U.S. Patent Office Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone

The USPTO needs to be investigated for bias and/or collusion with certain companies to bring this "re-examination" at this particular time when Samsung has has basically made the same position their mantra fro the last however many months.

The "prior art" claims are a sham...anyone can draw whatever they want, but the patent really should only be valid if there's something functionally executing the processes described in the patent in the real world. Can you imagine what kind of world it would have been if all of Bell Telephone's patents had been invalidated years after the actual real products were on the market? I guess we may see what it might have looked like in the near future if this goes through.

kockgunner said:

I don't disagree that Apple has some broad patents, but I think people don't realize how the phone landscape was back in 2007. People thought Apple was going to introduce a phone with a click wheel. That shows how "obvious" the iPhone was.

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You're right, lots of fan concepts had a clickwheel. Of course, Apple played with doing a clickwheel based iPhone, so we're lucky they changed their minds.

However, there were some fan concepts that got pretty close. I came across the following in this 2006 video of iPhone/iPod/iPad fan predictions:




Fans even came up with several rounded rectangular flat-screened iPad metal edged concepts, such as the following.... four years before it came out:

Imhotep397 said:

The "prior art" claims are a sham...anyone can draw whatever they want, but the patent really should only be valid if there's something functionally executing the processes described in the patent in the real world. Can you imagine what kind of world it would have been if all of Bell Telephone's patents had been invalidated years after the actual real products were on the market? I guess we may see what it might have looked like in the near future if this goes through.

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Some of the registered design claims by Apple never ended up as products. These aren't all in real products. If Bell's patents were invalidated years later, the products could have remained on the market. That they're invalidated now just means they never should have been granted.

kdarling said:

However, there were some fan concepts that got pretty close. I came across the following in this 2006 video of iPhone/iPod/iPad fan predictions:

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Some of those look like jokes, but Apple may have gone through a multitude of design concepts prior to moving forward with any of them.

kdarling said:

iWe said:

From Wired:

"It is simply too early to make any sweeping conclusions at this point," Brian Love, an assistant professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, said. "Office action rejections during re-examination are common and rarely are fatal to the entire patent."

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/jobs-patent-tentatively-invalid/

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Not that rarely. See my previous post #67 which presents USPTO supplied statistics:

In one out of eight cases (12%), ALL the claims are invalidated. In 70%, at least some of the claims are rescinded or modified.

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Well, from my perspective your 12% is in line with what the man said. Thanks for the numbers though.

Imhotep397 said:

Can you imagine what kind of world it would have been if all of Bell Telephone's patents had been invalidated years after the actual real products were on the market?

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No need to imagine it.

Everyone lived in that kind of world for a hundred years.

No need even for forced invalidation years later. Patents expire automatically all on their own.

That's one reason why companies keep innovating. Sitting still only works for so long, even if everything goes right.

Hahahaaa... so Samsung has to pay like 100k $ now?

better hurry up and take what you can

STiNG Operation said:

There is a better image out there but this is all I could find

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"INVALIDATED" LoL RoFlMaO

I can totally picture Samsung executives dancing Gangnam Style with this news

xanagu said:

Hahahaaa... so Samsung has to pay like 100k $ now?

better hurry up and take what you can




"INVALIDATED" LoL RoFlMaO

I can totally picture Samsung executives dancing Gangnam Style with this news

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I'm sorry, while the iPhone certainly did an excellent job integrating software and creating a smooth user experience, I look at it and see nothing but the obvious. Look at this Palm based phone (Kyocera 6035) from 2001 and tell me the iPhone isn't the obvious result of better technology and software polishing.

Apple makes nice shiny things, but in the end, they are predictable nice shiny things made possible by technological progress. I'm un-surprised to see their patents being invalidated on the grounds of obviousness and prior art.

Imhotep397 said:

The USPTO needs to be investigated for bias and/or collusion with certain companies to bring this "re-examination" at this particular time when Samsung has has basically made the same position their mantra fro the last however many months.

The "prior art" claims are a sham...anyone can draw whatever they want, but the patent really should only be valid if there's something functionally executing the processes described in the patent in the real world. Can you imagine what kind of world it would have been if all of Bell Telephone's patents had been invalidated years after the actual real products were on the market? I guess we may see what it might have looked like in the near future if this goes through.

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Here ya go, bolded what ya need to squelch the rage http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/311

(a) In General.— Subject to the provisions of this chapter, a person who is not the owner of a patent may file with the Office a petition to institute an inter partes review of the patent. The Director shall establish, by regulation, fees to be paid by the person requesting the review, in such amounts as the Director determines to be reasonable, considering the aggregate costs of the review.
(b) Scope.— A petitioner in an inter partes review may request to cancel as unpatentable 1 or more claims of a patent only on a ground that could be raised under section 102 or 103 and only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications.

mallwitt said:

I'm sorry, while the iPhone certainly did an excellent job integrating software and creating a smooth user experience, I look at it and see nothing but the obvious. Look at this Palm based phone (Kyocera 6035) from 2001 and tell me the iPhone isn't the obvious result of better technology and software polishing.

Apple makes nice shiny things, but in the end, they are predictable nice shiny things made possible by technological progress. I'm un-surprised to see their patents being invalidated on the grounds of obviousness and prior art.

Image

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Na, not even close mate. The only thing coming even close to resembling the iPhone in that pic is the icons, and they look more like windows icons than iPhone icons. The touch screen doesn't bring it closer to the iPhone either.

dashiel said:

That article mentions nothing about prior art, rather it states that the patent was rejected for being obvious, but facts and reading comprehension have never played much part in your little anti-Apple crusade.

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Scratch this - I see someone else already pointed it out to you:

"What you write is true in that this particular article does not mention prior art. But the rubber band patent in question was still invalidated partly from prior art.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/apple-rubber-band-patent-invalidated-by-previous-apple-patent/"

mallwitt said:

I'm sorry, while the iPhone certainly did an excellent job integrating software and creating a smooth user experience, I look at it and see nothing but the obvious. Look at this Palm based phone (Kyocera 6035) from 2001 and tell me the iPhone isn't the obvious result of better technology and software polishing.

Apple makes nice shiny things, but in the end, they are predictable nice shiny things made possible by technological progress. I'm un-surprised to see their patents being invalidated on the grounds of obviousness and prior art.

Image

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What Apple does better than any other tech company is pick and choose the best of what is currently feasible, and polish it until it all works perfectly together in a way that no other company has been reliably able to do. Sometimes that means they use other people's ideas, sometimes it means that in the process of polishing those ideas they come up with new ones that themselves deserve patents, and sometimes they do novel work themselves.

Picking and choosing how this device had that before the iPhone and this company had that idea somewhere in their R&D dept. misses the point. Putting together all of those technologies in a cohesive package for the original iPhone changed everything about the phone market after it. If our patent system has no way of recognizing and protecting the very real skill it takes to put technology together in this way, that's a real shame. In many ways what Apple did is far more difficult than inventing any single technology and there should be a mechanism to protect them.

smoledman said:

Bounce-back effect is an important patent because nobody thought it was "cool" until Apple did it and it caused iPhones to sell in massive quantities.

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It bugs me. I've never liked it. And I've been through lots of iPhones.

WhoDaKat said:

I'm so sick of this crap. How can they grant a patent, and then nullify it years later? Whats the point of getting the patent in the first place? No one out there should invent anything because people will just steal it from you. Talk about stifling innovation.

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Because Apple invented multitouch?

You must be a legal expert. Harvard JD? Years spent on the Supreme Court bench? Tell us more!


Psssst. Protip: Patenting a concept you never invented doesn't encourage innovation. It actually stifles it.

xanagu said:

Hahahaaa... so Samsung has to pay like 100k $ now?

better hurry up and take what you can




"INVALIDATED" LoL RoFlMaO

I can totally picture Samsung executives dancing Gangnam Style with this news

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i fail to see whats so wrong with this picture. i'm glad one company takes the "idea" of another one as long as they improve said idea and twist it into their own (note 2 for example)

are u telling me u'd rather have an iPhone and all those "other phones"?

do u think apple would have bothered with an app store, let alone a 4inch screen if it wasnt for the competition catching up?

kdarling said:

You're right, lots of fan concepts had a clickwheel. Of course, Apple played with doing a clickwheel based iPhone, so we're lucky they changed their minds.

However, there were some fan concepts that got pretty close. I came across the following in this 2006 video of iPhone/iPod/iPad fan predictions:

Fans even came up with several rounded rectangular flat-screened iPad metal edged concepts, such as the following.... four years before it came out:

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Those are great pictures.

slffl said:

Wow, talk about some BS! Guess that's what happens when you have the political power of Google and their Korean and Chinese friends.

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bearcatrp said:

How do you know if Google had any hand in this. If you assume this then you could assume apple payed off someone to get this through. Someone challenged it, got reviewed and the facts came out.
+1 for getting it right. Just like rounded corners. Give me a break. There are plenty of things made prior with rounded corners. If you believe apple deserves a patent for rounded corners, I'll sell you some ocean front property in Kansas, with rounded beaches!

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QFT.

We can't just assume that Apple can do no wrong and that they're making use of the patent system in ways that are benefiting mankind. Let's disavow ourselves of such notions and seriously ask ourselves with a more objective eye to the facts whether we should be allowing companies to claim ownership to shapes and concepts authored by someone else. What kind of precedent do we set for future owners.

Given just how bad the system is, any idiot can sue a large corporation if they can just fill out the forms and claim ownership to a blatantly obvious concept that pre-existed the patent's filing.

Bigger picture. Let's not obsess over supporting anything that benefits Apple and only Apple.

xanagu said:

Hahahaaa... so Samsung has to pay like 100k $ now?

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This patent wasn't included in the California trial that came to a verdict last august. See my earlier post :

KnightWRX said:

This patent was not used in the California ligitation nor is it included in the Jury's 1B$ verdict. So this action by the USPTO has no bearing on that case.

Section 28. of the Amended complaint

Only 3 utility patents listed on the verdict form, none are the '949 patent.

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Looks like Google's spy finally worked her magic.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/16/...y-head-us-patent-office-silicon-valley-branch

mjaco002 said:

Looks like Google's spy finally worked her magic.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/16/...y-head-us-patent-office-silicon-valley-branch

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OUCH for apple. This is a bad idea to allow this.

coolfactor said:

Why the "bounce back effect" (elastic scrolling)? That is an ingenious part of the iOS user interface. Any app that doesn't implement it feels like it's broken.

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It's a digital means of alerting the user to the end of the document (or list, whatever). If you remove the word "digital", you're left with "a means of alerting the user of the end of a document". This could mean: The end of a piece of paper, a back cover flap, the words "The End", etc...

It's just as dumb as Lodsys getting a patent for DLC, but you don't see anyone standing up for Lodsys here either.

charlituna said:

Obvious at the time of the application or obvious now.

It's easy to look back and say something is obvious but was it at the time? If the answer is no, it wasn't then the claim should stand

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@charituna - did you not bother to read the article, read the USPTO's rejection response, or the ensuing responses to this thread? The USPTO invalidated the claim not just on obviousness, but also on prior art. In fact, if you bother to actually read the prior art references that were submitted, you'll see that one of the references describes rubber-banding pretty much exactly as how Apple designed it...but they documented it (and patented it) 3 years earlier than Apple did.

Please do some research before you embarrass yourself.

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Imhotep397 said:

The USPTO needs to be investigated for bias and/or collusion with certain companies to bring this "re-examination" at this particular time when Samsung has has basically made the same position their mantra fro the last however many months.

The "prior art" claims are a sham...anyone can draw whatever they want, but the patent really should only be valid if there's something functionally executing the processes described in the patent in the real world. Can you imagine what kind of world it would have been if all of Bell Telephone's patents had been invalidated years after the actual real products were on the market? I guess we may see what it might have looked like in the near future if this goes through.

Click to expand...

Did you read the references to prior art? How do you know they are a sham? Please explain how or why the prior art doesn't "functionally execute the process", since I'm assuming you're a patent lawyer and can enlighten all of us to your expertise.

The US patent office is a hot mess. They are like deaf and blind referrees for a game where all of the tech giants are slugging it out.

It's fun to watch, but eventually nobody wins until someone redefines the game. Apple needs to stop.

STiNG Operation said:

There is a better image out there but this is all I could find

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Samsung created a more complete view, claiming that a lot of their phone line-up didn't change (click to zoom):


The most important thing that Apple did with the iPhone, was to make all the other manufacturers realize that they could (and should) bring their concepts more quickly out of the lab, and into the marketplace. That move would've come even without Apple, but it would've taken longer to happen.

bearcatrp said:

OUCH for apple. This is a bad idea to allow this.

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It's a good idea to have a leader in the patent office who says "Low-quality patents and escalating legal costs are currently hurting the ability of U.S. companies to compete globally".

And yes, that sounds like an OUCH for Apple.