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

[dixido]

I wonder what the "user generated widget" is?

[Stella]

Originally Posted by MacFoodPoisoner

I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing this out Stella.

(and to think I owned a sonyerricsoon with a touch screen and stylus... I AM growing old indeed...)

Yes a lot of those phones back then used stylus.

Only 6 or 7 years ago. What type of phones are going to be around in 2018?

[iphoneclassic]

Originally Posted by jennyp

Perhaps Samsung invented the iPhone after all.

Who knows. Most of the tablets/laptops/netbooks are designed Asus. Nexus 10 is by Samsung, Nexus 4 is by LG.

Apple probably just wrote the air tight contract.

[Michael Scrip]

Originally Posted by MacFoodPoisoner

Oh, and I managed to find this image... Wasn't Steve who stole from Picasso who said that good artists steal? Well he was right.

Image

You can steal all you want... just make sure the people you steal from don't have copyrights or trademarks on a particular design.

Guess what happened when Apple stole the design of the Swiss clock... the Swiss owned the rights and Apple was forced to pay.

I guess Braun did not trademark their designs in the 1960s.

[powers74]

Originally Posted by The Bulge

Trolls rejoice ...

Lol, nailed it!

[Kwill]

Originally Posted by Mr. Gates

I smell a few lawsuits from some very unhappy companies that have been bullied by Apple...

They are the very ones challenging the original patent on the grounds that since they have since copied it, it must be invalid.

[TheJae]

Originally Posted by slffl

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

Excuse me my friend, did you just include Chinese into the list to make it more impressive?

[Renzatic]

Originally Posted by slffl

And then every other design in any other product. Everyone should be able to copy everyone. Sounds like a great idea!

That's the way the world's worked since roughly 20,000 BC. All good ideas are built upon other good ideas. When you prevent others from improving upon the things you've made, you stop innovation altogether.

[erzhik]

Originally Posted by slffl

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

boo-hoo cry me a river. Apple has more political power than any other company. Or do you think Apple is the only company that plays fair? Every major company has political power.

[MacFoodPoisoner]

Originally Posted by Michael Scrip

You can steal all you want... just make sure the people you steal from don't have copyrights or trademarks on a particular design.

Guess what happened when Apple stole the design of the Swiss clock... the Swiss owned the rights and Apple was forced to pay.

I guess Braun did not trademark their designs in the 1960s.

Apple shouldn't tout themselves, and pat themselves in the back as some kind of design uber innovator when they are not, that's what it boils down to, they 've ripped others as much, or maybe even much more so than anyone else.

Their patents for the iphone are at best dubious and the court decision in the states, jury member with an agenda notwithstanding, was a political one. It couldn't have played out any other way.

As an aside besides the swiss clock they paid creative around 200 million for a patent on the ipod. That's when Steve went ballistic and had every apple designer and engineer spending a few hours a month with a lawyer and started patenting everything. Of course from that understandable move to have come to a point where your legal dept. is more costly than your r&d one is, in my mind, a downhill trajectory.

[iGrip]

Originally Posted by kockgunner

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.

I remember when the iPhone first came out. It had little storage, no downloadable apps, no 3G on the crappy ATT network and it cost a small fortune. It was nuts.

Then I saw it in an ATT store and nearly instantly concluded that it was the greatest piece of consumer electronics gear ever made. It changed everything/

[Amazing Iceman]

Something doesn't sound right in all of this. It maybe some sort of conspiracy, or a way to reduce the patent war.

[iWe]

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/...ively-invalid/

[Michael Scrip]

Originally Posted by MacFoodPoisoner

Apple shouldn't tout themselves, and pat themselves in the back as some kind of design uber innovator when they are not, that's what it boils down to, they 've ripped others as much, or maybe even much more so than anyone else.

Their patents for the iphone are at best dubious and the court decision in the states, jury member with an agenda notwithstanding, was a political one. It couldn't have played out any other way.

As an aside besides the swiss clock they paid creative around 200 million for a patent on the ipod. That's when Steve went ballistic and had every apple designer and engineer spending a few hours a month with a lawyer and started patenting everything. Of course from that understandable move to have come to a point where your legal dept. is more costly than your r&d one is, in my mind, a downhill trajectory.

Good points...

I guess the next question is... since Apple is guilty of copying Braun... does that make it OK for Samsung to copy Apple?

Or...

Since Apple was so unimaginative and had to copy Braun... does that mean that Samsung is also unimaginative because they had to copy Apple?

[blackhand1001]

Originally Posted by kdarling

Best. Reply. Ever.

Wonderfully biting on so many levels



That's probably true.

I think software is unique, though, in the ease of creating a process. Probably the closest activity is writing music or a book. Incredibly easy to plink or type away and come up with something novel... yet with an overall theme that could be invented just as easily by someone else. That's why copyrights still make more sense than patents for software.

I'm especially against the gesture patents that Apple tries to get, such as using two fingers to do something. To someone like me, who's been doing touch for decades, that's like patenting a music chord. Just because no one else tried to patent it, or it's something an examiner has never seen, does not make it worthy of sole ownership.



Are you sure you didn't mean inertial scrolling? Because I highly doubt that most people bought an iPhone because of bounce back at the end of a page. Heck, more people buy Android phones today without it, so what does that say about its draw?

In the recent California trial, Apple themselves set a top hoped-for value of only about $2 per phone for use of that patent. That's just three thousandths of the iPhone's retail price. Hardly a major piece in their eyes.

2 dollars for a bounce back is still 500 times more than its worth. Even most major patents don't fetch that much.

I like androids edge glow better than the bounce back anyway.

[saichampa]

Originally Posted by coolfactor

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.

Because it's not an invention, because it's obvious, and because like many of Apple's patents, it's an attempt at stifling competition instead of using the patent system for what it's supposed to be used for.

[turtlez]

Originally Posted by iphoneclassic

Who knows. Most of the tablets/laptops/netbooks are designed Asus. Nexus 10 is by Samsung, Nexus 4 is by LG.

Apple probably just wrote the air tight contract.

you're silly

[Bubba Satori]

Originally Posted by slffl

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

Yes, Apple is a poor, struggling, powerless company.

Tinfoil alert on aisle 3.

----------

Originally Posted by turtlez

you're silly

No doubt about it.

[kdarling]

Originally Posted by iWe

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Michael Scrip

So yeah... Apple was ahead of pretty much every other phone manufacturer in 2007.

The sad thing is... all those other companies have been making phones for years.

As I keep saying, that's exactly why Apple was able to leapfrog them. The older companies had legacy apps and screens to support, and the fear of losing their current buyers held them back from making too large a change, even though their R&D concepts were quite similar to what Apple did. (*)

Likewise, five years after the iPhone came out, Apple is in a similar legacy support and customer situation. That's why they only make baby steps in changing the screen size and/or adding features.

Such is life. A neverending cycle of the same situations and mistakes playing out again and again. The older you get, the more you notice the repetition.

(*)E.g. Samsung's 2006 internal concepts for phones and UIs, which btw, were banned from the California trial due to a legal technicality Apple used. Imagine if the jury had seen these:

[MacFoodPoisoner]

Originally Posted by Michael Scrip

Good points...

I guess the next question is... since Apple is guilty of copying Braun... does that make it OK for Samsung to copy Apple?

Or...

Since Apple was so unimaginative and had to copy Braun... does that mean that Samsung is also unimaginative because they had to copy Apple?

Samsung to me is the epitome of unimaginative when it comes to design, lol! Despite my standing up for them in forums because on one hand I 've pretty much had it with apple appropriating ALL good design as pretty much their own invention, and on the other hand because I think apple desperately need to be put back in a position of competing with others instead of bullying them into submission, waaayyy overcharging even for their standards, taking away upgradability options from their users, constantly force obsoleting devices, while at the same time maintaining very poor standards in their software design with ios stagnating and os x becoming arguably worse in many respects. (Sony though, despite becoming sluggish in terms of hardware updates, is still excellent in design, I absolutely love what they've done with the tablet concept to make it look like an open book, although disappointingly they 've tapered it in their newer tablet to look more like what the others are offering...)



An example of average design, at best, is imho the new imac. Other vendors has presented aio's with touchscreens, aio's that are beasts with powerful desktop parts, in upgradability options and open up easily with a lever, aio's that are excellent in terms of ergonomics, etc. And apple comes up with a slim beer bellied mac, with a glued up screen, almost the same foot, and virtually no ergonomics again, and you get Phil Schiller on stage (who without Steve is just another vapid marketing exec, inexplicably full of himself) touting the imac as some kind of pinnacle of aio design and we are supposed to worship at apple's feet...

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by PsychoLogicXen

I'd rather watch the Gangnam Style music video on repeat for hours than hear or read another word about patents, lawsuits, litigation, or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Then don't click the links

[bearcatrp]

Originally Posted by slffl

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

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!

[charlituna]

Originally Posted by dashiel

Speaking of jumping to denounce, you should probably actually, you know read the article and not just parrot what an effusive anti-Apple troll spouts as fact. The patent was not invalidated for prior art, it was invalidated because the USPTO thought it was obvious.

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

[Breckenridge]

Originally Posted by GoodWatch

Are you trying to say that Steve Jobs would not allow a ruling by an independent body? Or are you speaking in irony?

True, nevertheless, the judge in the case just bought an iPhone and after using it for few weeks, getting lost few times like I just did today using apple maps, scratched the heck out of the sides and was made fun of by colleagues for missing the best Christmas party ever; he decided that the Steve jobs patents are nothing but BS. Stevie would've shoved the maps and the paint job on the iPhone 5 up someone's beehive before it made it out to the public.

[Fruit Cake]

Finally common sense prevails!