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“All the cited apple patents on multitouch gestures appear to be filed since Jeff Han's TED talk” FingerWorks, a pioneer in multitouch gestures, filed for (and

• ktizo 14y ago
  Just had a look at their patents, and found this line in their gesture patent - Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions - http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=9&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Fingerworks.AS.&OS=AN/Fingerworks&RS=AN/Fingerworks http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se... How is the use of intuitive gestures not obvious, entirely by definition?
  • kamaal 14y ago
    Don't finger print readers violate this patent? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
  • statictype 14y ago
    I believe the patent is for a specific implementation of identifying those intuitive gestures and generating corresponding user interface commands. That's what follows in the description of the algorithm and circuitry.
    • ktizo 14y ago
      It isn't. Which is why it has this line in it - [0046] It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed.
      • roc 14y ago
        The only things that matter with regards to patents, are the claims. That line, and the general and detailed descriptions can be ignored entirely.
        • learc83 14y ago
          The claims for the pinch-to-zoom patent are broad enough to cover pinch to zoom on any touchscreen.
          • roc 14y ago
            The claims as-filed, sure. But the USPTO doesn't generally update the published application to match the current document (including changed and struck claims) during the process. So it's entirely possible that wording didn't survive. In any event, it's hardly fair to judge a system based on the snapshot of a submission from before it had even gone through that system yet.
            • learc83 14y ago
              You can easily read all of that in the public PAIR database, it's not hard to find. Btw the wording did indeed survive, the patent as it stands is sufficiently broad to cover all pinch-to-zoom implementations on any kind of touchscreen.
  • travisp 14y ago
    When looking at patents you need to go beyond the title and read the full patent. It rarely broadly covers the title description.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • TylerE 14y ago
    Many patents are "obvious" - after the fact.
    • talmand 14y ago
      Many patents are "obvious" before the fact, thus prior art.
      • lttlrck 14y ago
        Show us a patent that is not obvious.
        • talmand 14y ago
          You're kidding right? Sure, I'll dig through the patent lists for a few hours digging up the hundreds of examples of patents that were creative new ideas for their time. Very little of them will be software patents. But this isn't a discussion about patents like that. This is a discussion about patents being granted for ideas that are simply innovations and/or copies of pre-existing ideas. That's completely different. Not every patent is of equal creativity, importance, and value.
      • TheGateKeeper 14y ago
        Being obvious doesn't make it prior art alone. If that were the case, Shazam would owe me millions.
        • talmand 14y ago
          I'm saying the patent was obvious before the fact because of prior art. Just because someone was the first to patent something doesn't mean that they can claim it was not obvious before their patent was issued. If you had prior art that invalidates a patent it doesn't necessarily mean the owner of the patent owes you money.
  • endeavor 14y ago
    I think the important point is that "obvious" has a very precise meaning for patents, and it's not what you think it means. . There was a great IAmA on reddit with a patent examiner that's worth reading: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ww982/iama_patent_examiner_i_want_to_answer_questions/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ww982/iama_patent_e...
    • creamyhorror 14y ago
      This needs many upvotes. That IAmA is rather worth reading, with the in-depth responses of the two patent examiners to questions. For example, I think most people here wouldn't know that the "obviousness" of a idea is determined by whether previous patents or prior art can be combined to produce that idea (and not by whether a professional in the field would judge it to be obvious, or any other standard). Furthermore, prior art can include products/art from anywhere in the world, patented or not. Some great questions and comments there too. I like the one by futurespacetraveler, apparently also of HN, who said this: --- The price we pay to incentivize an inventor to disclose their invention is with decades of protection from competition. For a utility patent, that's 20 years from the date of the patent grant. And we always pay the same price, regardless of the underlying value of the invention to our society. So whether you invent a new method of swinging in a swing or a new drug to fight cancer, we pay the same price to know how it works. And I think that's one of the key perspectives that often gets overlooked. We are paying for knowledge. The inventor is supposed to have figured something out that even skilled practitioners in the art hadn't thought of. We are paying for the secret sauce, so to speak. I think sofware "inventions", for many of us skilled in the art, seem so obviously non-insightful that we can't believe society has paid for such "knowledge" with a patent. Many of us realize that we don't even need to read most software patents to learn how to do what it explains. We're paying for "I was here first", rather than "I finally solved the problem no one else could". Yet we pay the same price regardless. That's why the Defend Innovation site wants to limit software patent terms to 5 years. Patent protection should be proportional to the value of the invention. But I believe that should be true for any invention.
      • CamperBob2 14y ago
  • coliveira 14y ago
    There is a big difference between dreaming about something and actually doing it. For example, everyone knew what a flying machine was, centuries before it was invented. Clearly this doesn't mean that creating that machine was actually obvious. With computing it is similar, there are lots of "inventions" dreamed about by science fiction writers that are simply not possible today. When such innovations become possible, they will need to be protected.
    • mcantelon 14y ago
      >When such innovations become possible, they will need to be protected. The underlying implementation details should be protected, sure, but not the idea itself. Just because you're the first to successfully make a flying machine doesn't mean someone competing with you, implementing it in a different underlying way, shouldn't be able to make a flying machine.
    • malandrew 14y ago
      Under that argument shouldn't the patents apply to the capacitive touch surfaces and not the gestures? "Method for transportation by flying vehicle" is very different from "Construction method of flux capacitor that provides enough energy to power flying vehicles". The first is obvious and there is prior art even if people could not build it. The concepts of pinch-to-zoom or slide-to-unlock are obvious to even people without Phds in touch surface technologies. Anything intuitive by definition should not be patentable.
    • jxcole 14y ago
      And yet the wright brothers were not granted a patent on "things that fly". They were granted patents on some specific machines they invented that could fly. But the patents were about the mechanical machines themselves. If someone else had come along and invented a totally different means of flying (like a helicopter) they would not have been infringing on their patents. This is a patent on "things that fly".
      • gnaffle 14y ago
        Apples patents are clearly not patents on "smartphones with a rectangular touchscreen and no external UI buttons", but they cover many inventions that make such a phone usable. Likewise, apart from a totally different kind of flying machine like a helicopter, there probably isn't any better method of controlling an airplane than the method covered by Wrights patents (since it specifically does not exclude non-wing warping control designs), which is why the basic mode of control is still in use today. So Wrights patents at the time might as well be called a patents on "things that fly". It was very difficult to make a controllable plane without violating the patent. Likewise, unless you equip a phone with dedicated zoom controls, there probably isn't a better or more intuitive way of zooming than using pinch-to-zoom or double tapping.
  • lttlrck 14y ago
    If "intuitive" is so damn easy why are so many gadgets and appliances so hard to use?
    • evincarofautumn 14y ago
      It’s easy to use a good UI—not to create one.
    • cloverich 14y ago
      Perhaps partially because you can patent intuitive.
• dj2stein9 14y ago
  Software patents like this should never be granted. Any kind of gesture we naturally do in the real world quite obviously can be rendered in software. There's nothing "invented" here. Microsoft was similarly granted a patent for grasping an object in 3d. If every possible human action can be granted a software patent, then computing in the future is going to become awfully ridiculous.
• roc 14y ago
  Beyond that, we need to consider priority dates when determining when something was 'invented' when it comes to prior art. Note the application referenced downthread (20060238520) is a continuation of a 2004 filing, itself a continuation of a 2001 filing, itself a divisional of a 1999 filing which claimed priority based on a provisional 1998 filing. [1] So to challenge that application, you'd need to find art circa at least 1998. And even then you have to consider the USPTO's (now legacy) practice of recognizing date of invention, rather than filing. Which means you may have to find art even older than 1998, to get that bit invalidated. [1] Patent applications are rarely straightforward affairs. The process of mapping what we colloquially think of as "an invention" (awesome new widget) to patent applications often entails the creation of a family of patent applications. It gets very messy, very quickly.
  • 001sky 14y ago
    So this expires 1998+20=2018?
    • Retric 14y ago
      No, it expires based on when it was granted not the priority date. However, different parts of the same patent can have different priority dates if they where not in the initial filing. So, some prior art after 1998 may still be relevant.
      • astrodust 14y ago
        This is why a lot of patent trolls would drag their feet as long as possible in the hopes that someone would actually research, prototype and bring to market what they've "invented". These so-called submarine patents then surface to sink the company who's done all the work. It's my understanding that the USPTO is trying to limit the ability of companies to do this though.
      • 001sky 14y ago
        ^ Wayne Westerman, 1999. Hand Tracking, Finger Identification, and Chordic Manipulation on a Multi-Touch Surface http://www.ece.udel.edu/~westerma/main.pdf http://www.ece.udel.edu/~westerma/main.pdf Edit: Ref, note [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
• gdubs 14y ago
  I was curious about the difference between Han's technology, and the iPhone's. In Han's words, his device is pressure based: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZv1nBM8zsI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZv1nBM8zsI (he also believes that the scale of the devices puts them into completely different categories.) I read up a little on the differences between pressure and capacitive devices, and one that stands out is that capacitive surfaces can emit more light, because less layers are required beneath the glass. (Edit: I meant to post this as a reply to the grandparent comment, not the parent post about FingerWorks. Whoops.)
  • ktizo 14y ago
    Hans device is light based and makes use of frustrated total internal reflection of infra-red light being shone into the edge of the touch surface that is then picked up by an infra-red camera that is sitting next to a projector underneath the table.