Does anyone know why Jeff Han's work was not emphasized more as prior art? (there was also more at the time, but I can't recall specifics now).
> If we had patents on desktop GUI user input standards like right click, ctrl key modifiers like ctrl-scroll to zoom, etc. then using computers would be a much bigger PITA.
This is the key right here. I don't think everyone fully understands what is happening around these UI patents in the rush to defend someone's "inventions" in the face of would-be-counterfeiters.
One of the most important aspects of patents is that they do not account for independent invention. Leave Apple out of your mind for a minute. Imagine your startup is developing a web or mobile app, and you come up with a nice way of presenting some kind of responsive UI that's well tailored to the data your app displays. It follows naturally from your data model, you end up with some really nice UX, and you get some internet buzz because it's a distinguishing feature of your app (see: pull to refresh, et al).
You will be liable if some company filed a patent for that idea 10 years ago, even if you've never heard of them or their product.
What's particularly insidious about these patents is that there's no real mechanism described here, like you'd have to provide for a mechanical device. Instead, you can get away with describing a "computing device" that "receives user input" and acts on it it in a fairly generic way, and suddenly you have a patent on not an invention, but a whole class of interaction or a generic human movement paired with a particular action on screen.
And you won't know you've infringed until you're sued!
Copyright and trademark have these well covered. They allow for independent invention and are much more specific to a particular expression of an idea. Regardless of copying and just deserts, regardless of the fact that this wasn't going to be settled in this case, no one here should be cheering the current standard for acceptable software patents.
This is independent claim 8 from 7844915, which (IANAL and everything we have so far is based on breathless reporting) was found infringing:
A machine readable storage medium storing executable program instructions which when executed cause a data processing system to perform a method comprising:
- receiving a user input, the user input is one or more input points applied to a touch-sensitive display that is integrated with the data processing system;
- creating an event object in response to the user input;
determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation;
- issuing at least one scroll or gesture call based on invoking the scroll or gesture operation;
- responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a window having a view associated with the event object; and
- responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of the user input.
The last part in particular appears to give Apple exclusive right to direct manipulation of an object on screen via multitouch, since you can't match pixels to touch points without scaling.
This is why patents were not meant for a class of ideas, only actual implementations of ideas. No one deserves a 20 year monopoly on all multitouch interactions involving scaling, and this sure as hell does not promote the progress of the science and arts. I'm eager to hear how the "it encourages innovation by forcing them to come up with new approaches!" crowd suggests designing around this.
If we're going to have to have software patents, we should at least have to do it right, providing extremely specific descriptions of object models and event systems, the same way you have to give diagrams and descriptions of how the new crankshaft you invented physically connects to the motor. That would simultaneously make them much less useful and make them actually analogous to patents of physical devices.
Exactly. One way to explain the lunacy of claim 8 to a layperson would be by example: imagine if Edison's patent for the light bulb had covered any possible means of turning electricity into light, rather than a specific method involving a conductive filament in an evacuated bulb.
Jeff Han demoed it in late 2006, merely months before iPhone introduction. Apple started working on iPhone (and multitouch screens) in the early 00s and (I'm recalling from memory) they filed their multitouch patent in 2004 or 2005.
In addition they purchased Fingerworks, who began working on capacitive multitouch sensing and gestures in the 1990s. I believe the founders of Fingerworks held several patents in that area--and still work at Apple today.
I have a Fingerworks touchpad and it is amazing. Apple is slowly rolling the gestures in their products. For instance with Lion the "click and drag" gesture went from a double-tap-and-hold (Apple standard for years) to a three-finger drag (what it is on my Fingerworks pad).
There is a big misunderstanding of patents. Patents don't cover ideas, but inventions. "Pinch to zoom" is a feature, and the idea of doing that is not patentable by Apple or Jeff Han. It is the implementation that is patentable, and Apple's touch technology is very different from Jeff Hans'.
It's quite possible that both could legitimately patent their inventions.... just as the rotory and the piston engines can both be patented even though both are "internal combustion engines".
See my sibling post for the actual claim. The distinction you make is exactly the problem with software patents: the way they can be written (and apparently enforced), they are covering ideas, not inventions.
Current law, as upheld by juries lacking sufficient knowledge, disagrees with the intent of the law.
Patents don't cover ideas, they cover implementation. Literally if your way of implementing something is the non-obvious way to make something more efficient, you are granted the right to exclusive use of it.
Apple, by act of jury, now has a patent on the idea and not the implementation. The patent is on a capacitive touch screen, but is a jury going to uphold a patent if it is an optical touchscreen? What if I use pinch-zoom on my Kinect?
Seriously, though, people on HN, etc, read claims far more broadly than a court would. They tend to see "rubber band effect" and think Apple patented all rubber band effects.
Claims start out broadly, and are narrowed by additional elements of the claim. "A rubber band effect THAT: a)... b)... c)..." You can't just ignore (a), (b), (c) because they narrow the boundaries of the claimed invention.
I just want to remind everyone in tech in the US that reading patents in your field is a very bad idea. The system is so dysfunctional that you may be infringing a lot (which should never have been granted, but you can't afford to fight) but becoming aware of them makes it "wilful" and can triple the damages from a suit. This doctrine is why Samsung's penalty is so high.
> If we had patents on desktop GUI user input standards like right click, ctrl key modifiers like ctrl-scroll to zoom, etc. then using computers would be a much bigger PITA.
This is the key right here. I don't think everyone fully understands what is happening around these UI patents in the rush to defend someone's "inventions" in the face of would-be-counterfeiters.
One of the most important aspects of patents is that they do not account for independent invention. Leave Apple out of your mind for a minute. Imagine your startup is developing a web or mobile app, and you come up with a nice way of presenting some kind of responsive UI that's well tailored to the data your app displays. It follows naturally from your data model, you end up with some really nice UX, and you get some internet buzz because it's a distinguishing feature of your app (see: pull to refresh, et al).
You will be liable if some company filed a patent for that idea 10 years ago, even if you've never heard of them or their product.
What's particularly insidious about these patents is that there's no real mechanism described here, like you'd have to provide for a mechanical device. Instead, you can get away with describing a "computing device" that "receives user input" and acts on it it in a fairly generic way, and suddenly you have a patent on not an invention, but a whole class of interaction or a generic human movement paired with a particular action on screen.
And you won't know you've infringed until you're sued!
Copyright and trademark have these well covered. They allow for independent invention and are much more specific to a particular expression of an idea. Regardless of copying and just deserts, regardless of the fact that this wasn't going to be settled in this case, no one here should be cheering the current standard for acceptable software patents.