6 ms·

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

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...
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      You can't get utility patents for "concepts". They patented a specific way to do pinch-to-zoom on mobile devices with capacitive touch screens (and interacting with an event loop). Which is a similar, but not identical, problem to doing multitouch pinch-to-zoom on a projector-based system as in the demo.
      - kamjam 14y ago
        Which is as silly as those patents which essentially took existing ideas and added "on the web" to the end of them. Not saying you're wrong, just what everyone else has been screaming - the patent system is broken!
  - heartbreak 14y ago
    The company that designed the interface in Minority Report is OOOii. They actually did implement the user interfaces portrayed in the movie: http://www.ooo-ii.com/ http://www.ooo-ii.com/
- eddieroger 14y ago
  Beacuse Minority Report is a movie, and Prior Art tends to require an actual implementation using the same methods claimed in the patent? But if you wanted to pretend that you could claim a movie as real, the implementation is different, in that they used their fingers to frame (the "L" shape), and pinch-to-zoom uses only two fingers in no particular location, other than that they move away from each other.
  - kamjam 14y ago
    Ok, but also view th TEDtalk I linked to, it has an actual implementation and Jeff Han zooms in using 2 fingers.
psbp 14y ago
To be fair, Minority report uses a really lame one hand approaching another zoom which obviously wouldn't work for a touchscreen device.
MichaelApproved 14y ago
Nothing is ever truly innovative. Nearly everything, quite literally everything, is built on something else. Your first statement is being contradicted by your second statement which is almost the exact definition of the word innovation.

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...
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    You can't get utility patents for "concepts". They patented a specific way to do pinch-to-zoom on mobile devices with capacitive touch screens (and interacting with an event loop). Which is a similar, but not identical, problem to doing multitouch pinch-to-zoom on a projector-based system as in the demo.
    - kamjam 14y ago
      Which is as silly as those patents which essentially took existing ideas and added "on the web" to the end of them. Not saying you're wrong, just what everyone else has been screaming - the patent system is broken!
- heartbreak 14y ago
  The company that designed the interface in Minority Report is OOOii. They actually did implement the user interfaces portrayed in the movie: http://www.ooo-ii.com/ http://www.ooo-ii.com/
eddieroger 14y ago
Beacuse Minority Report is a movie, and Prior Art tends to require an actual implementation using the same methods claimed in the patent? But if you wanted to pretend that you could claim a movie as real, the implementation is different, in that they used their fingers to frame (the "L" shape), and pinch-to-zoom uses only two fingers in no particular location, other than that they move away from each other.
- kamjam 14y ago
  Ok, but also view th TEDtalk I linked to, it has an actual implementation and Jeff Han zooms in using 2 fingers.

psbp 14y ago

To be fair, Minority report uses a really lame one hand approaching another zoom which obviously wouldn't work for a touchscreen device.

MichaelApproved 14y ago

Nothing is ever truly innovative. Nearly everything, quite literally everything, is built on something else. Your first statement is being contradicted by your second statement which is almost the exact definition of the word innovation.