Steve Jobs Patent On iPhone Declared Invalid 247
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's most famous multitouch software patents are increasingly coming under invalidation pressure. First the rubber-banding patent and now a patent that Apple's own lawyers planned to introduce to a Chicago jury as 'the Jobs patent.' U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 covers a method for distinguishing vertical and horizontal gestures from diagonal movements based on an initial angle of movement. For example, everything up to a slant of 27 degrees would be considered vertical or horizontal, and everything else diagonal. The patent office now seems to think that Apple didn't invent the concept of 'heuristics' after all."
Re:Snowy Walrus (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I think "a sticky Hitler" sounds better, and is much more intrinsically offensive.
A Godwin and a blowjob all in one.
Re:As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is they never seem to be satisfied when they have "enough."
Isn't that capitalism at its finest?
Re:Only 'preliminarily' invalid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why those assholes take years to determine 'full' invalidity is beyond me.
Also, this patent show up Steve Jobs for the sociopath asshole that he was. Patenting a 'complete solution' is okay; patenting a small process or a way of operating a device is a fundamentally flawed approach to granting patents in the first place.
Meanwhile, millions have been lost fighting this useless patent, and HTC were idiots to settle, etc etc
Make the holders of invalidated patents pay back their license fees.
Preliminary Invalidation, not end of the road. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just a preliminary invalidation, not the end of the road for this patent. Many patents that are in this state survive (partially or wholly). This simply is the start of a process within the USPTO.
(Relevant Post taken from Mac Rumors discussion on this, this is not my post, but relevant for this discussion): http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=16445804&postcount=39 [macrumors.com]
Folks -- a preliminary invalidation is a non-event. Every patent you apply for is almost always initially rejected. It is the way the patent examiner pushes the burden back on the inventor. They reject, you appeal, they reject, you appeal, patent issues.
Typically the findings for an initial patent application are really weak and easy to overcome.
The re-examination process is the same way. The patent examiner places himself in the position of the person trying to shoot the patent down. That is because the other party to communicate with is the original inventor and obviously they are going to push for maintaining the application. So in order to do proper due diligence, the examiner needs to find reasons to refute the patent, and then there is an appeal, and then possibly another invalidation, and another appeal and then the patent likely holds in some form.
In short... nothing to see here... move along.
I don't know the actual percentage, but I'd bet 99.9% of all patents for which a reexamination was requested receive a preliminary invalidation. And I don't think the patent office can refuse to do a reexamination on a patent.
Full Discussion here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1503872&page=1 [macrumors.com]
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Blue boxes were created to explore phone networks.
"Explore" as in getting free long distance phone calls. [wikipedia.org] Say, you would be an Apple employee, wouldn't you? Your attitude matches perfectly.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Interesting)
From wikipeida: Steve Jobs "was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line.[further explanation needed] According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[53] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him."
Re:As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that capitalism at its finest?
Utterly wrong. This is a crude, barbaric brand of nihilism.
Capitalism believes in the unbridled accumulation of wealth. But the neurotic psychopath Steve Jobs was not after wealth. In his own words:
A pure nuanced capitalist would've licensed the thousands of patents at a realistic price and made lots of money for himself and his shareholders. But Jobs wasn't a capitalist, he was a self-confessed copycat, an anarchist, nihilist and narcissist rolled into one.