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The patent system is supposed to encourage the commoditization of inventions by using a trade-off: if you invent something novel and useful, you can get a paten

The patent system is supposed to encourage the commoditization of inventions by using a trade-off: if you invent something novel and useful, you can get a patent that gives you a complete monopoly for a limited amount of time, but in return you have to completely disclose how your invention was made, so that, first, others can see if the intention would be useful for them right now (and thus negotiate a license with you) and, second, once you're patent expires society can easily reach for and utilize your invention. Unfortunately, that process has been turned on its head, so that patents are routinely granted for designs, devices, and methods that are already effectively commoditized or simply don't work patent protection. The iPhone's design is undeniably visually appealing and user-friendly, but it is by no means an "invention." It is a form of user interface, something that has already been held to not be patentable, and it is a form of branding, something that is protected, but through trademark law, not patent law. I find this situation disturbing for the same reason I find it disturbing that pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than they do on research and the belt. Consumer electronics companies should not be investing the bulk of their resources playing legal games with one another over non-disruptive "inventions" like the idea to use asynchronous processing to make sure video and audio lines up. They should be using their resources making phones that are better and more alluring than one another.

jeremyarussell 14y ago
I love how people like to forget about that, software patents never carry the actual code in the patent, so I can't see how they are really divulging how everything works without the code. As it stands when a patent for software finally does expire, no one gets how it worked except for those who had already re-engineered it. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this seem a bit strange?
doktrin 14y ago
I'm glad to see someone highlight the fact that design patents are inherently illogical, and in fact run altogether counter to the purpose of the patent system. Too often this is obscured, and/or all patents are lumped together as being generally awful. I personally do not ascribe to the notion that all patents should be outright abolished. Design patents, however, should simply not exist. Rounded corners, rectangles and UI elements in rows of 4 are simply not inventions.
- cheald 14y ago
  To be really pedantic about it, it's arguable that they are inventions (someone had to be the first to put four rocks in a row), but it's such a blindly obvious "invention" that it's insanely laughable to afford it any kind of protections at all.
  - bmuon 14y ago
    And that's because design, when done right, is obvious.
    - veemjeem 14y ago
      I think it's only obvious in hindsight. The massively popular Ugg boots are not seemingly "obvious design".
    - option_greek 14y ago
      Which is the reason design should not enjoy patent protection. No one says transistor when done right is obvious.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Design patents aren't for inventions. They are like trademarks, ornamental figures that are protected from impersonation, sort of like a policemans uniform. Anything functional is expressly out of scope for a design patent.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  What types of protection do you suggest a country implement to protect design/form? Trademark, copyright, and trade dress protection will not cover "design objects". If Louis Vuitton were to come out with a new fall handbag, what would they use to protect Gucci from duplicating their design and selling it under Gucci's brand?
  - WildUtah 14y ago
    Fashion items, along with things like recipes and the plots of novels, are categorically excluded from patent protection, including design patents. You can copy that handbag all you want, as long as you don't violate the trademark on the label. Software, being a fundamentally creative enterprise, should be included. It doesn't fit into the patent system for the same reason that granting a monopoly on a plot twist makes no sense.
nirvana 14y ago
>so that patents are routinely granted for designs, devices, and methods that are already effectively commoditized You are confusing utility patents and design patents. They are very different things, and design patents are intended for "designs" and the designs of devices. This is not a perversion, this is just you not understanding what patents are! Secondly you guys constantly claim that these things are not novel, yet you are never able to provide good prior art. Yes, here, 11 years later, this stuff is commoditized. Mostly because android ripped off the work Apple demoed in January 2007 and brought it to market. That doesn't mean in January 2007 it wasn't novel. I have constantly seen you guys claim that other people did this before, but I've never seen a single instance of genuine prior art. You guys cite movies (not understanding what prior art is, or what patents are) and you cite demos of completely different technologies (like microsoft's surface which uses cameras.) So, you're projecting a completely false characterization of the situation and then saying its "bad" or has been perverted. This feels like political propaganda to me. I notice that the anti-Patent movement started with google's lawyers letter and in defense of android which is a blatent ripoff of Apple technology. So, lets see google donate Pagerank to the public domain, eh? They only have 6 years or so left on it anyway.... why haven't they?
- cromwellian 14y ago
  There's been ample citation of prior art, everything from prior working and publicly shown prototypes to actually shipping devices. Apple was not the first company to show a capacitive multitouch screen (LG Prada was), they were not the first to show pinch-to-zoom (numerous examples, Jeff Han, Diamond Touch, 20 years of research prototypes), they were not the first with double-tap to zoom (there's 2 decades of ZUIs, zoomable-user-interface work that predates this), they were not the first with software to detect phone numbers in text and make them clickable, they were not the first with an uncluttered rounded corner flat, face-plate design (see disallowed Samsung F700 face), they were not the first with universal search (PalmOS had it first on the original palm pilot) and on and on. And don't give me that crap about "it's not about the idea, it's about the implementation". Apple's pinch to zoom patent, for example, covers implementations on ANY kind of touch surface. It claims are vague like "That gesture adjusts an image in some way", covering not just zoom, scale, and rotation, but any transform of the image. When someone makes such an absolute claim, that they've never seen any genuine prior art, even though tens of thousands of engineers in forums are pointing to research and devices that are at least arguably prior art and cast Apple's patents in a grey area, to have such an absolutist assertion indicates to me that that person is not interested in fairness, or truth, but on banging the drums of tribalism. There are for sure, people in the Android camp that are rooting for Android in this case because they like Android devices. I'm not one of them. For me, the issue is about software programming freedom. Whether it is SOPA/PIPA, or patents being used against open source, attacks on computing freedom in general are more important than Samsung, Android, or Apple. We should not assign away the future of software or networking by granting monopoly power to the largest corporations in the world. Not when the whole edifice was started by Homebrew hackers to begin with.
bsphil 14y ago
Also, the evolution time of tech is remarkably fast. 10-20 years (I'm not sure how long these patents are valid) is an incredibly long time in computing to hold a patent on a small feature. Look at where tech devices/interfaces were 20 years ago. Prototyping something digital is far faster, and things can be changed and refined at a rate that physical objects just can't match.
lines 14y ago
Note that the jury found that Samsung diluted Apple's trade dress, which is part of trademark law, not just infringed its design patents.

jeremyarussell 14y ago

I love how people like to forget about that, software patents never carry the actual code in the patent, so I can't see how they are really divulging how everything works without the code. As it stands when a patent for software finally does expire, no one gets how it worked except for those who had already re-engineered it. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this seem a bit strange?

doktrin 14y ago

I'm glad to see someone highlight the fact that design patents are inherently illogical, and in fact run altogether counter to the purpose of the patent system. Too often this is obscured, and/or all patents are lumped together as being generally awful. I personally do not ascribe to the notion that all patents should be outright abolished. Design patents, however, should simply not exist. Rounded corners, rectangles and UI elements in rows of 4 are simply not inventions.

cheald 14y ago
To be really pedantic about it, it's arguable that they are inventions (someone had to be the first to put four rocks in a row), but it's such a blindly obvious "invention" that it's insanely laughable to afford it any kind of protections at all.
- bmuon 14y ago
  And that's because design, when done right, is obvious.
  - veemjeem 14y ago
    I think it's only obvious in hindsight. The massively popular Ugg boots are not seemingly "obvious design".
  - option_greek 14y ago
    Which is the reason design should not enjoy patent protection. No one says transistor when done right is obvious.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Design patents aren't for inventions. They are like trademarks, ornamental figures that are protected from impersonation, sort of like a policemans uniform. Anything functional is expressly out of scope for a design patent.
veemjeem 14y ago
What types of protection do you suggest a country implement to protect design/form? Trademark, copyright, and trade dress protection will not cover "design objects". If Louis Vuitton were to come out with a new fall handbag, what would they use to protect Gucci from duplicating their design and selling it under Gucci's brand?
- WildUtah 14y ago
  Fashion items, along with things like recipes and the plots of novels, are categorically excluded from patent protection, including design patents. You can copy that handbag all you want, as long as you don't violate the trademark on the label. Software, being a fundamentally creative enterprise, should be included. It doesn't fit into the patent system for the same reason that granting a monopoly on a plot twist makes no sense.

nirvana 14y ago

>so that patents are routinely granted for designs, devices, and methods that are already effectively commoditized You are confusing utility patents and design patents. They are very different things, and design patents are intended for "designs" and the designs of devices. This is not a perversion, this is just you not understanding what patents are! Secondly you guys constantly claim that these things are not novel, yet you are never able to provide good prior art. Yes, here, 11 years later, this stuff is commoditized. Mostly because android ripped off the work Apple demoed in January 2007 and brought it to market. That doesn't mean in January 2007 it wasn't novel. I have constantly seen you guys claim that other people did this before, but I've never seen a single instance of genuine prior art. You guys cite movies (not understanding what prior art is, or what patents are) and you cite demos of completely different technologies (like microsoft's surface which uses cameras.) So, you're projecting a completely false characterization of the situation and then saying its "bad" or has been perverted. This feels like political propaganda to me. I notice that the anti-Patent movement started with google's lawyers letter and in defense of android which is a blatent ripoff of Apple technology. So, lets see google donate Pagerank to the public domain, eh? They only have 6 years or so left on it anyway.... why haven't they?

cromwellian 14y ago
There's been ample citation of prior art, everything from prior working and publicly shown prototypes to actually shipping devices. Apple was not the first company to show a capacitive multitouch screen (LG Prada was), they were not the first to show pinch-to-zoom (numerous examples, Jeff Han, Diamond Touch, 20 years of research prototypes), they were not the first with double-tap to zoom (there's 2 decades of ZUIs, zoomable-user-interface work that predates this), they were not the first with software to detect phone numbers in text and make them clickable, they were not the first with an uncluttered rounded corner flat, face-plate design (see disallowed Samsung F700 face), they were not the first with universal search (PalmOS had it first on the original palm pilot) and on and on. And don't give me that crap about "it's not about the idea, it's about the implementation". Apple's pinch to zoom patent, for example, covers implementations on ANY kind of touch surface. It claims are vague like "That gesture adjusts an image in some way", covering not just zoom, scale, and rotation, but any transform of the image. When someone makes such an absolute claim, that they've never seen any genuine prior art, even though tens of thousands of engineers in forums are pointing to research and devices that are at least arguably prior art and cast Apple's patents in a grey area, to have such an absolutist assertion indicates to me that that person is not interested in fairness, or truth, but on banging the drums of tribalism. There are for sure, people in the Android camp that are rooting for Android in this case because they like Android devices. I'm not one of them. For me, the issue is about software programming freedom. Whether it is SOPA/PIPA, or patents being used against open source, attacks on computing freedom in general are more important than Samsung, Android, or Apple. We should not assign away the future of software or networking by granting monopoly power to the largest corporations in the world. Not when the whole edifice was started by Homebrew hackers to begin with.

bsphil 14y ago

Also, the evolution time of tech is remarkably fast. 10-20 years (I'm not sure how long these patents are valid) is an incredibly long time in computing to hold a patent on a small feature. Look at where tech devices/interfaces were 20 years ago. Prototyping something digital is far faster, and things can be changed and refined at a rate that physical objects just can't match.

lines 14y ago

Note that the jury found that Samsung diluted Apple's trade dress, which is part of trademark law, not just infringed its design patents.