Multitouch Gesture Patents Could Prevent Standardization

ozmanjusri brings us a Wired report on Apple's efforts to patent the multitouch gestures used on their laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The article discusses concerns over how this could affect the standardization of certain gestures in developing multitouch technology. We've previously discussed the patent applications themselves. Quoting Wired: "If Apple's patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater. That's an outcome many in the industry would like to avoid. Synaptics, a company that by most estimates supplies 65 to 70 percent of the notebook industry with its touchpad technology, is working on its own set of universal touch gestures that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include scrolling by making a circular motion, moving pictures or documents with a flip of the finger, and zooming in or out by making, yes, a pinching gesture."

Middle Finger

I say they all deserve a middle finger gesture if they can't work out a sensible standard. Apple should especially be chastised for trying to patent this stuff. It's like patenting an 'x' for denoting closing a window.

It makes sense for competitors to collaborate on certain things to move the industry as a whole forward.

Re:Middle Finger

Immagine if someone tried to pattent the double click? That's essentially what they're doing here.

Re:Middle Finger

What they are in fact doing is patenting a new method to interact with the computer. Interaction with the computer has become increasing complex, from a several switches, to a few dozen switches on a keyboard, back to a single switch that is used with a context sensitive position data, to a small touch area that responds to patterns of pressure and motion.

Apple is patenting the method that makes the touchpad functional. In a way, they have a reason to do this as they were innovating the touchpad while everyone else was adding buttons to mice and arguing that the touch pad would never be as good as the mouse. These people lack creativity. It is easy to add buttons to a mouse, or a scroll wheel, or add USB ports to a computer, or other trivia that most firms rely on to imply innovation. But the trackpad is now a competitor to the mouse, and unless one has had issues, I see the mouse and mouselike interfaces going away on anything that is not a desktop machine.

OTOH, one reason that this patent may not cause too much trouble is that the engineering to make gestures happen may be expensive, and therefore we are much more likely to see cheap knockoffs, safe from the patents, rather than infringing duplication. For instance, MS did not go with a iPod style control on the original Zune, but the cheap click pad. Likewise, MS developed an affordable navigation pad on the new zune, rather than moving to a full touch screen model. Most manufacturers who wish to stay below the cost of the Apple product has done the same.

Re:Middle Finger

Apple did not creatively innovate multi touch gestures nor mp3 players nor phones, they marketed it into a successful high-end products for "cool" people, which is something else. Multi-touch has been pioneered since 1982 (wikipedia). This is more equal to patenting double-click or one-click ordering. It's about creating a barrier of entrance to competitors.

Call it what it is, please thank you.

What they are in fact doing is patenting a new method to interact with the computer.

No, they are not. They are patenting gestures. Don't make this more magical than is necessary.

What bothers me is that they prattle on and on about this kind of interaction being "intuitive." If the gestures are "intuitive," doesn't that by definition mean that they are already "inside" every person? That is, the gesture-as-representation-of-information, if it is "natural," is something discovered, and not invented. If this is not the case, then it's not "intuitive." So which is it?

If I develop an interface that interprets "waving goodbye" as "turn off computer," can I patent "waving goodbye?" Can I make it illegal for everyone else to use this very "intuitive" gesture?

Re:Middle Finger

There's nothing wrong with patenting a specific implementation, assuming it is a novel design. What is unfortunate about software patents is that I can't write a program to do the same thing done in a different way and avoid the patent, because software patents are on the idea. The implementation is usually described as "software means obvious to one skilled in the art".

Look back at Wang's patent on the SIMM. It only covered 9-bit parity modules. 36-bit SIMMS did not violate the patent. Hardware patents are forced to describe an implementation.

Universal?

If there's a company that stands to lose from having a non-standard input scheme, it's definitely not the one that has >90% of the desktop market. I mean, if you not only have to learn a new OS, new shortcuts, in some cases new applications, and now a new input scheme, it seems that Apple would be erecting a new barrier to Mac adoption, not encouraging Mac adoption. If Microsoft implements gestures of its own (like what it has said it'll do in Windows 7), I'd bet those are more likely to become the standard than Apple's gestures.

Re:Universal?

On the other hand, Apple has the momentum. They've been shipping products with multi-touch features for almost a year now. The most Microsoft has done is demo something that they haven't even begun to sell yet. They're playing catchup just like the Zune is doing.

Re:Universal?

vista sp1 breaks programs left and right even when they are actually compatible.

If you look at the list from the article yesterday, it was a very small number of programs. A dozen or so? And all the companies had been notified in advance. And as I said yesterday, it's been long over due that Microsoft stopped hard coding little fixes and work arounds for improperly coded 1st and 3rd party software.

Sad that you need to expend so much effort just to make products NOT work.

I'm not talking about DRM or file formats, but I will say Microsoft has taken efforts over the years to ensure their products as well as others do work, take a look at the Win2k source code overview [kuro5hin.org], granted that is Win2k but I don't think the development environment really would of changed all that drastically from then to now.

standards which do not make sense

> that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include: scrolling by making a circular motion and move the finger up and down to turn the picture? Come on!

Pinch was in the original multitouch demo.

The original multitouch demo used pinch to zoom in and out on images and on the workspace. How can Apple patent it after that?

I'm Crushing Your Patent!

I think "Kids In The Hall" have prior art here.

up to their old tricks again

In the 1980's, Apple tried to claim ownership of all modern GUIs; they lost on a technicality.

Multitouch as an input method goes back a long time; it wasn't put to much use because the hardware was expensive and GUI library developers were still coping with bigger issues.

Apple shouldn't be allowed to monopolize multi-touch, in any shape or form: not only would it be bad public policy, Apple simply didn't invent this stuff. Pretty much the only patents that should be valid in this space in 2008 are patents on better multi-touch hardware and low-level firmware.

Re:up to their old tricks again

That's not even remotely true. Apple invested well over $60 million (in early 80s dollars) into developing the Lisa desktop interface, along with the followup Mac desktop in parallel between the late 70s and 1984. By the time the Mac arrived, Apple had been showing the tech off for 2-3 years, so rivals began copying a lot of the same ideas. Apple didn't sue any of those rivals apart from two that were transferring a copy of Apple's tech directly to IBM's PC.

Apple didn't sue Atari's TOS, the Commodore Amiga, Berkeley System's GEOS, DRI's GEM/1, Acorn Archimedes or any of the other graphical desktops. It only sued Microsoft and HP, which was selling an add-on for Windows that made it more Mac-like. [1]

The reason Apple sued Microsoft to stop it was because Apple had entered an development contract with MS in 1982, giving MS early access to Mac technology. MS agreed not to release a competing product for IBM's PC until the Mac was delivered, but found a technicality that enabled it to announce Windows 1.0 in 1983. Even though Windows 1.0 was unusable garbage, it cloned enough of the Mac ideas to create a product concept that could make the PC look useful, and create the suggestion that Windows would deliver something similar to the Mac. It didn't even come close until 1995, more than a decade later. Windows was a vaporware distraction based entirely upon theft of ideas Apple released to Microsoft as a trusted partner.

Interestingly, Wikipedia presents this as a revised history where Microsoft invented Windows 1.0 first and suggests Apple copied it for the Mac. Windows Enthusiasts like Rob Enderle have also stated that Microsoft developed the Mac OS for Apple, despite the fact that at the time, Apple was already a huge company turning out blockbuster products and engaging in major R&D, while Microsoft was still a contract developer that simply relicensed Unix and DOS adding very little value, and didn't really develop any of its own original products for another ten years. Microsoft didn't even invent Excel, it only cloned the existing VisiCalc inside Apple's Mac GUI. It bought Word directly from Xerox. That's why those of use who were paying attention find it hard to swallow the idea the Microsoft has some significant history in the original development of the GUI. It did not.

Even MS knew that it infringed enough upon Apple's technology that it could not sell Windows 1.0. Despite showing off an early preview in 1983, MS didn't sell Windows 1.0 until 1985, partly because it had to keep working on it, and partly because it had to force Apple into licensing its Mac technology first. MS used the threat of porting Mac Excel to the PC as leverage to obtain a license from John Sculley's Apple for Mac interface ideas that were unique to Apple (as opposed to GUI ideas that had originated at Xerox PARC or other places). MS then used that 1985 license to copy even more of the Mac UI for Windows 2.0, which served almost entirely as a vehicle for porting Mac Excel to the PC.

No PC makers preinstalled Windows on their machines until Windows 3.0 in 1990. Apple's 1986 suit against MS was limited to copyright ideas about the user interface, because at the time, there was no established concept of software patents. Recall that Bill Gates was also warning the world that software patents would be a bad idea and stifle competition. He believed that at the time (1990) because he wanted full access to Apple's technology without paying for it. After MS began patenting its own software ideas, the company changed its tune. It now threatens to sue open source using its patent pool.

In a world where everyone patents every idea they think might ever have any value, and where companies are all sued by small inventors who have patented ideas that may seem obvious but end up getting millions awarded in claims from the court, the idea of patenting every line of research isn't evil, but necessary.

Open Source developers are at the mercy of lots of patent nonsense, so they critically need to cont

How about customizability?

It probably wouldn't kill device manufacturers to make the gestures on their devices customizable. That way, if you are used to the Apple gestures, you can use them; otherwise, you can use the defaults or whatever else you prefer. That would make Apple's patents irrelevant, as well as leave Apple at a disadvantage with its One UI to Rule Them All philosophy.

Hitchhiking Gesture Patent

Hitchhiking Gesture Patent
The thumb is positioned in an erect manner with the rest of the fingers clenched into a fist. Optionally the forearm can be successively pivoted at the elbow joint.

If any of you want to go hitchhiking you will have to invent gestures of your own that do not violate my patent. Perhaps you could do a sort of Egyptian walk to attract attention instead, although it is possible that the Bangles have a patent on that particular gesture. I will of course licence you to use my hitchhiking gesture at a fee that renders the whole purpose of hitchhiking completely pointless :)

Defensive use?

I am surprised nobody mentioned that those other companies (RIM, Nokia and Synaptics) also hold spurious patents that could block iPhones? It seems Apple is just joining the fray by carving its own territory. Hateful but oh so typical of the industry.

In a sense, the industry uses patent minefield in the same way that France used the Maginot line. When someone blitzkriegs around it with a paradigm shift, everyone is in a hurry to dig new trenches and claim new territories.

Bound to happen anyway

What company, in their right mind, wouldn't patent multitouch gestures and protect themselves? I'd much rather see a company patent this and actually use the technology than a troll come along and assert their litigation power on every company who adopts a defacto standard.

Already obsolescent?

In a world in which digital cameras have face and smile recognition (perhaps the most pointless development of neural network technology anywhere?) how long before the touchpad is replaced by a little short focus digital camera that detects the fingers? In which case, rather than multitouch, you could have three dimensional object recognition and a hugely expanded gesture set.

This is one case where an industry standard is the only thing that makes sense. Make the gesture set standard and allow people to patent specific implementations (physical not software) which offer new features.

Unfortunately, in my experience it's the marketing and sales departments who, because of their competitive mindset, don't understand the benefits of collaboration in growing the overall market. When they do turn up at standards meetings as observers, the results are sometimes laughable but usually cringeworthy for the engineers from their companies. Microsoft XML is a case in point. I confidently expect these people to continue to act as a brake on the wheels of input mechanism progress.

OOOOOOOOR

Apple could just simply license it, which they have for most of their technology anyway... Do people really realize how much of the computing world relys on Apple patents? Your PC sitting under your desk running XP likely has at least 3-4 parts that are LICENSED from Apple.

Just because something is patented doesnt mean people cant use it, and companies wont license it.

How dare you

dictate how I can use my hands!

Re:MOD PARENT UP

because he posted the nimp link then posted the warning to kharma whore, presumably in order to get the +1 posting bonus to troll later, look at his post history SirBudgington [slashdot.org]

Re:It will pass.

Why do you believe all devices have and/or will have keyboards now and/or in the future?

Because with the exception of phones and other "toy" devices most people need keyboards to get work done. I have never used a touch screen that I can type as fast and as accurate as I can on a keyboard. Also, most people know how to type on keyboards and the keyboard has been used ever since the typewriter. I don't see the keyboard going away anytime soon for any serious device.

Re:It will pass.

After just taking a tour of a major college campus my bet is that the small and/or cheap laptop is going to be the new standard.This was a very affluent campus,and the students could afford any mobile device they wanted.The ones on the cells,with the exception of those blasting off a quick text,were simply using them to chat with their friends.But everywhere I looked I saw the small Apple laptops and the Asus EEE laptops.I mean EVERYWHERE,the grounds,break rooms,student centers,all over the place.I figured the Apple would be popular,but I saw nearly as many of the Asus.I even asked a girl in the break room what made her get one."It is just too easy to use,and I don't have to freak if I scratch it like I always did when I took my macbook out".And if that girl from OLPC comes up with an under $200 laptop,give it up.

The reason I believe that laptops haven't become as popular as they could is the price.Just like that girl with her macbook folks are scared of breaking their expensive laptops.But a cheap,easy to use,and lightweight laptop that you can just chunk in your bag without freaking if it gets scratched? That thing will take off,as we have seen somewhat with the Asus,and will will definitely see if they come out with an under $200 laptop.And like the above poster said,folks can just work faster with a keyboard.They have used them all their lives,they know the shortcuts they use the most,and are generally happy with them.While I can see gestures becoming popular on things like mp3 players and cell phones,I think ultra cheap,ultra portable laptops will become the "must have" of the next 5-10 years.As always my 02c,YMMV.

Re:This is good...

The Apple patents are good for business and the rest of the computing arena, as they will spur creativity and growth as a work around to the patent issues, assuming no one wants to license the patents.

Your claim that the Apple patents (and patents like them) are a good thing is, unsurprisingly, unsupported by the evidence.

http://researchoninnovation.org/ [researchoninnovation.org]

I am really struck by the number of /.ers who fall for naive patent system mythology, though I don't blame them for it. However, to any /.er reading this who is pro-free market but who has listened to some of the woo churned out by the pro-software patent cranks and been made to feel uneasy about taking an anti-software patent stance, I say this: do a little nerdish studying of the subject (patent system economics), "dismal science" though it may be, and you'll come to realise you could've trusted your instincts about software patents in the first place. You won't feel you have to be an apologist for crap patents like these Apple ones anymore, you'll have facts and economic science to back you up, and you'll feel a lot better - I know I did.