Multitouch Gesture Patents Could Prevent Standardization 210
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."
Re:Middle Finger (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)
Feb 2006 talk. Publicly posted Aug 2006. No "Patent pending" anywhere.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:up to their old tricks again (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Call it what it is, please thank you. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, now you can't, because the idea's been published.
Re:Bound to happen anyway (Score:3, Informative)
There are three main reasons why things get patented: By inventors (individuals and companies) who try to create valuable inventions, which can then be sold to someone who is interested in it. By companies, who collect patents as a defence against other companies (if company A ever sues company B for patent infringement, then B examines their patent portfolio for infringements of A, and they are bound to find something), and the third category is patent trolls; companies who never produce anything of any use to anyone, but get patents with the sole purpose of blackmailing others.
What Apple is trying to patent here is mostly intended for use by Apple, and that by definition means Apple is not a patent troll. What a patent troll would try to do is look at these gestures, describe the whole thing in the most impenetrable way possible so that no patent examiner figures out that it describes what an iPhone already does, get a patent, and sue Apple.
Re:up to their old tricks again (Score:3, Informative)
That's because Apple was utterly defeated during the first couple of lawsuits.
Wrong: Apple didn't lose its case until 1992 and appealed for another ruling in 1994. By that time, all of the other small GUIs had been trampled by Microsoft's PC. You have things backwards. The Atari ST, Amiga, C64 GEOS and GEM all existed during the 80s and sold against the Mac. Windows never sold in any volume throughout the 80s. Apple sued Microsoft to stop it from porting its own technology to the IBM PC, as IBM was Apple's primary hardware threat in the 80s.
I was there at the time. I programmed in Smalltalk, Cedar, the Lisa, and the original Mac, and I followed the lawsuits closely. The Mac was an imitation of the Xerox technologies, and not even a very good one.
Wrong again: Xerox attempted to sell its own GUI hardware and later desktop software and failed miserably. The Mac team introduced a number of clear advances well beyond what had been accomplished at Xerox. While the Mac was a far lower priced product (roughly 2% the price of a Xerox Star), and didn't deliver anything like a Smalltalk environment, it was far ahead in terms of GUI and human user interface design. That's why cloners copied the Mac instead of the Star.
Well, duh! That's because Apple bought the company producing the multitouch controllers and the company that owns the multitouch patents.
That's not accurate either. There are plenty of sources of multitouch controllers and Apple didn't buy any company with multitouch patents. Are you thinking of FingerWorks or did you just invent that factoid? Because Apple didn't buy Fingerworks, it hired its employees. That's because Fingerworks was being sued by patent trolls itself, and Apple didn't want to inherit a patent troll lawsuit. You are completely wrong in everything you said.
First, you say that Apple is using patents to prevent Chinese cloners, then you say that cloning is too much of an investment.
Innovating is too much work for Chinese cloners. Or don't you know that either? Good job making up a bunch of bullshit to support your opinions. Do you think everything you invent is a fact?
Re:up to their old tricks again (Score:3, Informative)
No, read that again with your eyes open. Apple didn't sue any of a wide range of companies selling a Mac knock off, including Atari's ST, which was so blatantly patterned after the Mac it was called the Jackintosh after CEO Jack Tramiel. Nor did it sue Amiga or Acorn or GEOS, all of which copied the Mac desktop even closer than Windows. Apple only sued Microsoft and HP (and threatened DRI) for porting Mac technology to the IBM PC. And the only thing Apple "lost" was the fact that it had not patented Mac inventions, and since Microsoft had obtained a license to Mac technology under threat of porting Excel to the PC, the court ruled that there were only minimal things Microsoft had to change.
The rest of your stuff is just non-sensical gibberish that dashes around asserting "facts" you pulled out of your ass without any context.
We don't have $150,000 workstations networked like Xerox was selling in the early 80s.
Macs weren't priced any higher than similarly equipped PCs; its just that DOS-tards thought a stripped down box that could do 16 colors compared to a 32-bit color Mac.
Saying "the Mac team only introduced one major advance: a substantially lower price" proves you know nothing. Among other things, Apple invented Regions, which were critical to auto-updating multiple overlapping windows, something Xerox didn't ever do. Clearly, you've never used an oddball Xerox Star and are just asstalking.
You are so absolutely full of shit the world deserves an apology for your nonsense.