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Apple Patent: Translucency

leftbanke7 said:
As for the small developer, they have as much right to patent their products as do the big boys. As costly as it may be, if I had a legitimate claim to my patent and Microsoft or Apple tried to throw lawyer after lawyer after me, I would still fight. In the end, I know I would win and then the big boys could pick up the tab on my court fees. People give up too easily anymore.
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"Mr. Small Software Developer, holder of patent XYZ-123 for "Widget Design", Plaintiff, versus Big Software Corporation, Defendants." Or vice-versa - it doesn't matter really. Whoever has the most money will win the confrontation in Court - assuming it gets to a verdict and Mr. Small Developer doesn't go backrupt before the end of proceedings. And so far as I know, the whole loser-pays thing doesn't quite work that way (that said, it's mere hearsay because I don't live in the US and I am not terribly well acquainted with the details of its legal system).

Just for the sake of ranting, CISCO recently began patent applications for patches issued by a public standards board to solve flaws in the TCP protocol.

At some point this must stop - before we're running TCP/IP (c) CISCO, 2004 on top of our Operating System (c) Big Software Corp, 2006. Surely all of you can see the absurdity of this, yes? Like when companies come along and say that they own propietary protocols at the core of the JPEG standard, or GIF standard, and demand payment (the former is happening now, the latter took place a decade ago). And if you think Amazon trying to patent the cookie is bad, how about British Telecom trying to imply one of its patents covers hyperlinking?!
 
szark said:
I wonder how you would select the window again? Just using the title bar? :confused:
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I thought of that, too. What if I leave my computer for a while to find out that all the windows have become transparent?
 
TranceMin said:
I am also against software patenting. Although I would like it if apple had the edge for gain in the market share. Patenting software code stops innovation.

Remember when amazon tried to patent the cookie?
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I wish they would have, then perhaps we wouldn't have so damn many on the internet.
 
qubex said:
And if they had, just how would you propose logging into public forums such as these?
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Manually every time you want to by typing your username and password?
 
qubex said:
"Mr. Small Software Developer, holder of patent XYZ-123 for "Widget Design", Plaintiff, versus Big Software Corporation, Defendants." Or vice-versa - it doesn't matter really. Whoever has the most money will win the confrontation in Court - assuming it gets to a verdict and Mr. Small Developer doesn't go backrupt before the end of proceedings. And so far as I know, the whole loser-pays thing doesn't quite work that way (that said, it's mere hearsay because I don't live in the US and I am not terribly well acquainted with the details of its legal system).
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If in your lawsuit, you specify that as part of the damages you want the offender to pay your legal fees and the judge sees that fighting this in court was damaging to your economic health, so to speak, judges will award you compensation for it.

If you can't show that fighting this in court has hurt you financially, then the judge will probably tell you no deal.
 
Patents Don't Necessarily Stifle Innovation

Another thing to remember, and some have made this point indirectly, is that patents merely establish ownership. For example, many poo pooed Amazon's patent on one-click online checkouts. Apple, however, decided that this technology was worth paying for and now pays royalties to Amazon to use the technology.

If people want others to pay for R&D so they can use the results for free, this doesn't bode well for innovation either. Why invest the money to come up with new innovations when someone is just going to rip it off and use it for free?
 
We already have this kind of "windows" NOW!!!

Doesn't this patent refer to the bevelboxes (windows) that we see when we changing the volume (or contrast, keyboard lightning etc.)?!

If the volume changes, by pressing a key on keyboard, the window comes forth, and after a while it disappears gradually by changing transparency again as its value no longer changes...
 
It'll be nice if Apple can have a patent or two. I'm generally opposed to software patents (especially as it looks as though Europe will go through with it like the US) but Apple may as well have a few, as it is definately one of the most innovative companies in my book. It'll be nice for Tiger to have a couple of features that Longhorn won't. Just hope it works nice and smoothly on my rev B 12" PB...
 
leftbanke7 said:
If in your lawsuit, you specify that as part of the damages you want the offender to pay your legal fees and the judge sees that fighting this in court was damaging to your economic health, so to speak, judges will award you compensation for it.
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Interesting... so if Big Software Corp., holder of Patent XYZ-123 for Widget Design sues you alleging infringement on your part, they can make fighting against them even more unpalatable by specifying that you'll have to pay for the legal fees of their seven bigshot lawyers? Now there's a true cornerstone of equality!
 
Kool said:
Doesn't this patent refer to the bevelboxes (windows) that we see when we changing the volume (or contrast, keyboard lightning etc.)?!

If the volume changes, by pressing a key on keyboard, the window comes forth, and after a while it disappears gradually by changing transparency again as its value no longer changes...
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Yup, that's what I thought too. It looks like a patent application for these existing features.
 
Macrumors said:
Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window.
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Does anyone actually understand what this means?
I'll admit I'm struggling. I understand the meaning of the words, 'translucency', 'underlying' and 'overlaying' but what are they describing?

i_b_joshua
 
leftbanke7 said:
By logging in using the sign in page.
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I hope you are being sarcastic. Cookies aren't only necessary for "long-term persistence" (i.e. autologin). They're also necessary for short-term persistence: such as remembering who you are after you type your username and password and click "login".

Can you be "logged in" to a webpage without the use of cookies? No. Absolutely not.
 
qubex said:
Interesting... so if Big Software Corp., holder of Patent XYZ-123 for Widget Design sues you alleging infringement on your part, they can make fighting against them even more unpalatable by specifying that you'll have to pay for the legal fees of their seven bigshot lawyers? Now there's a true cornerstone of equality!
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Well, if Big Software Corp. sues me for the cost of their lawyers, they might need to do a little restructuring.

And I could be (and probably am) completely wrong. I am a film major, not a law student so if you want information on Modernist films, I can help you but anything related to law that isn't covered on COPS or America's Most Wanted is not something I know a whole lot about.

My assumption was based solely on it sounds logical to do it this way but court proceedings are often very far from that.
 
trek7k said:
Another thing to remember, and some have made this point indirectly, is that patents merely establish ownership. For example, many poo pooed Amazon's patent on one-click online checkouts. Apple, however, decided that this technology was worth paying for and now pays royalties to Amazon to use the technology.

If people want others to pay for R&D so they can use the results for free, this doesn't bode well for innovation either. Why invest the money to come up with new innovations when someone is just going to rip it off and use it for free?
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I don't see how you can reconcile your first paragraph and the second. What R&D revenue went into the concept of one-click purchasing?
 
qubex said:
Can you be "logged in" to a webpage without the use of cookies?
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Yes.
The PHP, perl, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP etc etc webserver creates a unique id and passes it along with all (dynamically created) hyperlinks. It's clumsy but it works fine.

i_b_joshua
 
qubex said:
I hope you are being sarcastic. Cookies aren't only necessary for "long-term persistence" (i.e. autologin). They're also necessary for short-term persistence: such as remembering who you are after you type your username and password and click "login".

Can you be "logged in" to a webpage without the use of cookies? No. Absolutely not.
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And those kind of cookies don't bother me. They have a perfectly good purpose. However, the 99.9% of the other cookies that inidate me with ads for whatever it was I looked up on the internet last week are just another example in computing on how a good thing gets used for horrible purposes.
 
i_b_joshua said:
The PHP, perl, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP etc etc webserver creates a unique id and passes it along with all (dynamically created) hyperlinks. It's clumsy but it works fine.
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Granted. That said, cookies can also be appended to URLs, so depending on how the patent was structured, these techniques could have also been covered. Indeed, there isn't all that much difference between a SessionID (sid) and a cookie.
 
Kyle? said:
You know, it's fine to have a balanced view of things even though this is a mac-related board. However, this continual barrage accusing people on these boards of blinding bias is really worthless and quite often terribly misguided. People can have well thought out opinions of apple that are favorable of apple without being biased toward apple. Most here at times will disagree with apples decisions and being favorable toward them is not blindness. Its simply agreement. If you feel it necessary to start off on the wrong foot with the members of mr, then you might find a better use for your spare time than posting here.
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my xp machine boots in 20 seconds. i don't know what ur talking about. My g5 machine boots quicker. but get serious booting times don't mean much.
 
davegoody said:
when M$ produces an OS that is as stable, as good looking (and not just superficially) and can load from scratch from Power-up in 31 seconds as it does on my RevA 17" iMac then we need to start worrying - until then, relax and enjoy your Macintosh experience :p
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:p I will tell my children to keep watching out for this... if I should ever have any... on my deathbed :D
 
patenting transparency...

Ok, well software patents ARE BAD. (we all signed the petition, right?)

BUT: other companies have been doing the same. I remember that Gateway bought Amiga some time ago (and sold it later) purely for it's UI patents.

It's sad and bad, but Apple (and anbody else) is forced to do this kind of thing because if they don't they will be stopped from using all sorts of patents by other holders.

I'm in an industry where a competitor will use a patent to stop us from doing something, and then we just throw another patent at them so that they withdraw theirs. It sucks.
 
i_b_joshua said:
Yes.
The PHP, perl, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP etc etc webserver creates a unique id and passes it along with all (dynamically created) hyperlinks. It's clumsy but it works fine.

i_b_joshua
Click to expand...

However, if cookies can be patented, so can and will server-side stored session information. The point is that this is ridiculous.
 
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