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Apple's New Pinch-To-Zoom Monopoly is Bad News

220 points by bookwormAT 14y ago

MichaelApproved 14y ago
I think pinch to zoom is pretty innovative and someone should get credit for coming up with that idea. Without it, I bet we'd see the classic magnifying glass in the bottom corner of every screen to zoom. Simple does not mean obvious. UX designers need to protect their work and creativity.
- andybak 14y ago
  Credit - yes. A pat on the back and maybe a nice statue somewhere. A 25 year monopoly with legally-enforceable rent? No.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    You can't recoup millions in R&D investments with a pat on the back. The system is designed to encourage investment and risk taking to create something with the reward of profit.
- earnubs 14y ago
  If you're the UX designer who came up with the human hand, by all means, patent away.
- ghost91 14y ago
  But pinch to zoom is not invented by Apple. Microsoft Surface implemented it before, also it was shown in some scifi movies way before then.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    That's true. Can't someone successfully contest it, then?
    - intended 14y ago
      Iirc the groklaw point was that 1) Yes there is prior art but Samsung lost because 2) It was shown that Samsung was willfully trying to make its products similar to Apple's. There are some further murky corners to the verdict, one aspect which seems will be contested is the size of the damages. The Jury foreman stated that they valued the damages to be "more than a slap on the wrist". Whereas the instructions given clearly state that the jury is not to levy punitive damages, but to recoup losses incurred by the infringed. Edit: Going to double check just to be sure. Update: Iirc the groklaw point was that 1) Yes there is prior art but Samsung lost because 2) It was shown that Samsung was willfully trying to make its products similar to Apple's. There are some further murky corners to the verdict, one aspect which seems will be contested is the size of the damages. The Jury foreman stated that they valued the damages to be "more than a slap on the wrist". Whereas the instructions given clearly state that the jury is not to levy punitive damages, but to recoup losses incurred by the infringed. Edit: Going to double check just to be sure. Update: From the verdict: Patent invalidity, Samsung had to prove apple invalid - No, across the board for all patents brought up. Apple contested that 3 feature related patents and 4 design patents were infringed a) '381 - rubber band - valid / Samsung infringed b) ’915 - pinch to zoom or scroll - valid / Samsung infringed c) ’163 - multi-tap to zoom - valid / Samsung infringed Samsung also was found to be willfully infringing. d) '667 - iPhone front design - valid / infringed /willful e) '087 - iPhone back design - valid / infringed /willful f) '305 - iPhone home screen - valid / infringed /willful g) '889 - iPad design - no infringement Apple has only proven that the unregistered iPhone 3G trade dress is protectable. Negative on the iPhone / iPad combo and the iPad / iPad 2 trade dress This is a pretty broad sweep of the verdict, a lot of the verdict breaks down onto whether Samsung Telecom America (STA), Samsung Electronics (SEC) and Samsung Engineering America (SEA). This is further broken down over each product which is found to be infringing. Sources: http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/301948/apple-patent-breakdown-which-samsung-tech-gadgets-infringe/5 http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/301948/apple-patent-bre... http://www.bgr.in/manufacturers/samsung/samsungs-patent-trial-loss-to-apple-has-a-silver-lining-for-the-industry/ http://www.bgr.in/manufacturers/samsung/samsungs-patent-tria... yet another edit: Also to be noted is that none of Samsung's claims against Apple were found valid.
  - andybak 14y ago
    I'm not clear on this and haven't got around to reading the patent to try and figure it out. This is the patent in question: http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381 http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381 This patent is more limited: http://www.google.com/patents/US7812826 http://www.google.com/patents/US7812826 as discussed here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-pat... However - it was granted after the first patent (2010 vs 2008)
    - m_eiman 14y ago
      That first one isn't related to multitouch, it's about bounce-back when scrolling with a single finger.
- rocha 14y ago
  The pinch gesture can be traced back to 1983: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
- danmaz74 14y ago
  Designers (UX or any other kind) should protect their work and creativity with copyright, not with patents. Or should any new idea be protected with a patent? Comedians come out with new funny ideas every day, should they get patents on them?
- cageface 14y ago
  Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and an unprecedented leap to the top of the list of most valuable companies in the world seems like pretty good compensation already, no?
  - lttlrck 14y ago
    so you mean after you reach a certain valuation all your IP should be taken away? WTF.
    - creamyhorror 14y ago
      No, he just means that Apple would have been well-rewarded by its innovation even if it hadn't been granted the patents in question, ergo, it wasn't necessary to grant the patents to encourage innovation. Patents should not be granted willy-nilly, and especially not on broad 'implementations' that essentially cover the whole concept, because then it just turns into a huge land grab. I'm already wondering if I should attempt to patent any half-cool idea I implement on my site, even though the idea of it stinks to me. With the way doubtful patents appear to be less spurious than expected, I'd be remiss not to grab my share of the land where I could. That's a crappy state of affairs, to have to attempt to patent everything that moves.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    The compensation is due to the system in place. Take that away and their ability to be compensated in the same way goes away.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  I'm waiting for the producers of Minority Report (2002) to start suing everyone since that movie clearly demonstrated swipe, pinch-to-zoom and other "innovative" UI elements. </sarcasm> Nothing is ever truly innovative. Nearly everything, quite literally everything, is built on something else. Apple, at its core, is actually the BEST IN THE WORLD at not innovating, but perfecting someone else's design. And that is my problem with this whole farce. Apple isn't an innovative company, at all. Apple is, however, excellent at seeing what others are doing and out doing them at their own game. They don't 'invent', they never have. They tweak, they massage and they simplify (some could argue that this is innovative, but I'm going to use the term like it is being used in court...is they are actually inventing a concept that didn't exist before).
  - kamjam 14y ago
    You know, I was just thinking the same thing about Minority Report. How does that not serve as prior art? I'm sure there are plenty of others before this as well. Someone commented on that blog about the TED talk that did a demo on "the pinch": http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      Uhh, because fictional representations of devices without sufficient information on how to actually construct them isn't prior art? I guarantee you, if you invent a matter/energy transporter you will be able to patent it despite Star Trek having put it on screen almost 50 years ago.
      - kamjam 14y ago
        Did you see the video I linked to? This was actually real and that video is dated 1 year before the iPhone was even announced, let alone released. Besides, as far as I've read (and I haven't read the details of the patents themselves) they are patenting the concept of the pinch-to-zoom, not the actual implementation, otherwise Samsung would just have a slightly different technical implementation of it right...
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > UX designers need to protect their work and creativity. You're obviously not familiar with the spirit behind Intellectual Property. IP is supposed to protect consumers, not inventors. Protecting inventors is just a means to an end. When you say we should protect designers just out of protecting designers' sake. Then you're inverting the logic. We should only protect designers when doing so is in the best interest of users (meaning it will bring more innovation to the market). This is obviously not the case here. So no, designers do not need to protect their work, if that means abusing consumers.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    I suggest that you are not familiar with the spirit. It has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It has everything to do with encouraging innovation/invention that will eventually be freely available to the public. To achieve that goal, investors need time to make their R&D investment back, plus enough profit to make the venture/risk worthwhile.
- hetman 14y ago
  The purpose of patents is not to protect your clever ideas because you're special and you deserve it. That's what copyright is for (copyright carries certain restrictions however). Patents are in fact an exchange; something for something. Society gives you a temporary monopoly, that means society incurs a certain loss. However in exchange you reveal all your secrets about how you did it. On the balance of things both you and society are better off. This was one of the things that made guilds obsolete (which existed to protect trade secrets) and so gave us a much more open, fast paced, modern world. Now here's the problem. There is nothing secret about pinch-to-zoom! It makes sense to patent novel innovations in how a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom works. But patenting a gesture that is so obvious you don't even need a scrap of expertise in the field to see? Ridiculous. This is why a lot of people are beginning to question just what society is getting in exchange for the types of patents being issued today.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    Now here's the problem. There is nothing secret about pinch-to-zoom! It makes sense to patent novel innovations in how a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom works. But patenting a gesture that is so obvious you don't even need a scrap of expertise in the field to see? Ridiculous. You consider it obvious, the courts do not. Simple is not the same as obvious.
    - hetman 14y ago
      You're missing the point. Perhaps it was my fault for using a word that is already loaded with meaning in the context of the patent system, but it wasn't my intention for it to be used in the same way. What I was talking about has nothing to do with how original the idea might be. Let me explain. The problem with the secret guilds wasn't that they didn't create publicly available products. Of course they did. The point was that even upon seeing what they had created, the average expert would have a hard time figuring out how they did it. Patents made that knowledge available to everyone. There is no need for the disclosure of any secrets with something like pinch-to-zoom. You pinch. It zooms. Even a child can grasp that. This is why I said it might make sense to patent a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom, but not the concept. Additionally, granting a patent here in no way even protects innovation. The patent holder would have implemented pinch-to-zoom whether they could monopolise it or not because it would sell their products. Society gains nothing it wouldn't anyway, and is forced to waste time enforcing stupid monopolies.
- nathan_long 14y ago
  >> someone should get credit for coming up with that idea If the execute well on that idea, they do get credit, in the form of business. If you come up with Korean tacos first, and they're good, you get lots of business. We don't have to start shutting down your competition and guaranteeing you're the only Korean taco stand in town in order for you to benefit from your work. >> UX designers need to protect their work and creativity. I don't know if you're in the U.S., but this is precisely the opposite of the rationale for intellectual property according to the US Constitution. It grants Congress power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The goal is to promote progress; exclusive rights are a sacrifice, for a limited time only, made in order to benefit the public. If the public begins to lose out because of these monopolies, the Constitution would not support their existence.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    * If the execute well on that idea, they do get credit, in the form of business. If you come up with Korean tacos first, and they're good, you get lots of business. We don't have to start shutting down your competition and guaranteeing you're the only Korean taco stand in town in order for you to benefit from your work.* Invention and innovation cost a lot of money. The taco example won't work but if you invest a ton of money to develop something, you deserve a temporary monopoly on the innovation/invention so you could get a return on your investment. If anyone would be allowed to copy you, the margins go way down and you'll never profit on the investment. The goal is to promote progress; exclusive rights are a sacrifice, for a limited time only, made in order to benefit the public. I don't see the conflict here. The public gets to enjoy your innovation/invention after a period of time which is designed to give you incentive to innovate/invent. Without that temporary monopoly, no one would invest in major R&D.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  Pinch to zoom is a skeuomorphic gesture, similar to stretching a slab of silly putty to enlarge a pencil drawing. There are only a few ways of manipulating the apparent size of a physical object, such as changing your view to make the object seem larger, or stretching the object itself. Any engineer translating those to multitouch would come up with similar gestures. Also, when you mention that UX designers need to "protect" their designs, it sounds like you are arguing from an artist's perspective that all creative work "deserves" some kind of legal protection. That is what copyrights are for. However, this problem must be approached from an engineering perspective, as it deals with machines that serve a purpose, and can only be implemented in a very limited set of ways.
- nchlswu 14y ago
  As a UX designer (in training), I disagree with your sentiment when you say "UX designers need to protect their work and creativity" when it comes to a gesture like pinch to zoom. Our work may need to be protected, but when it comes to gestures, I'd want my work to be copied and become standardized. If I had invented pinch to zoom, becoming a standard would be the ultimate validation of my work, as I'd want to improve everyone's experience. That's just my personal philosophy, however.
- forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
  "I think pinch to zoom is pretty innovative and someone should get credit for coming up with that idea." Pinch to zoom is there since multitouch technology in the 1980s. Once you start experimenting with multitouch, pinch to zoom is obvious in 5 min. It was very common in the industry. I was using it for transforming(amplifying an rotating) and moving vertex of an "elastic"(tesselated) vector shape in the early 2000s, late 90s, and we were not the first to do it with wacom multitouch. The same with "bouncing effect" that is just adding elasticity force to elements. The problem is that someone could take what already exist in the desktop and patent it "on a mobile device", or "in the browser" and have a monopoly for 20 years. This is as simple as the US gov selling monopolies to the highest bidder.
andybak 14y ago
Compare this with the culture prevalent in web development. People sharing every improvement or advance by blogging about it, open-sourcing code, writing tutorials etc.
- buro9 14y ago
  Although the age of open web dev may be passing. I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag. Only this morning did I see the job advert for Swiftype: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442562 By default I wish startups success, but I fear for the long-term implications when each piece of the puzzle (of web development) migrates towards being a business that needs to make money. And that is before you factor in patents and proprietary knowledge and how companies tend to act aggressively when their financial back is up against the wall. Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way.
  - nathan_long 14y ago
    >> I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly... one-by-one become startups with a price tag I'm not worried. I develop for the web, and nearly every piece of my tech stack - language, editor, database, server, browser rendering engine - is open source. My skills are in such high demand that my team can't find people to join it. I feel zero pressure to use anything closed-source. >> Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way. I do agree with this. I think it's unwise to develop for platforms like iOS, however popular they may be. It's a form of sharecropping. Let's keep working on the web, where every computer and mobile device is on equal footing, and we don't have to rewrite our app to reach new customers.
  - brown9-2 14y ago
    I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag. This has been the way of the computer industry for as long as there has been a computer industry. People attempt to commercialize and sell products. You don't really think that 2012 is the beginning of when people tried to sell a database server as a software product, do you?
no_gravity 14y ago
So far this only applies to the USA, right? Will companies ship their products with pinch-to-zoom to the rest of the world?
thomasjoulin 14y ago
Any reason/proof Pinch-To-Zoom (and the other Apple patents in the Samsung case) will not be licensed under FRAND ?
- magicalist 14y ago
  FRAND is not really a legal definition in the US (although that's changing somewhat as more precedent is being set). So far it's almost always been enforcement of agreements (through actual contracts and implicit licenses) due to the patent holder participating in things like standards bodies. That's why most of the major standards bodies require patent disclosure and some sort of patent license (whether it's royalty free or otherwise) in order to participate in them. In any case, I don't believe pinch to zoom is currently being standardized anywhere, so why would it be licensed under FRAND terms? I like Posner's argument where many of these types of patents, if they're going to be granted at all, should be held to essentially FRAND terms (since there aren't really any damages you can show in the case of infringement), but we'll see how that goes.
- hmottestad 14y ago
  Apple said that they, in the prelude to the suit, talked with Samsung about licensing their patents. So all in all I don't think apple has a monopoly since they will likely be forced to license their patents.
- _djo_ 14y ago
  FRAND only applies as a legal principle of the patent in question is part of an industry standard. So a Samsung patent that got incorporated into the UMTS should become a FRAND patent. The rules do vary from standards body to standards body. Google has argued that industry-common patents, not just industry-standard patents, should fall under FRAND terms as well. In other words a patent that enables multitouch gestures is so essential to modern smartphones that you can't compete without it. I'm still ambivalent on the whole patent question, though I'm intrigued by the idea of making all patents licensable under FRAND terms.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
babarock 14y ago
To me the real bad news is that I'm scared shitless to develop and commercialize anything now. No invention is truely innovative, not a single product on the market today is truely original. We're all influenced by the same factors and we're all trying to push the same limits in technology. I don't have nearly the means to go to court against a company like Apple (or any company at all for that matter). If I launch my product today, I would be afraid of being successful, because I know I'll be bullied by others. And when patent lawsuits can win you a Billion dollars, patent bullies are happy and waiting for me. But yeah, I agree patents are a driving force behind innovation...
- danmaz74 14y ago
  I hope this madness in US patents policies gets fixed. But if it doesn't, it could be an opportunity for Europe... http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-us-software-patents-threat-or-opportunity/ http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-u...
  - AhtiK 14y ago
    One experiment could be excluding Texas when selling to US. That could take care of most of the patent troll court filings and move you down in their prioritized attack list. AFAIK yet IANAL, if you have no customers in Texas then a company can't bring you to Texas court. Unfortunately this does not help with more "legitimate" cases from real software companies.
    - danmaz74 14y ago
      This is an interesting point; but is it feasible with web products? We would need a lawyer here... and the sad truth is that the only real winners here are lawyers.
    - josteink 14y ago
      The 1 billion dollar lawsuit was in California. Ignoring Texas wont help. Software patents is a US problem. Chances is it will be a driving force in taking innovation elsewhere.
deleted 14y ago
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- danmaz74 14y ago
  I looked at your link. There is no "steering wheel patent". Those are specific patents about specific innovations in the implementation of the steering wheel.
  - jonathanyc 14y ago
    http://bit.ly/RWdZpd http://bit.ly/RWdZpd
badclient 14y ago
Question about patents - is the act of pinch-to-zoom patented or the implementation(the algorithms, type of hardware needed etc.) patented? If it is the act that is patented, then as others have mentioned, its not necessarily original. If the implementation is patented, could there be alternative implementations? Did Samsung even actually copy Apple's implementation(at an algorithm level)?
- bluedanieru 14y ago
  The first one.
- taligent 14y ago
  It's closer to the second one. The implementation. It's just that in some cases it can be difficult nee impossible to implement it any other way. I would recommend reading some patents. Most are far more specific than you realise.
  - ajross 14y ago
    The text of the patents is specific. The fact that you see judgements like this implies that the interpretation (at least by this jury) is as broad as it seems to be. No where in that verdict do I see a narrow, careful reading of the technicalities of multitouch UIs. They got asked questions of the form "Did this device infringe?" and answered "Yup", almost without exception. Where exactly is the subtlety you're talking about?
- panacea 14y ago
  It's both the first and second, and neither at the same time. It's Schrödinger's Pinch. ... Making this comment pains me slightly. It's a comment I wouldn't have made on HN a year ago, pithy (I think) and slightly humorous, but I'm not bringing specific domain knowledge into the discussion to answer a question. It's the sort of comment I would have refrained from making on reddit many years ago when I first visited, when I encountered great commentary from knowledgeable participants on the topic at had, and lurked.
  - 14y ago
RivieraKid 14y ago
Google should distribute two Android versions - one for the U.S. (with features like pinch-to-zoom removed) and one for the rest of the world. This would hopefully create some pressure to change the obsolete patent system.
- sangaya 14y ago
  I think that's the wrong approach. They should continue to distribute one Android version, and that version should retain pinch-to-zoom, while they fight the absurdity in court.
- Loughla 14y ago
  From what I can tell about the American consumer, that would only shift the blame for patent infringement from the company to the consumer - American's are nothing if they're not resourceful. They would buy the pinch-to-zoom enabled version from overseas. Then, it only stands to reason that in the current atmosphere of punish, punish, punish, the average consumer would be on the line for importing illegal goods or some-other-such nonsense law. That's less pressure to change the obsolete system, and more pressure to prosecute based on antiquated laws.
mikecane 14y ago
Submarine patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent Well, I guess it's better than having to deal with that.
pschlump 14y ago
I can imagine what he is saying. In a Cherokee 180 4 person airplane you do steer on the ground with your feet and control the throttle with your hand. In a Gulfstar 50 you steer on the ground with a dial for your left hand placed off on the left. You need training to use each machine. The world has not come to a screeching halt just because not all airplanes have the same controls.
- mrich 14y ago
  But what is your point? Is a majority of the world population going to fly one of those airplanes as part of their daily routine soon?
- BitMastro 14y ago
  Yet all cars steer using the steering wheel. I think it's a pity to introduce unnecessary differences just because trivial things are being patented. (trivial on my opinion, others may disagree)
- hetman 14y ago
  That seems like a silly argument. The amount of time a person has to invest to be trained sufficiently to fly an airplane is huge. The amount of time required to then have to pick up completely different user interfaces probably doesn't seem very large by comparison. But could you imagine having to spend large amounts of time training for every mundane interaction with technology around you? The way aeroplanes work today there probably isn't a way to make flying them intuitive to a novice, but that's not an argument to make everything else painful to pick up when it doesn't need to be.
biturd 14y ago
Question: Can I start a small dev company in some other country thereby bypassing any patent trolls? Perhaps somewhere like Sweeden where they are much more sane about these issues? If this is the case, all we are ending up doing is driving technology away from the USA, and continuing to kill our economy.
- hetman 14y ago
  Unfortunately you'd still have to contend with the trolls if you wanted to sell your product/service in the USA.
- AhtiK 14y ago
  It depends on where your customer is located. Selling to a USA customer is opening you up to the US legislation for that specific transaction. IANAL.
- acdha 14y ago
  If the company does any business with people in the US, patent trolls can attack it - perhaps the most famous recent example being the Uniloc vs. Mojang case: http://notch.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mojang.pdf http://notch.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mojang.pdf
ktizo 14y ago
All the cited apple patents on multitouch gestures appear to be filed since Jeff Han's TED talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ - which clearly demonstrates many of the patented techniques. I find it really hard to understand how any of these patents were awarded. [edit] Some of the quotes from his 2006 presentation are quite relevant to this... ... "Now, multi-touch sensing isn't anything- isn't completely new, I mean, people like Bill Buxton have been playing around with it in the '80s." ... ... "Now this is a photographer's light box application. Again, I can use both of my hands to kind of interact and move photos around. But, what's even cooler- (uses fingers to 'grab' two corners of one of the photos and 'pulls' it to full screen size) is that, if I have two fingers, I can actually grab a photo and then stretch it out like that really easily. I can pan, zoom, and rotate it effortlessly. (slides piles of photos around) I can do that grossly with both of my hands, (pulls photo out of stack & enlarges it) or if I can do it just with two fingers on each of my hands together. (grabs empty space around photos & zooms in and out of canvas) If I grab the canvas I can kind of do the same thing- stretch it out- I can do it simultaneously, where I'm holding this down- (holds pile of photos down while pulling out another) -and gripping on another one, stretching this out like this. Again, the interface just disappears here. There's no manual. This is exactly what you kind of expect, especially if you haven't interacted with a computer before." ... Which sort of begs the question that if an expert in the field thinks the gesture is exactly what you would expect, even if you had no expertise whatsoever, then how does that not qualify as obvious?
- makomk 14y ago
  Apple probably got a patent on using those gestures on a handheld device, which no-one had demonstrated before because the touchscreen technology required to achieve it wasn't available yet. Apple didn't invent that technology, any more than they invented the gestures themselves, but because they were the first ones to take the obvious step of combining the two they get to patent it and have a monopoly on it for the next two decades.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    I suppose it is a bit like wondering how Boeing got to own using the moon's gravity for orbital maneuvers. - http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boeing_Patent_Shuts_Down_AMC_14_Lunar_Flyby_Salvage_Attempt_999.html http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boeing_Patent_Shuts_Down... I should stop looking for signs of any kind of sanity in the decision making processes of faceless bureaucracies, as it is entirely pointless and only causes me stress.
thewileyone 14y ago
I think Android should implement a clock-wise single finger "circle around an object" to zoom and counter-clock-wise to unzoom. Just like the "undo" option in Paper. That's pretty cool.
- hfsktr 14y ago
  Strangely when someone asked how else zooming could be done the first thing I thought of was a circle clockwise and anti clockwise.
  - cloverich 14y ago
    Follow to the logical conclusion. Did you think of it quickly? Then someone patented it. You know, so you don't go and "steal" their "innovation".
mtgx 14y ago
This is what I've been thinking from the moment Apple started going after Android manufacturers with patents like these, and it's why the patent system is so very flawed, because it doesn't account for how competition actually works in a market. Let's say you have one company "create" a new product category - a new type of product. So they are the first ones doing that, but this is usually done through some combination and improvement of old things. But then you have to get other companies to do the same or very similar, because that's how competition works, and that's exactly what competition is. Making 90% of the same product - so to be in the same product category - but having that 10% as a competitive advantage over the others in that specific market. Competition is not overhauling the product 90%. That's just not how it works, and you don't have to take my word for it. Just look around you at any product category you want. They are all 90% similar and 10% different, not just in how they look, but how they function. The only major "overhaul" happens once a decade or so when that specific market gets disrupted, but then that new market is populated by competitors doing the same, too, and the cycle repeats itself. If you wouldn't have that, you'd have exactly what the article is saying - random "innovations" just for the sake of being different so you don't get sued, less competition from the point of view of the users, because the vast majority of them will prefer a certain way of doing things, and since only one company can own that, it means monopolies will be much easier to form - and it will also be much harder for new entrants.
brudgers 14y ago
The analogy with cars is misleading. Patents (unlike copyright) offer protection for a fairly limited duration. The steering wheel and other standard controls would long since have been unprotected. Likewise, our children will be free to incorporate pinch to zoom in a few years...if of course patent protection doesn't lead to innovating a prefered alternative. On the one hand I think IP laws have significant problems, but on the other, Android's interface shows little evidence of a meaningful effort at innovation and even less effort to respect the IP of others in the industry.
- dasil003 14y ago
  The timespan is utterly ridiculous though. With the modern pace of innovation in mobile and software development, a 20-year patent term would be like if the steering wheel patent were valid for 200 years.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    To push the analogy further... In the first 30 years of the automobile, tiller, steering wheel, or pedals were largely irrelevant. Until the proliferation of better roads, none of that mattered. Likewise, what is holding back mobile computing is bandwidth infrastructure and device power efficiency, not interface design features. If you think that the pace of change is so radically different, consider that in the twenty years following patent 37435 the world got aircraft, motion pictures and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. The iPhone of Automobiles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent_Motorwagen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent_Motorwagen
- colinshark 14y ago
  Why is it misleading? Patents on basic interfaces of early cars still would have fragmented the industry. Furthermore, the temporary period of 20 years is an eternity in the tech world. In my opinion, a 20 year tech patent is roughly as bad as a 100 year automotive patent.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    It is misleading because the counterfactual premise is that patents are of great duration, i.e. that Honda would be bound by patents covering steering wheels or brake pedals. However, the premise of the article's argument is that items such as steering wheels for automobiles are unpatentable or are not commonly patentable. Here are 2300+ patents with "steering wheel" in the title: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=steering+wheel&FIELD1=TI&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PALL http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
nachteilig 14y ago
Please stop blaming Apple and start blaming the patent system itself. Samsung would have done the exact same thing if they had those patents or came out with iPhone first.
- Blara 14y ago
  And you know this for a fact how?
  - nachteilig 14y ago
    Because almost all companies (and people) inherently behave in a way that is in their own best interests. Owning critical smartphone patents is clearly in the interest of people in the smartphone business.
- gridaphobe 14y ago
  Apple and the patent system are equally at fault in my opinion. The patent system for creating the circumstances that allowed this lawsuit and others, and Apple (and Samsung, Motorola, etc.) for filing the actual patents and lawsuits. Tech companies have free will, they could have chosen to fight software patents from the start.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Blame is not zero sum, we can do both.
netcan 14y ago
IP laws have to do an impossible task. They need to separate innovation into two piles based on whether an innovation would have/could have happened without that party and (though this seems to be easy to forget). That's what these laws are supposed to be doing. The problem is that this is a job that legal systems (laws, lawmaker, courts, etc) are not well suited for. Even if you leave aside problems like big patentholders in existing industries & companies out-lobbying potential future beneficiaries of reduced patent protection (future businesses & consumers) it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively. Laws that will do the job effectively for generations are virtually impossible. I think that Apple did do something with iphones that may not have happened without them. That said, I don't think that any of these specific patents capture that.
- 001sky 14y ago
  RE: it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively - Playing devil's advocate, doesn't law ultimately assign this task to humans? ie, the patent office? And reviewers? - Clearly, the reviewers are outgunned. Both intellectually, and tactically. For example, the trend of making overly broad claims. This can effectively mask the prior art. It makes a "needle in a haystack" problem for the reviewer. By generalizing the case, when the prior art is specific examples.
  - netcan 14y ago
    I think the task has to be shared which is how it is set up to work. Patent office employees & judges are people. But, laws don't just lay out their goal and let people get to work. They break it down into much smaller judgments. Things like novelty, non-obviousness, subject matter & applicability. "Would have probably been invented regardless of patent law" is to vague to be a law and too difficult to ask bureaucrats to ascertain.
    - 001sky 14y ago
      Ideas of "principle" vs "rules" based decisionmaking have a long history of debate. As you note, writing perfect rules to cover all scenarios ex-ante is nearly impossible. That leaves us the task to debate virtue of new and existing principles, and find a way to incorporate discretion and expertise. The issue is making sure that discretion doe not get manipulated/gamed as well. How do we do that? Society today is very much every man/special interest for himself.
philbarr 14y ago
Personally I think pinch-to-zoom doesn't work very well anyway. It always seems to zoom in too quickly or too slowly; the amount of zoom seems arbitrary. What I've always wanted was to be able to put two fingers to mark the top left and bottom right of a bounding box which would mark how much to zoom in and hold for, say, half a second. To zoom out use two fingers to mark the top right and bottom left of the bounding box you want the current screen to zoom out to (again hold for half a second). This would be much more accurate. The time delay is to allow for mis-taps and to give the user time to get the bounding box the right size. A variation would be similar but would be something like: - hold two fingers on the screen until you get a bounding box like above. - move the bounding box to the correct size. - let go and the zoom happens. With this method you could cancel the zoom action by collapsing the bounding box on itself vertically or horizontally.
- sp332 14y ago
  Interesting, how would you differentiate between zooming in and zooming out though?
  - philbarr 14y ago
    Zooming in is with fingers at top left and bottom right, zooming out is with fingers at top right and bottom left.
- brfox 14y ago
  Those are probably patented, also.
CulturalNgineer 14y ago
Patents are important protections designed to protect the hard work of individuals from the onslaught of more powerful forces... I've got one myself (a utility patent) THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE! This is more akin to privatizing the alphabet... Not exactly a great way to stimulate civilization's advance.
brandoncapecci 14y ago
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas..." - Steve Jobs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." - Steve Jobs
jjara 14y ago
Samsung can: 1. Negotiate a license with Apple to use patented gestures. => Reduces profit margins on Samsung phones. Bad news. 2. Invent/use other gestures. => Forces users to learn new gestures. Should be fine. 3. Challenge the patent system claiming User Interface patents should not be. => Re-initiates the debate on the use of patents to protect inventions/stop innovation, in particular when it comes to UIs. The real question. Let's refocus. This question requires a deeper analysis than a simple analogy with car manufacturers, but fortunately does not require hackers to turn IP experts.
wtvanhest 14y ago
(This comes from an S2 user with Pinch-To-Zoom.) First, Pinch-To-Zoom is the best idea anyone has come up with yet, but it certainly won't be the last. If anything, this decision forces Google/Samsung etc. to innovate a better solution. If you don’t think one exists, I think you are sorely mistaken. Pinch-To-Zoom needs to be used by 2 hands (one to pinch, one to hold the phone) which inherently is annoying. If the patents are trivial, obvious, etc. other companies will find workarounds and some of those workarounds will be better than what is currently available. In 12 months, this lawsuit will be meaningless because technology will keep advancing forward.
ajaimk 14y ago
Not much worse than Amazon's Monopoly on 1 click ordering.
jawr 14y ago
What I don't understand, is how Apple market these gestures as being very "human". If they are so natural, how can they be patented?
- Tycho 14y ago
  Because the method of translating the gesture into digital signals is ingenious - like how the Kinnect and Wii capture natural gestures and movements (note how they were able to innovate round each others patents).
emehrkay 14y ago
I asked in another thread, but the first few versions of android didn't have these features, what changed?
glenntzke 14y ago
Does this mean Metro apps need new guidelines? Here is the documentation for optical zooming in Metro: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465307.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46530...
saturdaysaint 14y ago
I think it's instructive to look away from the world of operating systems, which have been under legal threat since the 80's and thus have always been under an anti-competitive, anti-innovative shadow. The fact that so few companies tried what Apple did with UI speaks as much to the intimidation inherent in the industry than to Steve Job's genius. Whenever I ask myself if patents are necessary to promote innovation, I think of music software, where copying is a fact of life yet highly original ideas emerge year after year. Whenever something useful emerges (like Ableton Live's once innovative "session view" where you launch repeating music clips) it's usually copied by half the industry within a few versions and nobody even blinks. In the mean time, the biggest incumbents (Avid's Pro Tools, Steinberg's Cubase) have remained seemingly profitable businesses, and consumers have benefited from abundant choice. The competition has also encouraged the software makers to add a lot of value in the form of lots of included content (soft synths, effects, loops, etc.). And funny enough, the more innovative companies (Ableton, Propellerhead, Cycling 74 spring to mind) keep coming up with interesting ideas.
deleted 14y ago
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ryanwanger 14y ago
It blew my mind when I learned about d-pad patents for video game consoles. Ever wonder why Playstation had to use that awkward combination of 4 arrow-like things pointing towards each other? Patents.
anandpdoshi 14y ago
Has anyone used Aldiko ebook reader on android? It uses the right edge of the mobile's screen to change its brightness. With your thumb, trace the right edge towards the top and brightness increases, down and it decreases. I wonder if something similar could be used for zooming. You don't need two fingers to zoom!
dharmarth 14y ago
US patent business is really sad. Looks patents are given without doing enough investigation. I remember turmeric and neem get patented by some university of US, where India is using these herb from ancient time. Is it really given to protect someone's innovation?
sbuk 14y ago
I don't think we need anymore of these threads. It's getting repetitive. There are too many emotional individuals on all sides of the fence that are adding nothing of value to the debate. If you want to flame that's fine, go do it on Reddit or try the Ars Technia battlefront forum.
cin_ 14y ago
Great artists steal... good artists get caught?
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
Another article that doesn't get patents right. "Apple did first in iOS now only iOS can use them" No, everyone can use, as long as they pay Apple whatever they ask for the royalties, or get sued by ridiculously sums of money. The monopoly is not on the invention - the monopoly is on the legal right to ask any value from, or sue, whoever implements similar idea. That is what's f* up about patents, because otherwise, it would be a great idea since you can build upon other's inventions and the inventor still gets financial return for R&D.

220 points by bookwormAT 14y ago

I think pinch to zoom is pretty innovative and someone should get credit for coming up with that idea. Without it, I bet we'd see the classic magnifying glass in the bottom corner of every screen to zoom. Simple does not mean obvious. UX designers need to protect their work and creativity.

andybak 14y ago
Credit - yes. A pat on the back and maybe a nice statue somewhere. A 25 year monopoly with legally-enforceable rent? No.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  You can't recoup millions in R&D investments with a pat on the back. The system is designed to encourage investment and risk taking to create something with the reward of profit.
earnubs 14y ago
If you're the UX designer who came up with the human hand, by all means, patent away.
ghost91 14y ago
But pinch to zoom is not invented by Apple. Microsoft Surface implemented it before, also it was shown in some scifi movies way before then.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  That's true. Can't someone successfully contest it, then?
  - intended 14y ago
    Iirc the groklaw point was that 1) Yes there is prior art but Samsung lost because 2) It was shown that Samsung was willfully trying to make its products similar to Apple's. There are some further murky corners to the verdict, one aspect which seems will be contested is the size of the damages. The Jury foreman stated that they valued the damages to be "more than a slap on the wrist". Whereas the instructions given clearly state that the jury is not to levy punitive damages, but to recoup losses incurred by the infringed. Edit: Going to double check just to be sure. Update: Iirc the groklaw point was that 1) Yes there is prior art but Samsung lost because 2) It was shown that Samsung was willfully trying to make its products similar to Apple's. There are some further murky corners to the verdict, one aspect which seems will be contested is the size of the damages. The Jury foreman stated that they valued the damages to be "more than a slap on the wrist". Whereas the instructions given clearly state that the jury is not to levy punitive damages, but to recoup losses incurred by the infringed. Edit: Going to double check just to be sure. Update: From the verdict: Patent invalidity, Samsung had to prove apple invalid - No, across the board for all patents brought up. Apple contested that 3 feature related patents and 4 design patents were infringed a) '381 - rubber band - valid / Samsung infringed b) ’915 - pinch to zoom or scroll - valid / Samsung infringed c) ’163 - multi-tap to zoom - valid / Samsung infringed Samsung also was found to be willfully infringing. d) '667 - iPhone front design - valid / infringed /willful e) '087 - iPhone back design - valid / infringed /willful f) '305 - iPhone home screen - valid / infringed /willful g) '889 - iPad design - no infringement Apple has only proven that the unregistered iPhone 3G trade dress is protectable. Negative on the iPhone / iPad combo and the iPad / iPad 2 trade dress This is a pretty broad sweep of the verdict, a lot of the verdict breaks down onto whether Samsung Telecom America (STA), Samsung Electronics (SEC) and Samsung Engineering America (SEA). This is further broken down over each product which is found to be infringing. Sources: http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/301948/apple-patent-breakdown-which-samsung-tech-gadgets-infringe/5 http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/301948/apple-patent-bre... http://www.bgr.in/manufacturers/samsung/samsungs-patent-trial-loss-to-apple-has-a-silver-lining-for-the-industry/ http://www.bgr.in/manufacturers/samsung/samsungs-patent-tria... yet another edit: Also to be noted is that none of Samsung's claims against Apple were found valid.
- andybak 14y ago
  I'm not clear on this and haven't got around to reading the patent to try and figure it out. This is the patent in question: http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381 http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381 This patent is more limited: http://www.google.com/patents/US7812826 http://www.google.com/patents/US7812826 as discussed here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-pat... However - it was granted after the first patent (2010 vs 2008)
  - m_eiman 14y ago
    That first one isn't related to multitouch, it's about bounce-back when scrolling with a single finger.
rocha 14y ago
The pinch gesture can be traced back to 1983: http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
danmaz74 14y ago
Designers (UX or any other kind) should protect their work and creativity with copyright, not with patents. Or should any new idea be protected with a patent? Comedians come out with new funny ideas every day, should they get patents on them?
cageface 14y ago
Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and an unprecedented leap to the top of the list of most valuable companies in the world seems like pretty good compensation already, no?
- lttlrck 14y ago
  so you mean after you reach a certain valuation all your IP should be taken away? WTF.
  - creamyhorror 14y ago
    No, he just means that Apple would have been well-rewarded by its innovation even if it hadn't been granted the patents in question, ergo, it wasn't necessary to grant the patents to encourage innovation. Patents should not be granted willy-nilly, and especially not on broad 'implementations' that essentially cover the whole concept, because then it just turns into a huge land grab. I'm already wondering if I should attempt to patent any half-cool idea I implement on my site, even though the idea of it stinks to me. With the way doubtful patents appear to be less spurious than expected, I'd be remiss not to grab my share of the land where I could. That's a crappy state of affairs, to have to attempt to patent everything that moves.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  The compensation is due to the system in place. Take that away and their ability to be compensated in the same way goes away.
fingerprinter 14y ago
I'm waiting for the producers of Minority Report (2002) to start suing everyone since that movie clearly demonstrated swipe, pinch-to-zoom and other "innovative" UI elements. </sarcasm> Nothing is ever truly innovative. Nearly everything, quite literally everything, is built on something else. Apple, at its core, is actually the BEST IN THE WORLD at not innovating, but perfecting someone else's design. And that is my problem with this whole farce. Apple isn't an innovative company, at all. Apple is, however, excellent at seeing what others are doing and out doing them at their own game. They don't 'invent', they never have. They tweak, they massage and they simplify (some could argue that this is innovative, but I'm going to use the term like it is being used in court...is they are actually inventing a concept that didn't exist before).
- kamjam 14y ago
  You know, I was just thinking the same thing about Minority Report. How does that not serve as prior art? I'm sure there are plenty of others before this as well. Someone commented on that blog about the TED talk that did a demo on "the pinch": http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    Uhh, because fictional representations of devices without sufficient information on how to actually construct them isn't prior art? I guarantee you, if you invent a matter/energy transporter you will be able to patent it despite Star Trek having put it on screen almost 50 years ago.
    - kamjam 14y ago
      Did you see the video I linked to? This was actually real and that video is dated 1 year before the iPhone was even announced, let alone released. Besides, as far as I've read (and I haven't read the details of the patents themselves) they are patenting the concept of the pinch-to-zoom, not the actual implementation, otherwise Samsung would just have a slightly different technical implementation of it right...
vibrunazo 14y ago
> UX designers need to protect their work and creativity. You're obviously not familiar with the spirit behind Intellectual Property. IP is supposed to protect consumers, not inventors. Protecting inventors is just a means to an end. When you say we should protect designers just out of protecting designers' sake. Then you're inverting the logic. We should only protect designers when doing so is in the best interest of users (meaning it will bring more innovation to the market). This is obviously not the case here. So no, designers do not need to protect their work, if that means abusing consumers.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  I suggest that you are not familiar with the spirit. It has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It has everything to do with encouraging innovation/invention that will eventually be freely available to the public. To achieve that goal, investors need time to make their R&D investment back, plus enough profit to make the venture/risk worthwhile.
hetman 14y ago
The purpose of patents is not to protect your clever ideas because you're special and you deserve it. That's what copyright is for (copyright carries certain restrictions however). Patents are in fact an exchange; something for something. Society gives you a temporary monopoly, that means society incurs a certain loss. However in exchange you reveal all your secrets about how you did it. On the balance of things both you and society are better off. This was one of the things that made guilds obsolete (which existed to protect trade secrets) and so gave us a much more open, fast paced, modern world. Now here's the problem. There is nothing secret about pinch-to-zoom! It makes sense to patent novel innovations in how a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom works. But patenting a gesture that is so obvious you don't even need a scrap of expertise in the field to see? Ridiculous. This is why a lot of people are beginning to question just what society is getting in exchange for the types of patents being issued today.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  Now here's the problem. There is nothing secret about pinch-to-zoom! It makes sense to patent novel innovations in how a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom works. But patenting a gesture that is so obvious you don't even need a scrap of expertise in the field to see? Ridiculous. You consider it obvious, the courts do not. Simple is not the same as obvious.
  - hetman 14y ago
    You're missing the point. Perhaps it was my fault for using a word that is already loaded with meaning in the context of the patent system, but it wasn't my intention for it to be used in the same way. What I was talking about has nothing to do with how original the idea might be. Let me explain. The problem with the secret guilds wasn't that they didn't create publicly available products. Of course they did. The point was that even upon seeing what they had created, the average expert would have a hard time figuring out how they did it. Patents made that knowledge available to everyone. There is no need for the disclosure of any secrets with something like pinch-to-zoom. You pinch. It zooms. Even a child can grasp that. This is why I said it might make sense to patent a specific implementation of pinch-to-zoom, but not the concept. Additionally, granting a patent here in no way even protects innovation. The patent holder would have implemented pinch-to-zoom whether they could monopolise it or not because it would sell their products. Society gains nothing it wouldn't anyway, and is forced to waste time enforcing stupid monopolies.
nathan_long 14y ago
>> someone should get credit for coming up with that idea If the execute well on that idea, they do get credit, in the form of business. If you come up with Korean tacos first, and they're good, you get lots of business. We don't have to start shutting down your competition and guaranteeing you're the only Korean taco stand in town in order for you to benefit from your work. >> UX designers need to protect their work and creativity. I don't know if you're in the U.S., but this is precisely the opposite of the rationale for intellectual property according to the US Constitution. It grants Congress power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The goal is to promote progress; exclusive rights are a sacrifice, for a limited time only, made in order to benefit the public. If the public begins to lose out because of these monopolies, the Constitution would not support their existence.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  * If the execute well on that idea, they do get credit, in the form of business. If you come up with Korean tacos first, and they're good, you get lots of business. We don't have to start shutting down your competition and guaranteeing you're the only Korean taco stand in town in order for you to benefit from your work.* Invention and innovation cost a lot of money. The taco example won't work but if you invest a ton of money to develop something, you deserve a temporary monopoly on the innovation/invention so you could get a return on your investment. If anyone would be allowed to copy you, the margins go way down and you'll never profit on the investment. The goal is to promote progress; exclusive rights are a sacrifice, for a limited time only, made in order to benefit the public. I don't see the conflict here. The public gets to enjoy your innovation/invention after a period of time which is designed to give you incentive to innovate/invent. Without that temporary monopoly, no one would invest in major R&D.
nitrogen 14y ago
Pinch to zoom is a skeuomorphic gesture, similar to stretching a slab of silly putty to enlarge a pencil drawing. There are only a few ways of manipulating the apparent size of a physical object, such as changing your view to make the object seem larger, or stretching the object itself. Any engineer translating those to multitouch would come up with similar gestures. Also, when you mention that UX designers need to "protect" their designs, it sounds like you are arguing from an artist's perspective that all creative work "deserves" some kind of legal protection. That is what copyrights are for. However, this problem must be approached from an engineering perspective, as it deals with machines that serve a purpose, and can only be implemented in a very limited set of ways.
nchlswu 14y ago
As a UX designer (in training), I disagree with your sentiment when you say "UX designers need to protect their work and creativity" when it comes to a gesture like pinch to zoom. Our work may need to be protected, but when it comes to gestures, I'd want my work to be copied and become standardized. If I had invented pinch to zoom, becoming a standard would be the ultimate validation of my work, as I'd want to improve everyone's experience. That's just my personal philosophy, however.
forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
"I think pinch to zoom is pretty innovative and someone should get credit for coming up with that idea." Pinch to zoom is there since multitouch technology in the 1980s. Once you start experimenting with multitouch, pinch to zoom is obvious in 5 min. It was very common in the industry. I was using it for transforming(amplifying an rotating) and moving vertex of an "elastic"(tesselated) vector shape in the early 2000s, late 90s, and we were not the first to do it with wacom multitouch. The same with "bouncing effect" that is just adding elasticity force to elements. The problem is that someone could take what already exist in the desktop and patent it "on a mobile device", or "in the browser" and have a monopoly for 20 years. This is as simple as the US gov selling monopolies to the highest bidder.

andybak 14y ago

Compare this with the culture prevalent in web development. People sharing every improvement or advance by blogging about it, open-sourcing code, writing tutorials etc.

buro9 14y ago
Although the age of open web dev may be passing. I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag. Only this morning did I see the job advert for Swiftype: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442562 By default I wish startups success, but I fear for the long-term implications when each piece of the puzzle (of web development) migrates towards being a business that needs to make money. And that is before you factor in patents and proprietary knowledge and how companies tend to act aggressively when their financial back is up against the wall. Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way.
- nathan_long 14y ago
  >> I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly... one-by-one become startups with a price tag I'm not worried. I develop for the web, and nearly every piece of my tech stack - language, editor, database, server, browser rendering engine - is open source. My skills are in such high demand that my team can't find people to join it. I feel zero pressure to use anything closed-source. >> Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way. I do agree with this. I think it's unwise to develop for platforms like iOS, however popular they may be. It's a form of sharecropping. Let's keep working on the web, where every computer and mobile device is on equal footing, and we don't have to rewrite our app to reach new customers.
- brown9-2 14y ago
  I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag. This has been the way of the computer industry for as long as there has been a computer industry. People attempt to commercialize and sell products. You don't really think that 2012 is the beginning of when people tried to sell a database server as a software product, do you?

no_gravity 14y ago

So far this only applies to the USA, right? Will companies ship their products with pinch-to-zoom to the rest of the world?

thomasjoulin 14y ago

Any reason/proof Pinch-To-Zoom (and the other Apple patents in the Samsung case) will not be licensed under FRAND ?

magicalist 14y ago
FRAND is not really a legal definition in the US (although that's changing somewhat as more precedent is being set). So far it's almost always been enforcement of agreements (through actual contracts and implicit licenses) due to the patent holder participating in things like standards bodies. That's why most of the major standards bodies require patent disclosure and some sort of patent license (whether it's royalty free or otherwise) in order to participate in them. In any case, I don't believe pinch to zoom is currently being standardized anywhere, so why would it be licensed under FRAND terms? I like Posner's argument where many of these types of patents, if they're going to be granted at all, should be held to essentially FRAND terms (since there aren't really any damages you can show in the case of infringement), but we'll see how that goes.
hmottestad 14y ago
Apple said that they, in the prelude to the suit, talked with Samsung about licensing their patents. So all in all I don't think apple has a monopoly since they will likely be forced to license their patents.
_djo_ 14y ago
FRAND only applies as a legal principle of the patent in question is part of an industry standard. So a Samsung patent that got incorporated into the UMTS should become a FRAND patent. The rules do vary from standards body to standards body. Google has argued that industry-common patents, not just industry-standard patents, should fall under FRAND terms as well. In other words a patent that enables multitouch gestures is so essential to modern smartphones that you can't compete without it. I'm still ambivalent on the whole patent question, though I'm intrigued by the idea of making all patents licensable under FRAND terms.
- nitrogen 14y ago

babarock 14y ago

To me the real bad news is that I'm scared shitless to develop and commercialize anything now. No invention is truely innovative, not a single product on the market today is truely original. We're all influenced by the same factors and we're all trying to push the same limits in technology. I don't have nearly the means to go to court against a company like Apple (or any company at all for that matter). If I launch my product today, I would be afraid of being successful, because I know I'll be bullied by others. And when patent lawsuits can win you a Billion dollars, patent bullies are happy and waiting for me. But yeah, I agree patents are a driving force behind innovation...

danmaz74 14y ago
I hope this madness in US patents policies gets fixed. But if it doesn't, it could be an opportunity for Europe... http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-us-software-patents-threat-or-opportunity/ http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/08/04/european-startups-and-u...
- AhtiK 14y ago
  One experiment could be excluding Texas when selling to US. That could take care of most of the patent troll court filings and move you down in their prioritized attack list. AFAIK yet IANAL, if you have no customers in Texas then a company can't bring you to Texas court. Unfortunately this does not help with more "legitimate" cases from real software companies.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    This is an interesting point; but is it feasible with web products? We would need a lawyer here... and the sad truth is that the only real winners here are lawyers.
  - josteink 14y ago
    The 1 billion dollar lawsuit was in California. Ignoring Texas wont help. Software patents is a US problem. Chances is it will be a driving force in taking innovation elsewhere.

deleted 14y ago

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danmaz74 14y ago
I looked at your link. There is no "steering wheel patent". Those are specific patents about specific innovations in the implementation of the steering wheel.
- jonathanyc 14y ago
  http://bit.ly/RWdZpd http://bit.ly/RWdZpd

badclient 14y ago

Question about patents - is the act of pinch-to-zoom patented or the implementation(the algorithms, type of hardware needed etc.) patented? If it is the act that is patented, then as others have mentioned, its not necessarily original. If the implementation is patented, could there be alternative implementations? Did Samsung even actually copy Apple's implementation(at an algorithm level)?

bluedanieru 14y ago
The first one.
taligent 14y ago
It's closer to the second one. The implementation. It's just that in some cases it can be difficult nee impossible to implement it any other way. I would recommend reading some patents. Most are far more specific than you realise.
- ajross 14y ago
  The text of the patents is specific. The fact that you see judgements like this implies that the interpretation (at least by this jury) is as broad as it seems to be. No where in that verdict do I see a narrow, careful reading of the technicalities of multitouch UIs. They got asked questions of the form "Did this device infringe?" and answered "Yup", almost without exception. Where exactly is the subtlety you're talking about?
panacea 14y ago
It's both the first and second, and neither at the same time. It's Schrödinger's Pinch. ... Making this comment pains me slightly. It's a comment I wouldn't have made on HN a year ago, pithy (I think) and slightly humorous, but I'm not bringing specific domain knowledge into the discussion to answer a question. It's the sort of comment I would have refrained from making on reddit many years ago when I first visited, when I encountered great commentary from knowledgeable participants on the topic at had, and lurked.
- 14y ago

RivieraKid 14y ago

Google should distribute two Android versions - one for the U.S. (with features like pinch-to-zoom removed) and one for the rest of the world. This would hopefully create some pressure to change the obsolete patent system.

sangaya 14y ago
I think that's the wrong approach. They should continue to distribute one Android version, and that version should retain pinch-to-zoom, while they fight the absurdity in court.
Loughla 14y ago
From what I can tell about the American consumer, that would only shift the blame for patent infringement from the company to the consumer - American's are nothing if they're not resourceful. They would buy the pinch-to-zoom enabled version from overseas. Then, it only stands to reason that in the current atmosphere of punish, punish, punish, the average consumer would be on the line for importing illegal goods or some-other-such nonsense law. That's less pressure to change the obsolete system, and more pressure to prosecute based on antiquated laws.

mikecane 14y ago

Submarine patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent Well, I guess it's better than having to deal with that.

pschlump 14y ago

I can imagine what he is saying. In a Cherokee 180 4 person airplane you do steer on the ground with your feet and control the throttle with your hand. In a Gulfstar 50 you steer on the ground with a dial for your left hand placed off on the left. You need training to use each machine. The world has not come to a screeching halt just because not all airplanes have the same controls.

mrich 14y ago
But what is your point? Is a majority of the world population going to fly one of those airplanes as part of their daily routine soon?
BitMastro 14y ago
Yet all cars steer using the steering wheel. I think it's a pity to introduce unnecessary differences just because trivial things are being patented. (trivial on my opinion, others may disagree)
hetman 14y ago
That seems like a silly argument. The amount of time a person has to invest to be trained sufficiently to fly an airplane is huge. The amount of time required to then have to pick up completely different user interfaces probably doesn't seem very large by comparison. But could you imagine having to spend large amounts of time training for every mundane interaction with technology around you? The way aeroplanes work today there probably isn't a way to make flying them intuitive to a novice, but that's not an argument to make everything else painful to pick up when it doesn't need to be.

biturd 14y ago

Question: Can I start a small dev company in some other country thereby bypassing any patent trolls? Perhaps somewhere like Sweeden where they are much more sane about these issues? If this is the case, all we are ending up doing is driving technology away from the USA, and continuing to kill our economy.

hetman 14y ago
Unfortunately you'd still have to contend with the trolls if you wanted to sell your product/service in the USA.
AhtiK 14y ago
It depends on where your customer is located. Selling to a USA customer is opening you up to the US legislation for that specific transaction. IANAL.
acdha 14y ago
If the company does any business with people in the US, patent trolls can attack it - perhaps the most famous recent example being the Uniloc vs. Mojang case: http://notch.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mojang.pdf http://notch.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mojang.pdf

ktizo 14y ago

All the cited apple patents on multitouch gestures appear to be filed since Jeff Han's TED talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ - which clearly demonstrates many of the patented techniques. I find it really hard to understand how any of these patents were awarded. [edit] Some of the quotes from his 2006 presentation are quite relevant to this... ... "Now, multi-touch sensing isn't anything- isn't completely new, I mean, people like Bill Buxton have been playing around with it in the '80s." ... ... "Now this is a photographer's light box application. Again, I can use both of my hands to kind of interact and move photos around. But, what's even cooler- (uses fingers to 'grab' two corners of one of the photos and 'pulls' it to full screen size) is that, if I have two fingers, I can actually grab a photo and then stretch it out like that really easily. I can pan, zoom, and rotate it effortlessly. (slides piles of photos around) I can do that grossly with both of my hands, (pulls photo out of stack & enlarges it) or if I can do it just with two fingers on each of my hands together. (grabs empty space around photos & zooms in and out of canvas) If I grab the canvas I can kind of do the same thing- stretch it out- I can do it simultaneously, where I'm holding this down- (holds pile of photos down while pulling out another) -and gripping on another one, stretching this out like this. Again, the interface just disappears here. There's no manual. This is exactly what you kind of expect, especially if you haven't interacted with a computer before." ... Which sort of begs the question that if an expert in the field thinks the gesture is exactly what you would expect, even if you had no expertise whatsoever, then how does that not qualify as obvious?

makomk 14y ago
Apple probably got a patent on using those gestures on a handheld device, which no-one had demonstrated before because the touchscreen technology required to achieve it wasn't available yet. Apple didn't invent that technology, any more than they invented the gestures themselves, but because they were the first ones to take the obvious step of combining the two they get to patent it and have a monopoly on it for the next two decades.
- ktizo 14y ago
  I suppose it is a bit like wondering how Boeing got to own using the moon's gravity for orbital maneuvers. - http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boeing_Patent_Shuts_Down_AMC_14_Lunar_Flyby_Salvage_Attempt_999.html http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Boeing_Patent_Shuts_Down... I should stop looking for signs of any kind of sanity in the decision making processes of faceless bureaucracies, as it is entirely pointless and only causes me stress.

thewileyone 14y ago

I think Android should implement a clock-wise single finger "circle around an object" to zoom and counter-clock-wise to unzoom. Just like the "undo" option in Paper. That's pretty cool.

hfsktr 14y ago
Strangely when someone asked how else zooming could be done the first thing I thought of was a circle clockwise and anti clockwise.
- cloverich 14y ago
  Follow to the logical conclusion. Did you think of it quickly? Then someone patented it. You know, so you don't go and "steal" their "innovation".

mtgx 14y ago

This is what I've been thinking from the moment Apple started going after Android manufacturers with patents like these, and it's why the patent system is so very flawed, because it doesn't account for how competition actually works in a market. Let's say you have one company "create" a new product category - a new type of product. So they are the first ones doing that, but this is usually done through some combination and improvement of old things. But then you have to get other companies to do the same or very similar, because that's how competition works, and that's exactly what competition is. Making 90% of the same product - so to be in the same product category - but having that 10% as a competitive advantage over the others in that specific market. Competition is not overhauling the product 90%. That's just not how it works, and you don't have to take my word for it. Just look around you at any product category you want. They are all 90% similar and 10% different, not just in how they look, but how they function. The only major "overhaul" happens once a decade or so when that specific market gets disrupted, but then that new market is populated by competitors doing the same, too, and the cycle repeats itself. If you wouldn't have that, you'd have exactly what the article is saying - random "innovations" just for the sake of being different so you don't get sued, less competition from the point of view of the users, because the vast majority of them will prefer a certain way of doing things, and since only one company can own that, it means monopolies will be much easier to form - and it will also be much harder for new entrants.

brudgers 14y ago

The analogy with cars is misleading. Patents (unlike copyright) offer protection for a fairly limited duration. The steering wheel and other standard controls would long since have been unprotected. Likewise, our children will be free to incorporate pinch to zoom in a few years...if of course patent protection doesn't lead to innovating a prefered alternative. On the one hand I think IP laws have significant problems, but on the other, Android's interface shows little evidence of a meaningful effort at innovation and even less effort to respect the IP of others in the industry.

dasil003 14y ago
The timespan is utterly ridiculous though. With the modern pace of innovation in mobile and software development, a 20-year patent term would be like if the steering wheel patent were valid for 200 years.
- brudgers 14y ago
  To push the analogy further... In the first 30 years of the automobile, tiller, steering wheel, or pedals were largely irrelevant. Until the proliferation of better roads, none of that mattered. Likewise, what is holding back mobile computing is bandwidth infrastructure and device power efficiency, not interface design features. If you think that the pace of change is so radically different, consider that in the twenty years following patent 37435 the world got aircraft, motion pictures and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. The iPhone of Automobiles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent_Motorwagen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent_Motorwagen
colinshark 14y ago
Why is it misleading? Patents on basic interfaces of early cars still would have fragmented the industry. Furthermore, the temporary period of 20 years is an eternity in the tech world. In my opinion, a 20 year tech patent is roughly as bad as a 100 year automotive patent.
- brudgers 14y ago
  It is misleading because the counterfactual premise is that patents are of great duration, i.e. that Honda would be bound by patents covering steering wheels or brake pedals. However, the premise of the article's argument is that items such as steering wheels for automobiles are unpatentable or are not commonly patentable. Here are 2300+ patents with "steering wheel" in the title: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=steering+wheel&FIELD1=TI&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PALL http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

nachteilig 14y ago

Please stop blaming Apple and start blaming the patent system itself. Samsung would have done the exact same thing if they had those patents or came out with iPhone first.

Blara 14y ago
And you know this for a fact how?
- nachteilig 14y ago
  Because almost all companies (and people) inherently behave in a way that is in their own best interests. Owning critical smartphone patents is clearly in the interest of people in the smartphone business.
gridaphobe 14y ago
Apple and the patent system are equally at fault in my opinion. The patent system for creating the circumstances that allowed this lawsuit and others, and Apple (and Samsung, Motorola, etc.) for filing the actual patents and lawsuits. Tech companies have free will, they could have chosen to fight software patents from the start.
jlgreco 14y ago
Blame is not zero sum, we can do both.

netcan 14y ago

IP laws have to do an impossible task. They need to separate innovation into two piles based on whether an innovation would have/could have happened without that party and (though this seems to be easy to forget). That's what these laws are supposed to be doing. The problem is that this is a job that legal systems (laws, lawmaker, courts, etc) are not well suited for. Even if you leave aside problems like big patentholders in existing industries & companies out-lobbying potential future beneficiaries of reduced patent protection (future businesses & consumers) it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively. Laws that will do the job effectively for generations are virtually impossible. I think that Apple did do something with iphones that may not have happened without them. That said, I don't think that any of these specific patents capture that.

001sky 14y ago
RE: it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively - Playing devil's advocate, doesn't law ultimately assign this task to humans? ie, the patent office? And reviewers? - Clearly, the reviewers are outgunned. Both intellectually, and tactically. For example, the trend of making overly broad claims. This can effectively mask the prior art. It makes a "needle in a haystack" problem for the reviewer. By generalizing the case, when the prior art is specific examples.
- netcan 14y ago
  I think the task has to be shared which is how it is set up to work. Patent office employees & judges are people. But, laws don't just lay out their goal and let people get to work. They break it down into much smaller judgments. Things like novelty, non-obviousness, subject matter & applicability. "Would have probably been invented regardless of patent law" is to vague to be a law and too difficult to ask bureaucrats to ascertain.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    Ideas of "principle" vs "rules" based decisionmaking have a long history of debate. As you note, writing perfect rules to cover all scenarios ex-ante is nearly impossible. That leaves us the task to debate virtue of new and existing principles, and find a way to incorporate discretion and expertise. The issue is making sure that discretion doe not get manipulated/gamed as well. How do we do that? Society today is very much every man/special interest for himself.

philbarr 14y ago

Personally I think pinch-to-zoom doesn't work very well anyway. It always seems to zoom in too quickly or too slowly; the amount of zoom seems arbitrary. What I've always wanted was to be able to put two fingers to mark the top left and bottom right of a bounding box which would mark how much to zoom in and hold for, say, half a second. To zoom out use two fingers to mark the top right and bottom left of the bounding box you want the current screen to zoom out to (again hold for half a second). This would be much more accurate. The time delay is to allow for mis-taps and to give the user time to get the bounding box the right size. A variation would be similar but would be something like: - hold two fingers on the screen until you get a bounding box like above. - move the bounding box to the correct size. - let go and the zoom happens. With this method you could cancel the zoom action by collapsing the bounding box on itself vertically or horizontally.

sp332 14y ago
Interesting, how would you differentiate between zooming in and zooming out though?
- philbarr 14y ago
  Zooming in is with fingers at top left and bottom right, zooming out is with fingers at top right and bottom left.
brfox 14y ago
Those are probably patented, also.

CulturalNgineer 14y ago

Patents are important protections designed to protect the hard work of individuals from the onslaught of more powerful forces... I've got one myself (a utility patent) THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE! This is more akin to privatizing the alphabet... Not exactly a great way to stimulate civilization's advance.

brandoncapecci 14y ago

"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas..." - Steve Jobs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." - Steve Jobs

jjara 14y ago

Samsung can: 1. Negotiate a license with Apple to use patented gestures. => Reduces profit margins on Samsung phones. Bad news. 2. Invent/use other gestures. => Forces users to learn new gestures. Should be fine. 3. Challenge the patent system claiming User Interface patents should not be. => Re-initiates the debate on the use of patents to protect inventions/stop innovation, in particular when it comes to UIs. The real question. Let's refocus. This question requires a deeper analysis than a simple analogy with car manufacturers, but fortunately does not require hackers to turn IP experts.

wtvanhest 14y ago

(This comes from an S2 user with Pinch-To-Zoom.) First, Pinch-To-Zoom is the best idea anyone has come up with yet, but it certainly won't be the last. If anything, this decision forces Google/Samsung etc. to innovate a better solution. If you don’t think one exists, I think you are sorely mistaken. Pinch-To-Zoom needs to be used by 2 hands (one to pinch, one to hold the phone) which inherently is annoying. If the patents are trivial, obvious, etc. other companies will find workarounds and some of those workarounds will be better than what is currently available. In 12 months, this lawsuit will be meaningless because technology will keep advancing forward.

ajaimk 14y ago

Not much worse than Amazon's Monopoly on 1 click ordering.

jawr 14y ago

What I don't understand, is how Apple market these gestures as being very "human". If they are so natural, how can they be patented?

Tycho 14y ago
Because the method of translating the gesture into digital signals is ingenious - like how the Kinnect and Wii capture natural gestures and movements (note how they were able to innovate round each others patents).

emehrkay 14y ago

I asked in another thread, but the first few versions of android didn't have these features, what changed?

glenntzke 14y ago

Does this mean Metro apps need new guidelines? Here is the documentation for optical zooming in Metro: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465307.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46530...

saturdaysaint 14y ago

I think it's instructive to look away from the world of operating systems, which have been under legal threat since the 80's and thus have always been under an anti-competitive, anti-innovative shadow. The fact that so few companies tried what Apple did with UI speaks as much to the intimidation inherent in the industry than to Steve Job's genius. Whenever I ask myself if patents are necessary to promote innovation, I think of music software, where copying is a fact of life yet highly original ideas emerge year after year. Whenever something useful emerges (like Ableton Live's once innovative "session view" where you launch repeating music clips) it's usually copied by half the industry within a few versions and nobody even blinks. In the mean time, the biggest incumbents (Avid's Pro Tools, Steinberg's Cubase) have remained seemingly profitable businesses, and consumers have benefited from abundant choice. The competition has also encouraged the software makers to add a lot of value in the form of lots of included content (soft synths, effects, loops, etc.). And funny enough, the more innovative companies (Ableton, Propellerhead, Cycling 74 spring to mind) keep coming up with interesting ideas.

deleted 14y ago

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ryanwanger 14y ago

It blew my mind when I learned about d-pad patents for video game consoles. Ever wonder why Playstation had to use that awkward combination of 4 arrow-like things pointing towards each other? Patents.

anandpdoshi 14y ago

Has anyone used Aldiko ebook reader on android? It uses the right edge of the mobile's screen to change its brightness. With your thumb, trace the right edge towards the top and brightness increases, down and it decreases. I wonder if something similar could be used for zooming. You don't need two fingers to zoom!

dharmarth 14y ago

US patent business is really sad. Looks patents are given without doing enough investigation. I remember turmeric and neem get patented by some university of US, where India is using these herb from ancient time. Is it really given to protect someone's innovation?

sbuk 14y ago

I don't think we need anymore of these threads. It's getting repetitive. There are too many emotional individuals on all sides of the fence that are adding nothing of value to the debate. If you want to flame that's fine, go do it on Reddit or try the Ars Technia battlefront forum.

cin_ 14y ago

Great artists steal... good artists get caught?

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

Another article that doesn't get patents right. "Apple did first in iOS now only iOS can use them" No, everyone can use, as long as they pay Apple whatever they ask for the royalties, or get sued by ridiculously sums of money. The monopoly is not on the invention - the monopoly is on the legal right to ask any value from, or sue, whoever implements similar idea. That is what's f* up about patents, because otherwise, it would be a great idea since you can build upon other's inventions and the inventor still gets financial return for R&D.