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U.S. Patent Office Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone
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I'm going to agree with your post in principle, but nit pick it a bit at the same time.
The USPTO doesn't just 'miss details'. They often completely miss the forest for the trees. Examples include the multitude of "a process that's been done since the US was a set of colonies, but over a network|the internet|radio|cellular|etc." patents which have been granted *AND UPHELD* over the years. Or the many that are written such that they don't cover a process, but cover *any* method of getting a certain result. Or anything which covers software, which is mathematics, and therefore not patentable subject matter. Or the examples of patents actually described as covering mathematics, such as the *TWO* different GIF compression patents, or the RSA encryption patent.
These sorts of patents started getting through the USPTO approval process back when the patent inspector rating system was revised to rate the inspectors based on number of patents *approved*, rather than reviewed, or rejected. At that point, the entire patent review system became weighted toward creating as many patents as possible, rather than making sure that the patents which *were* granted were actually *worth* being granted. The idea that bad patents can be 'fixed' in the courts is a failed experiment.
(Hmm... That turned into a bit more of a rant than I'd planned. Oh, well.)
Oh yeah, I'm sure Obama is using his Galaxy S3 in his office right now saying " I WON STEVE JOBS! MUWAHAHAHAHAhAHA! "
Apple contributed to Obamas campaign heavily as well. The fact that this patent will probably be invalidated should not surprise anyone.
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The level of idiocy in this thread is astounding. I've come across people here masquerading as patent experts only to have others call them out for making stuff up. But calling for an investigation of the USPTO? Conspiracy theories about corruption and kickbacks by Google? That kind of lunacy is something you'd only hear on a Fox News!
WTF?!
I don't recall being this loony in grade school. What're they teaching kids in school these days?!
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With all due respect, an innovative way of combining existing technologies is an invention. I mean, the lightbulb was a combination of existing technologies - would you say that wasn't an invention?
Here ya go, bolded what ya need to squelch the rage
FYI, that's the old version. It says you can request reexam based only on printed publications (not products) and only based on prior art/obviousness.
The new version: http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/...((35) ADJ USC):CITE AND (USC w/10 (311)):CITE says ANY means of rejection.
There is a better image out there but this is all I could find
Maybe it was this one:
http://www.osnews.com/img/26230/s-comp.PNG
Bad comparison. It would apply only if Apple actually invented the touchscreen smartphone.
The patent system is a joke. It's difficult and unfair to blame those filing for patents - be it Jobs or Samsung - because the system is ridiculous!
Certainly patenting a rectangle (Apple) is ridiculous, but patenting cellular radio innovations (Samsung) isn't so silly.
Filing ridiculous patents is the problem, compounded by a patent office that's unable to discover "prior art" even when devices using "prior art" have been on sale for years, and unable to decide on "obviousness".
Apple's "thermonuclear war" may end up being directed against the patent system, and the fallout may be that a large number of Apple's patents will be invalidated.
And when/if that happens, we can thank Steve Jobs for helping to push some sense into the patent process.
Indeed. All the patent regime has done is create an enormous cost of doing
business. If there's one good thing that's come out of this patent war, it would be that we and real experts in the field are reminded this is a problem that won't go away until some serious reform is introduced. Apple and Samsung can afford to have these patent spats, but thousands of other companies out there can't.
Patent officers are paid to give patents. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean that it will hold up in court or that it won't be invalidated later. IMO this one shouldn't have been invalidated, but I've seen some ones that are pretty weak.
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Let me guess, Obama also closed down Hostess because his wife doesn't like it. He's also Muslim and therefor an illegal immigrant trying to take over the world. He's a communist. See what juicy hidden stories you uncover when you do some "research"?
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They invented a certain type of touchscreen smartphone. Before the iPhone, did you ever hear about downloading smartphone apps? Were smartphones mainstream? Did people use their smartphones as music players?
And before the iPad, the only time I ever heard the word "tablet" was in reference to ancient Roman writing boards or Windows-based laptops that have touch-sensitive surfaces for using a stylus.
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In worldwide sales, no. Samsung dominates outside of the US.
The level of idiocy in this thread is astounding. I've come across people here masquerading as patent experts only to have others call them out for making stuff up. But calling for an investigation of the USPTO? Conspiracy theories about corruption and kickbacks by Google? That kind of lunacy is something you'd only hear on a Fox News!
WTF?!
I don't recall being this loony in grade school. What're they teaching kids in school these days?!
They teach kids to be rebellious and protest peacefully, or at least they did around 2006. They also did a good job of making everyone afraid of Germans, Brits, and communists.
Samsung presented some during the August trial, and if you read the article and kdarling's post, the USPTO did justify its invalidation based on some amount of prior art :
So yes, prior art has been presented.
People do change jobs. What could possibly be surprising about that? You can't automatically assume with these situations, as that would limit the future career options available to an individual after leaving such a large corporation.
Yes, there were a lot of app stores out there like Handango, Pocketgear, etc.
And the original iPhone didn't had any app
There were app stores out there. My friends' flip phones had app stores. So did iPods. But nowhere did anyone ever say anything like "get this app" or "there's an app that does that" until the iPhone had an app store.
Seems like USPO officials have recently apperared on someone's payroll. Nice try, Samsung. Although a little short-sighted...
I had a windows CE phone before the iPhone ever came out. I had downloaded GPS programs/apps for it , and even had a few songs on the thing.
The term "stifling innovation" is just a regurgitation that Apple fanboys seem to use because they heard Steve or Tim say it before. A lot of people take anything the Apple CEO feeds them hook, line, and sinker.
The lightbulb gave us light from electricity, something that hadn't been done before; previously we had been using fire for this. What did the iPhone do that hadn't ever been done before? I am not saying the iPhone didn't do things BETTER than anything prior to it, but it didn't do any of those things in a new way.
But anyway, our opinions don't matter. Frankly, the back and forth gets to go however the courts decide. I am sure Apple will at least attempt at a rebuttal, and the world keeps on turning.
That you didn't talk about apps doesn't mean that people didn't talked about them
I used my w810i as my MP3 player, back in 2006. Device consolidation was already all the rage as people were consolidating PMPs, PDAs and phones into a single device. This came about before the iPhone.
For apps, I had the SDK for my T610 in 2003. You could develop J2ME apps for it, there was a full-on emulator and my carrier sold the apps through its App store. My w810i also had a Symbian runtime, so it had 2 SDKs, full on emulators, you could write games compiled to native machine code for them in C using the Symbian SDK.
Guess why people were disappointed when Steve Jobs said the iPhone was a platform for Web apps only ? Guess why the JB community started making apps with an unofficial SDK until Apple caved, saw the potential and rolled their own ?
Because it was already happening on others phones and people wanted to replicate the experience on the iPhone.
Stop making stuff up, you're only showing you don't really know or have a grasp of the industry prior to 2007, which indicates either tech illiteracy at that time or that you are very young don't remember it.
So tablet was already in use for electronic devices. Notice Apple never uses tablet, only iPad. Guess why ?
There were other tablets. Guess why everyone wanted Apple to make one ? Because others were making tablets and we're making a very good job at it.