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USPTO Preliminarily Rejects Apple's 'Pinch-to-Zoom' Patent
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Well, you're correct in a sense -- Apple did not invent their multi-touch gesture technology. FingerWorks did. Apple bought them, and their patents, which was based on research done at the Univ. of Delaware in the late '90s.
I am generally not a fan of software patents, but I believe this work is both unique and innovative in its algorithms and implementation, and these patents should be upheld. How can Amazon's patent for "one-click shopping" stand and this cannot?
Nope, he is right on the money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_touch
Science fiction is the baloney Apple tries to sell about them inventing all of this stuff.
Students, please correct me if I am wrong, you are not allowed to quote Wikipedia on your research.
It is my understanding that anyone may post articles on Wikipedia, and there was a major corporation a while back rewriting articles to cover up or make an incident seem not as bad as it really was ?
How correct is Wikipedia ?
If these patents are rejected now, why was it approved to begin with ?
And here i thought Apple was the first ones to come up with pinch-to-zoom....
Can't companies come up with anything anymore .....?
Just wait,, next year, we'll hear .. "The Macbook Pro is not our design either" We came up with the idea from <no name> site."
"Apple successfully used Patent No. '915 against Samsung in its court battle earlier this year, and 21 of 24 Samsung devices in the lawsuit were found to be infringing on the patent. "
Shoddy courts ?? If there was something wrong, why did Apple win ?
Unbelievable. Nothing is original now-days... Welcome to the 20th contrary.
And here i thought Apple was the first ones to come up with pinch-to-zoom....
Can't companies come up with anything anymore .....?
Just wait,, next year, we'll hear .. "The Macbook Pro is not our design either" We came up with the idea from <no name> site."
"Apple successfully used Patent No. '915 against Samsung in its court battle earlier this year, and 21 of 24 Samsung devices in the lawsuit were found to be infringing on the patent. "
Shoddy courts ?? If there was something wrong, why did Apple win ?
Unbelievable. Nothing is original now-days... Welcome to the 20th contrary.
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Yeah, some guy just showed up one day and decided to fabricate 20 years of multitouch history on Wikipedia, complete with names, dates, and references, just because he was an apple hating fandroid.
You can check their references. You can check references of those references. You can do the same thing with published materials. If the topic matters to you, it's not that big of an issue going through such things.
It was a stupid way of trying to prove that Apple invented Pinch to Zoom? Should the poster be heralded as a genius instead?
Not everyone happily swallows the BS that came from Jobs and is coming from Cook. I like Apple computers as much as the next person, hence why I am on a site called Mac Rumors.
If you have a problem calling a spade a spade then that is your misfortune not mine.
I agree, but I don't remember seeing this technology in the hands of millions of people before Apple either. They might not have created it, but it wasn't mainstream before Apple either. The TED video displaying multi touch several years earlier is proof of this too. Just saying Apple deserves some credit here.
I agree, but I don't remember seeing this technology in the hands of millions of people before Apple either. They might not have created it, but it wasn't mainstream before Apple either. The TED video displaying multi touch several years earlier is proof of this too. Just saying Apple deserves some credit here.
They deserve all the credit for making the function popular. Unfortunately for Apple making a function popular is not grounds for a patent. If that were how patents were granted, big corporations would wait for anything to be invented, steal the idea and make millions off of it. At least now when they steal your idea they either have to tweak it or buy it from you.
That was a cool video even Mr. Gates couldn't ruin the tech!
A reenactment of the Samsung vs Apple trial ca. 1990
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM5_dgKDsrc
The kids in the hall obviously have a good case against both companies here. Or maybe not
LOL
LOL
Except nothing has been invalidated, other than the accuracy of WSJ reporting (which is nothing new). The following may put it in a proper light--especially the likely identity of the "anonymous" objector:
"A 2011 law made it easier to challenge Apple's patents
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt December 20, 2012: 7:13 AM ET
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act opened the door to more post-grant reviews
Samsung's court filing.
FORTUNE -- On Wednesday, Samsung informed a federal court -- and the Wall Street Journal dutifully reported -- that the U.S. Patent Office had "rejected" all claims of an Apple (AAPL) patent (the so-called "pinch to zoom" patent) that the Journal described as "a cornerstone of its case against Samsung."
Two weeks earlier, the Patent and Trademark Office had tentatively concluded that all 20 claims of a second Apple patent -- the so-called "rubber-banding" (or over-scroll bounce) patent -- were invalid.
From the headlines, you'd think that the foundations on which a jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion last August were crumbling.
The truth is a little more complicated.
Both rulings flow from substantial changes in U.S. patent law that Congress passed last year as part of the Leahy-Smith American Invents Act.
Key provisions of that act make it substantially easier to challenge a patent after it has been approved. For a filing fee of $17,750, anybody can anonymously demand that the Patent Office initiate a post-grant review on any invalidity ground -- including, according to the National Law Review, "prior art, lack of written description, or lack of enablement, but not failure to comply with the best mode requirement."
The new law makes it harder for the Patent Office to deny the review. Or, to put it the other way, easier to initiate a review -- which is what just happened in the case of pinch to zoom. A patent examiner is going to take another look at Apple's patent claims based on the new objections that were filed. That's not quite the same as "rejecting" or "invalidating" them, which is how the Journal described it.
In the case of the rubber-band patent -- A.K.A. the Steve Jobs patent -- the situation is more dire for Apple. The Patent Office initiated a reexamination procedure in October, which meant that the review process had passed its first bureaucratic hurdle. What happened two weeks ago is that the examiner announced that he had tentatively rejected all 20 of the patents claims. The burden now falls on Apple to defend those claims. The company may yet prevail, but Steve Jobs' patent has two strikes against it.
Bottom line: With the barriers lowered and so much riding on the validity of Apple's patents, we can expect more challenges in the future."
Apple once was a very sympathetic company (at least to me), now they're just arrogant and all about money... So, when did Apple become Microsoft?
Bored of reading this tripe. The amount of people thinking Apple shouldn't be protecting themselves and let others just leach of their phones innovations is just amazing, it really is.