moving a bolt sideways on a door, but this is tenuous and certainly wouldn't extrapolate as the most natural/expected method of signalling to an electronic device that I'd like it to no longer ignore my touch gestures. Would the closer analogy be the 'hold' slider as present on music players, including apple's own ipods? (And earlier devices.) Again, why is this the natural choice in lieu of a hundred other ways of telling the device that I'm ready to work with it. Apple's love of skeuomorphs present many seemingly 'obvious' analogies, but they were usually rare or non existent before, so I'm curious to understand what is the line of innovation.

Zak 14y ago
really how obvious is it? I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?
- idspispopd 14y ago
  I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here. The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?
  - Zak 14y ago
    Given that the Neonode N1 had it first, I suspect that we would. I think it probably would have come about not long after capacitive touchscreens became the standard input device for phones no matter what. It's the easiest gesture to make that is fairly unlikely to happen by accident when the phone is in a pocket.

megaman821 14y ago

What is the patent office's mandate? It is not to grant trivial patents so companies can sue each other. Patents are supposed to be preferable to trade secrets because they make knowledge public in exchange for certain protections, and they encourage innovation in fields that require heavy investment. It would not matter if slide-to-unlock remained a "trade secret" and the investment in making that feature is low enough that they would do it, even if they were never granted patent protection.