Unless apple stole the code or implementation then no he has no case. If the request can be posed in many different ways you can't have a patent for that. I'm sure it would be invalidated just by previous artwork/examples in films and TV. I don't have favouritism for apple on this, I personally believe the patent system is broken and ineffective in it's original intentions.
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Florida Company Sues Apple Over Apple TV's 'What Did He Say?' Feature
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I can press a button on my tivo and go back 5 seconds......are they a licensee or are they named in the suit as well?
Does your Tivo also turn on subtitles to aid you in understanding what was just said?
You know what else got the patent? Swipe across the screen to unlock.
You know what's even better than swipe to unlock patent? THIS I lack words to describe what it even is except that Apple got approved to patent how time is displayed on the screen both in numeric and dial and how transitions from one to another.
Please watch how you design your screen design in the future when you have to show time
The purpose of the patent system is to encourage people to invent things AND disclose those inventions publicly by rewarding them when their inventions are adopted in the market. How do you propose fixing the patent system that would continue this purpose?
There are two things wrong with the patent system in my experience, and neither have anything to do with the present case. First, I think it is far too easy for big companies to infringe patents and then bully, delay, and obstruct in the courts. There is no incentive to settle and pay up when they know they can drag it out for years without any judicial remedy. Courts should be more willing to grant preliminary injunctions. Second, I think the real trolls are those that seek "cost of litigation" settlements and can't back up the value of their patents with any real evidence. Thus, I think the pleading stage should require a decent economical analysis of the value of the technology.
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You realize that's a design patent, right? Design patents are not utility patents. Design patents are super super narrow and specifically directed to nonfunctional things. Anything functional, per se, cannot infringe a design patent.
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Floridah...the nations capital of backwards everything.....plus high humidity and heat....this is bogus at best.
Patents, copyrights and trademarks...plus more recently proprietary parts all contribute to the stagnation of progress and are the reason you will never see any feasible free energy sources. Until society breaks down enough to say "get rid of this nonsense" we are all doomed. These systems are all too easy to exploit and hold advancements hostage. I dont agree with a lot Apple does, but their planned obsolescence is only a small part of the larger issues here. Patents, copyrights & trademarks being the oldest and more damaging to a society. Intellectual property is old thinking b.s. that needs to be dissolved like racism.
Consumer confusion is a trademark concern. Not patent
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Apple rarely patents something vague. Even if its just a proof of concept idea they have a level of detail to it that allows for others to come up with a different road the same destination.
Yep, someone pointed out that Roku has a similar feature. So why didn't they go after Roku? Sadly, there are a lot of people out there whose goal is, "I want to be annoying enough to Apple to get them to give me $10 million to go away."
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Folks on here are constantly conflating patents, with design patents, copyrights, trademarks... basically all forms of IP.
I'm a former IP attorney and have prosecuted patents. Before launching into a "patent BS" tirade, the first thing to look at is the patent's priority data. In this case it's 1998. Any attempts to invalidate it can only use prior art from 1998 backwards.
Think about the tech word in 1998. AOL dial up was still going strong! They came up with this invention when Windows Media Player could hardly sync audio and video.
It's likely that this patent will hold up to judicial scrutiny, and based on my cursory analysis, I'd say they are likely to win on the merits. At worst, it's a non-frivolous lawsuit and what our patent system is designed to do.
Think about the tech word in 1998. AOL dial up was still going strong! They came up with this invention when Windows Media Player could hardly sync audio and video.
It's likely that this patent will hold up to judicial scrutiny, and based on my cursory analysis, I'd say they are likely to win on the merits. At worst, it's a non-frivolous lawsuit and what our patent system is designed to do.
While the patent may be valid under current law, such a patent seems ridiculous. This isn't a "technology" but merely a feature. It would be akin to getting a patent for the ability to undo your last action in a program, or to copy & paste text, or to run two apps at the same time -- none of these ideas are truly "novel" but didn't exist decades ago and were conceived and implemented. Software patents are questionable at best and this patent perfectly illustrates why we should seriously consider getting rid of software patents like many other countries already have. Just because you think of a new software feature doesn't mean it should be patented.
So rewinding and turning on CC can be patented? And the company that patented this 'feature' never released any product implementing this 'feature'. This is so lame.
Being sued over yet another feature no one uses instead of giving us 4k HDR playback. My iPhone has been able to record 4k for years now.
HERE we go with that meme again.
Look at these two phones. Tell me the only thing COPIED is the shape:
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And you forgot about the closed-captioning button, and the rewind button on essentially every playback application and piece of equipment since the wire-recorder.
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Or at least Patent it...
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Look at this picture. Do you REALLY think that Apple was suing JUST for some rounded corners?
Usually I roll my eyes at these kinds of patent infringement claims, but this seems to be pretty darn simple in its description and in what it does, and Apple's feature is pretty much an exact copy.
It will be interesting if they fight it, which would be petty, or just settle with the company.
It will be interesting if they fight it, which would be petty, or just settle with the company.
Love your screen name btw. Do you really see infringement on Apple's part? Apple's tech is not just a button that rewinds a stored movie or show back 5 to 30 seconds, but actually uses context to replay what was said on screen (regardless of how long the statement onscreen was), and it shows you on-screen textually while re-playing.
It's not programmable to just go back 5 to 30 seconds. The only possible infringement I would see is when you ask Siri to rewind the show 5 to 30 seconds back, but even then I think they're making a pretty long reach that it's anything close to their very static rewind button. I'd be curious to know whether they've successfully challenged other tech companies, given a similar rewind feature has been around with things like Youtube (although not programmable, that I know of).
Very true, but the founding concept of patents is to lock in 'ownership' of a concept that is not readily obvious... and as clear as this patent is I have to say the results ARE obvious.
Besides, I remember being a kid, sitting at my grandparents house watching a 13" black and white tv and listening to my grandmother interrupt every 2 minutes with "What did he say?"
Seems like SHE has prior art for this.
There's no requirement to implement the feature themselves.
Plenty of inventors come up with ideas that others license and implement. Perhaps even the majority, since most people cannot afford to create factories themselves.
HERE we go with that meme again.
Yeah, speaking of memes... that's not what they looked like out of the box. They weren't even the same size. And Android doesn't display the app drawer unless you ask. It was more like this:
Siri's "What did s/he say?" rewinds the video back to a previous point, turns on captions, and replays that section with captions on. The function of "WHAT?" in the video player does the same thing. The initiation doesn't have to be a physical or dedicated 'button', but it has to be a single-point of activation (command, button, or trigger word/phrase)
So as a singular action, not several. The combination of those features (turning on captions - with a preferred language - and rewinding the video to a certain point, either predefined or user-defined, then playing the video again, keeping captions on during that section) enabled from a single command was / is an novel feature (in 1998).
Quick jumps back and forth (10s, 30s, etc) weren't common for physical media before DVDs, really. And even then you had chapter skips before something like this "WHAT?". Of course you could do each of those things before, but they were dedicated buttons: CC, rewind/jump, and play.