Apple Wins Mobile Patent On Displaying Lists, Documents 306
walterbyrd writes "Apple yesterday was granted Patent no. 8,223,134 for 'Portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying electronic lists and documents.' According to the patent's description, the technology relies upon a touch-screen display and includes both the function for displaying lists and documents, and how they look on a mobile product."
who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Funny)
It looks like Apple has controlling shares in the USPO
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
We (U.S. citizens) do, and we should be telling our congresscritters that this has to stop.
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of us do... the problem is the other "legal personhoods" speak louder and more frequently and with more money.
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But I already did talk to my hopefully-soon-to-be congresswoman about it. Guess that shoots your theory.
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Well, she's leading the polls and she agreed with me. :)
My current congressman doesn't answer his phone when I call, but I believe I did mention the USPTO to his staff when I called about SOPA.
What did she agree to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so your soon-to-be congress-woman candidate gets elected and becomes a real congress-woman
What she agrees to do now?
I mean, what can you expect _anyone_ in the Congress to do, while the USPO is protected by corporations, patent trolls, and the lawyer union?
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Anyone who follows politics, anywhere in the world, knows- what a politician claims to believe during an election and what they actually do after an election are more or less completely unrelated.
Check out the UK Tories' "no reorganization of the NHS" or "we support House of Lords reform (for real this time!)", or the Lib Dems' "we'll reduce University tuition fees", or Blair's Labour's "we'll implement proportional representation", or Obama's "I'll shut down Guantanamo", or...well, anything.
Lobby your elec
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You claim to know a lot about this person I haven't even named. No wonder you're cowardly posting anonymously.
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To be fair, in a typical phone call you cannot determine if the other persons lips are moving. There is some slight chance she wasn't lying after all ;)
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So you want to just roll over for the patent trolls instead of electing better candidates or convincing those in office? Do the trolls scratch your belly when you roll over?
FYI, the candidate in question actually blacked out her site for the big SOPA protest in January. She gets this stuff.
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Well, I was going to go beating up patent trolls vigilante-style, but I have this agreement with Commissioner Gordon to keep a low profile. So instead I find the good candidates, donate and do phone-banking and canvassing.
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've wasted time in your life that you'll never get back... "Hopefully soon to be" is not "is"... try speaking to the current congressperson...
You mean continue talking to the guys that routinely ignore their constituents, lie to us in the face of obvious factual contradictions, and only listen to those throwing hookers, bags of cash, and coke at them?
That's worked so well so far, hasn't it?
The definition of insanity comes to mind.
Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.
Strat
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.
Be careful what you wish for -- there's no reason to expect that the replacement politicians would be any less corrupt than the current ones, and every reason to expect that none of them would know what the hell they were doing for the first year of their first term in office. The result would be a completely dysfunctional government after every election.
The goal shouldn't simply be to have new representatives, the goal should be to have good representatives. And the way to get good representatives is to change the electoral system so that the path to getting elected isn't "raise the most money", but rather "best represent the views of the largest number of constituents". Only then will have you have politicians who are motivated to listen to people rather than to money.
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
The result would be a completely dysfunctional government after every election.
If only we should be so lucky.
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.
Because of course anyone who replaces them will spring from the forehead of Athena, walk on water then turn it into wine, poop vanilla ice cream, and give us all sweet fuzzy kittens to make us happy when we're sad.
Why not try to create a better informed electorate? One which understands that software patents deter competition and stifle innovation.
The "A Better Informed Electorate" oxymoron (Score:3)
Why not try to create a better informed electorate?
While you may believe that a "better informed electorate" is the key to solve the problem, I'm telling you this fact:
90% of the human population just-don't-give-a-fuck about 90% of the things that happen around them
All they want is to have an easy life, get laid, and be fed
Most of them just do-not-care-enough to lift their little finger to make any change, unless their livelihood got threatened
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Why not try to create a better informed electorate?
While you may believe that a "better informed electorate" is the key to solve the problem, I'm telling you this fact: 90% of the human population just-don't-give-a-fuck about 90% of the things that happen around them All they want is to have an easy life, get laid, and be fed Most of them just do-not-care-enough to lift their little finger to make any change, unless their livelihood got threatened
Then they deserve the government they get.
Re:The "A Better Informed Electorate" oxymoron (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they deserve the government they get.
But what about the rest of us?
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not try to create a better informed electorate? One which understands that software patents deter competition and stifle innovation.
What does it matter how informed and clued-in the electorate is if the politicians won't listen?
Don't get me wrong. I fully support efforts to inform and involve more people in the process. First, however, one must have a government that will respond and be accountable to the electorate. Career politicians have the time to form networks of cronies in and out of government to secure their positions and power, and to insulate themselves from public accountability.
As far as the new politicians, if they lie about their intentions and/or behave badly they must be voted out. There's no "Pre-Crime" that can determine this ahead of time. The electorate can only try to vet candidates as well as possible, and kick them to the curb if they prove untrustworthy.
The only course we can take to truly protect ourselves against government corruption is to limit the amount of power and wealth they control, and the amount of time they have to abuse it. Nobody is going to try to bribe/influence a politician to get government subsidies, for example, if said politician/government hasn't the power or wealth to provide such subsidies.
This in turn will be a disincentive to those contributing/spending large amounts of campaign and lobbying money, since their returns on their "investment" will be greatly reduced or eliminated. The framers of the Constitution knew this, and deliberately hamstrung the central government for precisely these reasons.
The more power and wealth government controls, the more money it's worth spending to those seeking influence. The reverse is also true, which is the point.
Strat
Re:who owns the uspo? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's probably harder to fix the electorate than fix the system, because the electorate is in many cases kept dumb by the system, because the system benefits from an uninformed electorate. If you want to fix the electorate you fight an uphill battle because those with the power to easily change this are working against you, whilst you, a minority, have neither power nor numbers.
Despite this I largely agree that the suggestions put forward by the GP aren't necessarily going to fix much. The fixes that are needed (not just for the US, but even countries like the UK) are:
1) Political campaigns funded purely by the public purse, relative to past popular support performance, with a cap such that the largest party has no inherent financial benefit over say, their next 2 or 3 closest competitors.
People don't like paying for politics, but this is simply the only way to ensure that parties campaign and perform in the interests of the public, rather than lobbyists. I would argue that any cost involved in this sort of thing to the tax payer would be more than made up for by the savings of having competent government that doesn't spend money handing useless contracts to lobbyists who got them in power etc.
2) A representative voting system.
There is an argument that representative voting systems like PR create governments that have little strength, but this is clearly false as Germany has proven having had coalition governments since the war. Ultimately minority or coalition governments are forced to compromise. In the UK people complain about our current coalition, citing things like the increase in tuition fees to £9,000 but they miss the fact that if it weren't for the coalition the Tories were actually going to push fees of £12,000. Our coalition has made a lot of mistakes, but it's naive to think the Lib Dems haven't had at least some degree of moderating influence on the government. The NHS changes were similarly far far worse under purely Tory proposals. Even with our shitty example of a coalition government, the coalition has led to moderation and has still been better than the alternatives - a Labour or Tory majority.
3. Limit media ownership.
Limit media ownership to say, 10% of the media, to ensure that no one media mogul can have undue influence on the media. Having a strong public broadcaster like the BBC which has a legal obligation to be impartial is also of major benefit.
Unless you do these sorts of root and branch changes you cannot have a healthy democracy, it will always be more easily corrupted, much less representative of the people and far more representative of vested interests and lobby groups.
It's unlikely America especially would ever go for these changes because many Americans have been fed bullshit about how the state is evil, but this has simply been used as a method by which to ensure corporations are strong enough to be able to control the state, which is then used as the tool by which to act against the interest of most Americans which creates this obscure feedback loop of Americans then thinking the state is evil and supporting laws that make corporations more powerful. Similarly the idea of state funding for political campaigns would probably be seen as too socialist in America, where socialism is defined to be synonymous with communism which is defined to be inherently evil because America lost the Vietnam war and failed in Korea to attain complete victory etc.
Just as religion and state should never be mixed, neither should corporate interests and state, and the only way to remove that separation is with the likes of implementations of ideas such as points 1 and 3 above. Point 2 works to limit corporate interests by itself, because it forces politicians to listen to the people if they want to be elected, it forces them to pursue moderate policies that at least half-please everyone, rather than extreme policies often pushed by corporate interests that make some people happy, whilst destroying the lives of others.
Until you solve this problem of the merging of state and corporations, you cannot have a healthy democracy and again, just as you cannot have a healthy democracy when there is a merging of religion and state.
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3D porn!? That sounds great!
Sounds great, until you go to Soviet, Russia, where the 3D porn watches you!
(Sorry for perpetrating an old tired meme, but I am old and tired)
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... but I am old ...
Guess you ain't as old as me
Guess I ain't as tired as you
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where the 3D porn watches you!
Your ideas are intriguing, and I wish to subscribe to your kinky newsletter.
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Just because we (U.S. citizens) are largely apathetic about this topic doesn't mean we don't own the USPTO. It's only our collective apathy that allows you corporations to effectively control the USPTO.
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder... can I get a patent on filing stupid patents?
I mean just think, that will pre-empt thousands and thousands of these things.
it'll be a god damn money pit.
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If you can, let me patent the processes of suing for patent violations on patents about stupid patents first.
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can I get a patent on filing stupid patents?
No, you can't
Simply because there has already been a lot of precedences
But you can try your luck on getting a patent on filing not-that-bright patents, since nobody has done that yet
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I don't quite see the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, waiting around, suing someone for using it, spending millions defending it in court, and getting the patent thrown out and paying the competitor's legal fees.
By suing someone you slow down their ability to bring competing products to the market.
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But toss it on the pile of other bogus patents and it makes a good bargaining chip (threat).
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry for that. We had to display the list of comments in the wrong order because of a new apple patent.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
It's not general, the summary is just dumb. As far as I can tell, it's a patent on a scrollbar that disappears when you're not dragging the view. If that's right, it's certainly a crummy patent, but not a general one.
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Good! Because for a moment I was thinking Apple went haywire and patented the <li> tag!
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Fine so it's not general, but guess what, my Galaxy Nexus on both ICS and MJB have done exactly this. No scrollbar is visible in the browser or lists (I just checked) until I touch the screen. When I touch the screen a UI hint appears on the right (or bottom), its size is inversely proportional to the length of the page and its location informs you of where you are. Prior art?
I'm pretty sure Unity does something like this, but that's using a scroll wheel not a touchscreen so obviously its a completely diffe
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HOW is this NOVEL in any way, shape, or form? In 2007?
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According to the patent "is not a scroll bar"
HOW is this NOVEL in any way, shape, or form? In 2007?
It doesnt have to be novel. It just has to be patentable.
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Like the one on Nokia N9 / MeeGo [youtube.com] ?
you don't see a business model (Score:5, Informative)
But Apple's law firm does, and you nicely described all of the revenue generating functions.
Of course there's a difference between a business model predicated on bringing something of value to society and the business model of a rent seeking parasite that only owes its existence to an unaddressed inefficiency.
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But Apple's law firm does, and you nicely described all of the revenue generating functions.
Of course there's a difference between a business model predicated on bringing something of value to society and the business model of a rent seeking parasite that only owes its existence to an unaddressed inefficiency.
I am happy for you to call lawyers, accountants, advertisers etc Devils sperm, but they are there to advise management who take the decisions. I'm not sure why we quite see the blame shifted onto the lawyers is beyond me.
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Does it make you any less of a dick because someone else paid you to be one?
Re:you don't see a business model (Score:4, Funny)
Does it make you any less of a dick (or vagina) because someone else paid you to be one?
There, I fixed that for you.
~your friendly Norwegian Microsoft Developer’s Conference Incorrectly Politically Correcting Department.
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Legal status quos that do nothing for society and only generate busy work for lawyers is a simple matter of parasitism.
Of course there is valid and important work lawyers do for society.
Now be intellectually honest and admit there's a whole bunch of other lawyerly work which is unjustified, wasteful and useless.
I think the word they like is "frivolous".
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... I'm not sure why we quite see the blame shifted onto the lawyers is beyond me.
Because they sold their soul for $$'s and make all the crap possible.
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why we quite see the blame shifted onto the lawyers is beyond me.
It's not so hard to understand
A hired hit-man that actually performs the murder is generally seen as more despicable as the person who hired him. And even if you might disagree you surely must see why that hit-man would take so much heat from the public.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, suing a new entrant to your market before they have millions of dollars to defend themselves in court, sucking their coffers dry and driving them out of the market, thus ensuring your market position?
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"How about the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, suing a new entrant to your market before they have millions of dollars to defend themselves in court, sucking their coffers dry and driving them out of the market, thus ensuring your market position?"
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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I hope you like paper, because I feel a patent for "viewing newsletters on a mobile device" coming on.
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How about clicking the link and reading the description. It's actually pretty specific about it.
I mean, fuck Apple, but don't just jump on that bandwagon.
"Abstract
In a computer-implemented method, a portion of an electronic document is displayed on the touch screen display. The displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document. An object is detected on or near the displayed portion of the electronic document. In response to detecting the object on or near the di
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Wait, wait, get this - it's a a scrollbar, but it's on a touchscreen. What innovation! Oh, the humanity! Nobody has ever used such an interface before across so many different devices and interfaces it could possibly be called "general"!
No it isn't (Score:3)
Essentially if you have a scroll bar in your implementation, you can't be sued with this patent as it's explicitly stated that it's not a scroll bar.
Also, it was filed in March of this year. It would be pretty damned easy to show prior art or that in fact your own implementation of this existed prior to Apple's filing of their application.
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Actually you're wrong. In the first claim of the patent they explicitly state the following: "and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar;"
They say that. But they don't offer any definitions of a "scroll bar", and they go on to describe exactly the function of a scroll bar.
Essentially if you have a scroll bar in your implementation, you can't be sued with this patent as it's explicitly stated that it's not a scroll bar.
You can be sued for anything. They may not be successful in their suite, however...
Also, it was filed in March of this year. It would be pretty damned easy to show prior art or that in fact your own implementation of this existed prior to Apple's filing of their application.
...assuming you can afford the requisite legal costs to actually make it to court and argue that claim, along with the slew of other patent violations you'd undoubtedly be served with at the same time.
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"In some portable devices, scroll bars are used to indicate the position in the document or list of the displayed portion. But scroll bars are fixed user interface features that take up valuable display screen area on an already small display screen."
It's a scrollbar that disappears when you aren't using it. They're just trying to divorce it from the usual scrollbar to make it seem more novel.
If someone is hit with a frivolous lawsuit and have a loose million, they have legal recourse available and could conceivably countersue Apple for court fees.
FTFY
If you don't think that this patent is valid, find some prior art. Otherwise if no one else has up to this point been using this idea, perhaps its more novel than most would consider now that it has been patented.
Patents need more than to be novel. They need to be non-obvious to one skilled in the art. Just because you're the first to do something, doesn't mean you get a government-enforced monopoly on it. It's supposed to be something that significantly contributes to the body of human knowledge, something significant enough to be worth placing restrictions on the rest
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If you don't think that this patent is valid, find some prior art.
The stock browser on my Android phone (2.1, which is Eclair, right?) has scroll 'indicators' which appear (right and/or bottom of the screen) when I move the view, showing where and what fraction of the overall canvas my viewport displays. After I've stopped moving the viewport, they disappear. (Of course, in true /. tradition, I've not RTFA)
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And I'm sorry, they're suing *Microsoft* for anti-competitive business practices? How is this not the definition of an antitrust situation?
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You're missing the model, then.
The actual model is:
* file idiotically general patent based on common sense applications in existence today, but for $todays_hot_technology
* sit silently and wait for competitors to spend billions of manhours developing new product in concurrency with your product feature improvements
* pay a couple million (or billion, if you're Apple) to an unaccountable board which decides import restrictions to prevent your biggest threats from being imported for months if not permanently
*
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I don't quite see the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, waiting around, suing someone for using it, spending millions defending it in court, and getting the patent thrown out and paying the competitor's legal fees.
That assumes the competitor can afford the fight. Given apple's current bank balance...
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The business model is:
1. File idiotic patent with lots of prior art
2. Block your competitor from selling their equipment for 6+ months while the patent is re-examined in court
3. Pay competitor some fraction of the profit earned in stage 2.
It's a clear winner.
I still say step 2 should only work until you've reached step 3 once, i.e. if you've blocked a competitor based on a patent that gets thrown out you can no longer "win" injunctions, you can only sue for losses after the fact.
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The lawsuit costs the competitor money. For smaller companies, the costs can be ruinous. Apple has a hundred billion dollars to burn to prevent competition.
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It's not a very general patent. The broadest claim is:
1. A method, comprising: at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display: displaying a portion of an electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document; displaying a vertical bar on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document, the vertical bar displayed proximate to a vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic
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The business model makes a lot more sense if you imagine them suing only small competitors that don't have the financial resources to battle a huge army of lawyers, even if a win is 99% certain.
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I don't quite see the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, waiting around, suing someone for using it, spending millions defending it in court, and getting the patent thrown out and paying the competitor's legal fees.
The business model is "buy a few years where there is no competition". A few million in lawyers fees is nothing compared to the profits the temporary monopoly will give them.
Well there's your problem... (Score:3)
DAMMIT (Score:2)
Patent Images (Score:3)
I couldn't see the images in the link above, but this site has them:
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/07/apple-wins-another-major-iphone-ios-interface-patent.html [patentlyapple.com]
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I think the authors are sarcastic/trolling, but Apple users don't notice it.
New Method (Score:5, Insightful)
________ with a touch interface! Patent awarded!
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Well exactly. Wading through the patent document, it mentioned the following points:
(1) Defining scrollbar behaviour.
(2) Showing and hiding a UI element based on user input.
(3) Defining a touchscreen apparatus to use your finger as an input device.
So (1) is a scrollbar (2) is autohide. Combining them produces a scrollbar that dynamically shows or hides based on user input. Nothing revolutionary given any UI toolkit could trap keyboard or mouse wheel events and show the scrollbar only while active. That Appl
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Although I generally agree the patent is silly, Apple did and in fact still does sell two button mice with scroll wheels (that are spheres instead of simply wheels).
It's been a long time since Apple sold a single button mouse, and even then it was not really a single button mouse as the system always was defined to access contactual menus via a modifier key.
Basically your point would have driven home much harder if you didn't trot out the old fallacies of Apple mice. It cheapens your argument.
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?? Where did I trot out the old fallacies a single button mouse?
I thought they had the following inputs
(1) Magic Trackpad - touchpad for desktop systems
(2) Mighty Mouse - touch sensitive zero button mouse
So basically devices that use multi-touch over bluetooth to simulate traditional mouse behaviour. One you slide your finger around for motion, the other that moves across the desk.
I'm not aware they actually sell Apple branded mice with buttons and a scroll wheel.
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They don't sell them any more, but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Mighty_Mouse [wikipedia.org]
BTW, Mac OS has responded to control clicks as a right click on one button mice for 15 or more years. Also, pretty much any 2 button USB mouse that is connected gets recognized for what it is, and the right mouse button works just like you'd expect it to.
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Apple no longer a product company (Score:2)
Let's take inventory. IPhone 4s. A minor upgrade. Ipad 3. A minor upgrade, and a downgrade in terms of weight, thickness and battery life. New products. None.
OK, I think I can see the pattern now. Apple plans to milk its existing assets for everything they're worth and has no intention of creating new ones. That would cost money, you see.
Re:Apple no longer a product company (Score:4, Informative)
Steve's dead, man. Nobody left at Apple has the balls to throw out aggressive new products like the Jobs did. As much as I hate the guy and his company, he definitely knew his shit when it came to generating hype out of thin air.
prior art (Score:2)
fucking paper
What you should be most angry about (Score:2)
Record-setting? (Score:3)
Is this the most idiotic patent awarded to Apple, yet?
The tragedy isn't (just) that Apple had the gull to submit this shite to the USPTO, and it's not just a tragedy that it has been awarded: the other tragic fact is, Apple is actually going to use this shit, to thwart competitors.
Lists and docs on a touchscreen phone (Score:2)
How fondly I remember them from the Ericsson R380 [gsmarena.com] back in 2000. I guess it wasn't patented then because not only was it so freaking obvious, it had been done before with various other PDAs. Still, there's a reality distortion field to combat now, so let's see the epic battle betwixt that and prior art begin!
Pure greed (Score:2)
That's the only reason I can come up with that we in the US still allow software patents that are non-obvious. I can't wait until these assholes see the error of their ways and use some common sense in such matters. Unfortunately, I feel that, by the time that occurs, it'll be too late for reasonable reform. Much like the rest of the political sphere, unfortunately.
For someone who care as much as I do about what technology can offer, it's hard not to get depressed. Thank God for cannabis.
Annoyed Cpt. Picard (Score:2)
"the object is a finger" (Score:2)
I won't even go into this, and don't talk about how the US SW patent system is a joke. So many people at so many places have talked this out already, without any effect whatsoever, that it seems utterly pointless to even start any new discussion about it. Yes, this is giving up from my part, since this seems just another thing that we can
Reading the patent (Score:3)
What the patent seemed to describe was the thin vertical bar which appears when you touch the screen(which represents the vertical location of the current screen) and vanishes the moment you put your fingers off.
An easy way to circumvent this patent is to display the scroll location whether you touch the screen or not. The thin bar may have been a significant display estate on the good old years, but as the display resolution increase, it may be a better idea to display the bar continuously anyway.
Not sure if the patent is actually innovative, though. It seemed to have an awful lot of clauses to avoid an awful lot of prior arts.
Gaaah! (Score:3)
Let it be known henceforth and herafter that 1) using any kind of electronic device to store, process, or display any kind of information, and 2) providing graphical, aural, tactile, or physical controls to manipulate, browse, or otherwise act upon the data are obvious to all skilled in the art and therefore not patentable !
Jesus Fucking Christ...
Auto-hiding scrollbars have been around for ages (Score:3)
Auto-hiding scroll widgets have been around for ages, on everything from flash-driven text display widgets through video games. Even the 'touch screen' magic does not make this innovative, as touch screen equipped kiosks have been around for a long time as well - just show one of those displaying such a flash widget from the early 2000's and this patent meets its maker.
To be honest it should not even be necessary to point at auto-hiding scrollbars to defuse this patent. In essence it comes down to auto-hiding visual interaction widgets after a period of user inactivity, so all those auto-hiding pointers (from the lowly inverse block cursor in text-based interfaces to the mouse-driven arrows and other shapes in GUIs) should be enough.
Even on a mobile device.
Or on a touch screen.
Or on a combination of both.
Or on the mobile touch-screen-driven rounded cornered internet.
Why has the USPTO not been reined in? Is it all lawyers supporting lawyers supporting lawyers (ad infinitum) or does the political establishment still believe this is the way to further progress in the arts and sciences?
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Did your GUI include a scrollbar-like UI element that was only visible while you were touching the screen? If not, no, your GUI is not prior art. Yes, the patent in question is stupid, but it is not overly broad like the summary makes it sound. And not reading what the patent is actually covering just makes you look dumb.
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so does patenting a list
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No, but Facebook does...almost everywhere :o|
Perhaps they will take each other down in the ensuing legal battle, and they can both DIAF while the rest of the world benefits.
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Re:UITableView (Score:4, Informative)
No, they patented the behavior of the scroll bar in UITableView, not the view itself like the summary makes it sound.
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No, they patented the behavior of the scroll bar in UITableView, not the view itself like the summary makes it sound.
BUT according to the patent "is not a scroll bar"
Re:don't hate the player hate the game (Score:5, Insightful)
And what is wrong with hating the hateful player that plays the hateful game? Apple has gone out of its way to make itself perfectly hateful so I for one must comply.
Re:Patent Experts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent Experts (Score:5, Insightful)
You shoud not be able to patent a god damn UI concept.
Indeed. Imagine somebody patenting the steering wheel of a car, or the order of the pedals, or the order of the gears. That would be ridiculous. You'd never be able to switch brands of car.
Now besides USER-interfaces, I think actually that one should not be able to patent interfaces in general. Because any patent in this area will block interoperability and, as a result, innovation.
Re: (Score:2)
Well spoken. Plus, none of these armchair examiners will put their keyboards where their mouths are and actually apply for a job (we're hiring).
Here's what the patent is actually about: