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Mr. Forstall said he invented a patent for double-tapping on Web pages because as he had been using a prototype of the iPhone to surf the web, he realized he wa

Mr. Forstall said he invented a patent for double-tapping on Web pages because as he had been using a prototype of the iPhone to surf the web, he realized he was spending a lot of time pinching and zooming the page to fit text perfectly on the screen. "I realized I have this incredibly powerful device, why can't it figure out the right size for me?" he said. So, he challenged his team to make the software automatically size the text into the center of the screen when he double-tapped around a webpage." This is why we're in such a sad state with regard to software patents. This guy genuinely believes that he "invented" something. And that it should be patentable. Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was "decide how something should work". You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. Certainly not something you should call "inventing", and absolutely not something that you should consider patenting. It's just one of thousands of design decisions you make. It's just sad to watch people who don't understand that making things worse for everybody.

StavrosK 14y ago
Maybe we should define "invention" in terms of "design decision". An invention should be something that requires no fewer than three hundred design decisions to create.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  They're already unable to handle other subjective requirements like "non trivial" and still struggle with the slightly objective "prior art". I don't think adding new subjective definitions would help. In my opinion the biggest problem with patents is that it's impossible to put the theory in practice no matter how great the theory is. On paper, patenting only non-trivial ideas sounds good. On practice that rule simply doesn't exist because it's impossible to define objectively.
batista 14y ago
>Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was "decide how something should work". You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. Sounds like a very useful feature to me, and something that competitors or previous products did not had. And "deciding how something should work" sounds like a perfectly good description of an _invention_.
- cma 14y ago
  Anyone that has implemented something like that knows implementation and execution is the really hard part.
  - batista 14y ago
    Implementation has the chance of being the "hard part" only _after_ the idea has been thought.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      What are you smoking? If the implementation is too hard, the idea was worthless.
      - css771 14y ago
        True but there are multiple ways of doing something. So after thinking about an idea, finding the easiest way to implement it is also a task in itself.
      - batista 14y ago
        I'm not smoking anything, thank you very much for your polite inquiry. How you came to the conclusion that "If the implementation is too hard, the idea was worthless", I can't even begin to think. Difficulty of implementation and worthiness of idea are totally orthogonal. There are tons of very important ideas that had a very difficult implementation. E.g the idea behind the atomic bomb was very valuable despite the fact that the implementation took some of the top minds, several years and millions of dollars.
- natrius 14y ago
  Is "the progress of science and useful arts" promoted by granting monopolies over such things? That is, would Apple have chosen not to create the iPhone without patents like this? I think not.
  - 14y ago
jsz0 14y ago
I think double-tap-to-zoom is a perfect example of something that should be patentable. It's a huge improvement over existing systems that often used a zoom box you would position with cursor keys. To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user's tap target. Web browsing before double-tap-to-zoom and multi-touch zoom was a nightmare. These two features reinvented web browsing on small displays. This was clearly one of the killer features of the original iPhone.
- pwg 14y ago
  > To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user's tap target. And that is what should be patentable, if anything at all should be patentable. The algorithm to account for design elements and make intelligent choices. Not "tap twice to zoom".
  - btilly 14y ago
    In theory, patents exist to cover ideas which are hard to think up, but obvious once you've seen them. Double-tap fits this description perfectly. I am against patents in general. But this is perfectly in line with past hardware patents. For example compare to 1950s radios where the volume control was also the on/off switch. Pull it out, and the radio was on, push it in, it was off, and it remembered the volume that you wanted. That button design was patented. I don't see a difference in kind on that patent and the double-click patent.
    - angersock 14y ago
      I'd wager anybody with a little work, when told "Don't add another interaction point to this radio" or "Try to find some way of cutting down on distinct inputs" would stumble upon the radio knob solution given a little time. This isn't art--even a cursory exploration of the solution space with vague constraints should get you there.
      - 14y ago
tvon 14y ago
> You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. The sum of these design decisions make the product, they are the most important aspect the project.
anamax 14y ago
There are two kinds of inventions. (1) Providing a solution to a known problem. (2) Figuring out that something is a problem and providing a solution. I'd argue that (2) is more valuable than (1) as there are likely to be other solutions in the case of (1) so the payoff is relatively small. Figuring out that a problem exists and solving it is far more valuable. Yes, I know that most of us work on (1), but surely our self-interest is irrlevant.
- angersock 14y ago
  You've made (2) a superset of (1) here. The fact is, he identified a problem and then handed it off to others to solve. Any of us could've identified that problem, and most of us could've implemented the solution after a bit of work. Especially in a group environment (dev listserv, public forums, etc.) we expect to have users that can identify problems and others that can solve them. Adding patents and claiming "Invention!" for incremental improvements is harming progress.
  - anamax 14y ago
    > Any of us could've identified that problem, Not so fast. None of you did, despite the fact that mobile devices aren't new. When I first saw tetris, I said "wow, I could have invented that, I was just looking at asymmetric block figures". However, I didn't. Almost everything is trivial in hindsight. >Especially in a group environment (dev listserv, public forums, etc.) we expect to have users that can identify problems and others that can solve them. Are you claiming that Apple execs can't invent anything because they have too many indirect subordinates? Or that groups only produce improvements that are too trivial to warrant protection?
    - angersock 14y ago
      First, about me not solving that problem. I wasn't in industry when that issue came up, and I wasn't employed by Apple. So, it really isn't fair to hold me responsible for a problem I didn't have. I've only recently begun carrying a mobile device of any sort, furthermore. There are infinitely many problems that I haven't solved nor, I reckon, have you. I will not argue, though, that we automatically are not capable of solving them, as we have not encountered them and have no reason to solve them. Given the constraints, given the hardware, given the opportunity and incentive, we certainly could come up with something similar. Just because we did not does not mean we could not. This logic puts us in the unfortunate opportunity of saying "Well, the first person to run into the problem, to them goes the spoils!" That's rubbish, and heavily encourages either wasteful flailing about in the problem space wasting resources, or worse, explicitly avoiding exploring even the same areas as others because you'd hate to be a few minutes late. We need to be free to attempt solutions to problems regardless of who else has worked on them and to what success. Second, the point I was making was not that Apple execs can't invent anything (indeed, I believe I set the bar fairly low for novelty!) or that groups only find trivial progress. The point was that in a community we expect some users to find problems and others to find solutions--and these may be different folks, spread far in time and space. You made some statement seeming to imply that one must both discover and solve a problem, and that is what I took issue with.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
goatslacker 14y ago
Completely agree, the implementation should be protected by copyright but not the idea itself.
- adrianwaj 14y ago
  So if you had the idea to create an open roof "sunroof" in a car, the way the roof opens mechanically should be protected by copyright, not the fact that you are putting a rectangular hole above drivers' heads for more light and air? Could the shade slide be protected too?
  - goatslacker 14y ago
    Good point except that I'm strictly speaking about Software. I didn't explicitly state it because I thought it was implied.
NHQ 14y ago
A Patent for "tapping on something to make it do something". Who owns the patents for tool use and fire brandishing?

StavrosK 14y ago

Maybe we should define "invention" in terms of "design decision". An invention should be something that requires no fewer than three hundred design decisions to create.

vibrunazo 14y ago
They're already unable to handle other subjective requirements like "non trivial" and still struggle with the slightly objective "prior art". I don't think adding new subjective definitions would help. In my opinion the biggest problem with patents is that it's impossible to put the theory in practice no matter how great the theory is. On paper, patenting only non-trivial ideas sounds good. On practice that rule simply doesn't exist because it's impossible to define objectively.

batista 14y ago

>Of course, anybody who has actually built anything knows that what he actually did was "decide how something should work". You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. Sounds like a very useful feature to me, and something that competitors or previous products did not had. And "deciding how something should work" sounds like a perfectly good description of an _invention_.

cma 14y ago
Anyone that has implemented something like that knows implementation and execution is the really hard part.
- batista 14y ago
  Implementation has the chance of being the "hard part" only _after_ the idea has been thought.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    What are you smoking? If the implementation is too hard, the idea was worthless.
    - css771 14y ago
      True but there are multiple ways of doing something. So after thinking about an idea, finding the easiest way to implement it is also a task in itself.
    - batista 14y ago
      I'm not smoking anything, thank you very much for your polite inquiry. How you came to the conclusion that "If the implementation is too hard, the idea was worthless", I can't even begin to think. Difficulty of implementation and worthiness of idea are totally orthogonal. There are tons of very important ideas that had a very difficult implementation. E.g the idea behind the atomic bomb was very valuable despite the fact that the implementation took some of the top minds, several years and millions of dollars.
natrius 14y ago
Is "the progress of science and useful arts" promoted by granting monopolies over such things? That is, would Apple have chosen not to create the iPhone without patents like this? I think not.
- 14y ago

jsz0 14y ago

I think double-tap-to-zoom is a perfect example of something that should be patentable. It's a huge improvement over existing systems that often used a zoom box you would position with cursor keys. To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user's tap target. Web browsing before double-tap-to-zoom and multi-touch zoom was a nightmare. These two features reinvented web browsing on small displays. This was clearly one of the killer features of the original iPhone.

pwg 14y ago
> To work properly it has to take into account the major design elements on a web page and make intelligent choices based on the user's tap target. And that is what should be patentable, if anything at all should be patentable. The algorithm to account for design elements and make intelligent choices. Not "tap twice to zoom".
- btilly 14y ago
  In theory, patents exist to cover ideas which are hard to think up, but obvious once you've seen them. Double-tap fits this description perfectly. I am against patents in general. But this is perfectly in line with past hardware patents. For example compare to 1950s radios where the volume control was also the on/off switch. Pull it out, and the radio was on, push it in, it was off, and it remembered the volume that you wanted. That button design was patented. I don't see a difference in kind on that patent and the double-click patent.
  - angersock 14y ago
    I'd wager anybody with a little work, when told "Don't add another interaction point to this radio" or "Try to find some way of cutting down on distinct inputs" would stumble upon the radio knob solution given a little time. This isn't art--even a cursory exploration of the solution space with vague constraints should get you there.
    - 14y ago

tvon 14y ago

> You do this dozens of times when putting out a new product, and it's not in any way a big deal. The sum of these design decisions make the product, they are the most important aspect the project.

anamax 14y ago

There are two kinds of inventions. (1) Providing a solution to a known problem. (2) Figuring out that something is a problem and providing a solution. I'd argue that (2) is more valuable than (1) as there are likely to be other solutions in the case of (1) so the payoff is relatively small. Figuring out that a problem exists and solving it is far more valuable. Yes, I know that most of us work on (1), but surely our self-interest is irrlevant.

angersock 14y ago
You've made (2) a superset of (1) here. The fact is, he identified a problem and then handed it off to others to solve. Any of us could've identified that problem, and most of us could've implemented the solution after a bit of work. Especially in a group environment (dev listserv, public forums, etc.) we expect to have users that can identify problems and others that can solve them. Adding patents and claiming "Invention!" for incremental improvements is harming progress.
- anamax 14y ago
  > Any of us could've identified that problem, Not so fast. None of you did, despite the fact that mobile devices aren't new. When I first saw tetris, I said "wow, I could have invented that, I was just looking at asymmetric block figures". However, I didn't. Almost everything is trivial in hindsight. >Especially in a group environment (dev listserv, public forums, etc.) we expect to have users that can identify problems and others that can solve them. Are you claiming that Apple execs can't invent anything because they have too many indirect subordinates? Or that groups only produce improvements that are too trivial to warrant protection?
  - angersock 14y ago
    First, about me not solving that problem. I wasn't in industry when that issue came up, and I wasn't employed by Apple. So, it really isn't fair to hold me responsible for a problem I didn't have. I've only recently begun carrying a mobile device of any sort, furthermore. There are infinitely many problems that I haven't solved nor, I reckon, have you. I will not argue, though, that we automatically are not capable of solving them, as we have not encountered them and have no reason to solve them. Given the constraints, given the hardware, given the opportunity and incentive, we certainly could come up with something similar. Just because we did not does not mean we could not. This logic puts us in the unfortunate opportunity of saying "Well, the first person to run into the problem, to them goes the spoils!" That's rubbish, and heavily encourages either wasteful flailing about in the problem space wasting resources, or worse, explicitly avoiding exploring even the same areas as others because you'd hate to be a few minutes late. We need to be free to attempt solutions to problems regardless of who else has worked on them and to what success. Second, the point I was making was not that Apple execs can't invent anything (indeed, I believe I set the bar fairly low for novelty!) or that groups only find trivial progress. The point was that in a community we expect some users to find problems and others to find solutions--and these may be different folks, spread far in time and space. You made some statement seeming to imply that one must both discover and solve a problem, and that is what I took issue with.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

goatslacker 14y ago

Completely agree, the implementation should be protected by copyright but not the idea itself.

adrianwaj 14y ago
So if you had the idea to create an open roof "sunroof" in a car, the way the roof opens mechanically should be protected by copyright, not the fact that you are putting a rectangular hole above drivers' heads for more light and air? Could the shade slide be protected too?
- goatslacker 14y ago
  Good point except that I'm strictly speaking about Software. I didn't explicitly state it because I thought it was implied.

NHQ 14y ago

A Patent for "tapping on something to make it do something". Who owns the patents for tool use and fire brandishing?