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Steve Jobs iPhone Keynote Invalidates Apple's Rubber-Banding Patent in Germany

Spectrum said:
I see it now. Cheers! No mention of it as a feature by Steve.
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Actually, around 16mins Steve actually says "rubber banding" when he's demo'ing the iPod functions.

This was the best keynote, just watched some of it again. I remember drooling at the demos and the disappointment when we found out the UK would get a 6 month later release. Exciting times they were though. :apple:
 
bbeagle said:
So, if I infiltrate into a company, and know they are working on a patent submission for the next day, I can simply call a press conference to talk about this, and the whole patent is invalidated?
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No, because that would be espionage, which happens to be illegal.
 
bbeagle said:
An American who specializes in technology should know about all the different countries of the world's laws? Oh, yeah, right.
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Uh, education on international patent laws is quite common in Engineering fields. Even the most basic course would cover this detail.
 
jayducharme said:
This makes absolutely no sense to me. So a company demonstrates a new concept. By demonstrating it before filing paperwork, that makes the concept ineligible for a patent. :confused:
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It makes no sense to you and me because we are laymen. To Apple and their cadre of lawyers it should have been patently obvious. Sorry about that:eek: If I am not mistaken, that's the keynote where Jobs stated "Boy have we patented it." He knew what was at stake. Jobs can be forgiven for not knowing the minutiae of every country's patent laws, but the legal team can't be forgiven. People love to rail on Apple about money wasted on their huge legal team. This is one of the reasons to have that team. It just happens they didn't do their job as well as they should have in this particular instance.

Whether the law makes sense is irrelevant. It's the law and has to be applied equally. Apple's error completely.
 
slu said:
That is a ridiculous ruling. How can your own prior art work against you?
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It's not prior art. It's public disclosure.

As the article notes, there was a one-year grace period after public disclosure to apply for a patent in the US. With the new patent law, I'm not sure that is still true.

In Germany, there is no grace period. So, if you disclose it outside your company without an NDA, or include the technology in a product and release it, you can't apply for a patent.

The US used to be "first to invent", but it is now "first to file". If there was no limit on the grace period, a company could invent something, ship product that used it, and wait as long as they dared to apply for a patent. The patent period starts when the patent is approved, so this technique would effectively extend the life of the patent and prevent others from using it until a later date.
 
jayducharme said:
This makes absolutely no sense to me. So a company demonstrates a new concept. By demonstrating it before filing paperwork, that makes the concept ineligible for a patent. :confused:
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The idea behind patents is the societal interest in promoting innovation. To do that, the State guarantees exclusive rights for inventions in exchange for disclosure, so that society can know and build upon it and the inventor can market the invention to regain their investments. So inventors can come up with inventions and the State grants a property right provided the invention is made public. The State thus gives a direct incentive for disclosure, the actual goal, but promises to protect the invention in return. But if an inventor presents his invention before, then it enters the public domain immediately. In other words, there is no interest anymore for the State to give protection, because disclosure already happened.

Another argument could be the following. Suppose some competitors saw the rubber-banding effect and decided immediately to implement it. Knowing that there is no patent application, they can proceed without risking that Apple might file a patent at another time. There is a legal certainty issue at play too.
 
bbeagle said:
So, if I infiltrate into a company, and know they are working on a patent submission for the next day, I can simply call a press conference to talk about this, and the whole patent is invalidated?
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I'm not intimately familiar with Germany's patent laws, but if it's anything like the US, you wouldn't invalidate it because you weren't the inventor.

This isn't a prior art issue. It's a disclosure issue. It's to keep an inventor from sitting on the patent and delaying the application, in order to extend the effective life of the patent.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
Apples lawyers are responsible for this outcome. It is their job to warn the Apple management BEFORE a keynote.
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Honestly, this patent rule is not obscure. Germany is not the only one who has it. I've only been involved with about 5-6 patent filings, and even I knew this. I is just a basic, well-known fact of patent timing. As someone who has his name of lots of patents, Steve and the people around him should have known this.
 
Skika said:
So all software patents are bad? Thats a bit of a stretch...
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Well, really, it isn't. I don't mind copyright on stuff like graphics and icons; that should be the sole property of the company selling the product. Copyright on software is also necessary.

With regards to patents, though, most software is composed of mathematical algorithms, equations, linear algebra, and several disciplines of calculus, along with graph theory. JPEG compression uses the Fourier transform, and kernel memory management is executed more efficiently with the best algorithms that you can only get from graph theory.

I don't think you'd propose patenting math.

Second, software patents hamper innovation. For instance, timer coalescing was originally a feature from the NT and Linux kernels before it was brought to OS X. If, say, Linus Torvalds or Ray Ozzie had patented timer coalescing, we'd still be stuck with fragmented CPU cycles on OS X for several more years.

If patents only lasted around 2-3 years, that would be great, and would allow compensation for the original company while allowing others to innovate after the patent expired. Unfortunately, patents last far longer than 2-3, and we've seen how long-lasting patents have completely destroyed the pharmaceutical industry.

The technology field runs at a much faster pace than the pharmaceutical industry. The pace of change is way too fast for patents to last as long as they do right now. If patents had a maximum expiry of 4 years, we'd see a lot less trolling (it would still happen, but a lot less), and more innovation in the industry.
 
bbeagle said:
An American who specializes in technology should know about all the different countries of the world's laws? Oh, yeah, right. I guess everyone should have a law degree from every country in the world before they do anything. ok.
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Well, a company that patents thing in various countries must know the patent laws of those countries or how do you think they can operate in a multitude of countries? Ignoring each and every law?
 
iSee said:
Apple licensed that stuff from Xerox so it doesn't seem to be a similar situation.
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tbone0726 said:
No, they paid to develop those technologies!
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That's a yes and no situation. They did initially license the GUI from Xerox for stock options, but then ended going beyond the initial agreement when they applied the whole thing to the first Mac. They were only allowed to use Xerox tech on the Lisa. Nothing else.

And then they got into even more trouble when they sued Microsoft over IP they didn't own or invent.
 
roland.g said:
And you wonder why the Europeans are so backwards. Case and point. It may be the law and Apple should have known and followed. But just because it is the law, doesn't mean it should be the law. What can you do but laugh at the fools.
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It's not as if the US is fundamentally different. Once you show it publicly, the clock starts ticking. The difference is the US provides a grace period and Germany does not.
 
roland.g said:
And you wonder why the Europeans are so backwards. Case and point. It may be the law and Apple should have known and followed. But just because it is the law, doesn't mean it should be the law. What can you do but laugh at the fools.
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How dare you calling ALL europeans backwards????
The Germans have their own laws, get over it. It is none of your business whatsoever.
Apple were stupid enough to make this mistake, and that is very funny indeed.
 
kunai said:
Why should we? It was a stupid patent. Things like MagSafe, that, I can understand, but software patents are the worst thing to ever come out of the rise of commercial software in the 80s and 90s.
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It was sarcasm. Sorry for not including the tag. I thought the tip off would have been that I thought this was funny.
 
slu said:
That is a ridiculous ruling. How can your own prior art work against you?
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My interpretation of the timeline goes something like this:

1. Apple demos non-patented feature.
2. Third-party can conceivably copy that feature, legitimately, because it's not patented.
3. Apple applies for patent.

My understanding (which in this case is a fancy way of saying "my guess") is that since a third-party could already have legitimately copied/implemented that feature before Apple attempted to patent it, it would therefore not be eligible for a patent.

But I'm from a country that's disallowing software patents from next year, so what do I know? :)
 
Renzatic said:
That's a yes and no situation. They did initially license the GUI from Xerox for stock options, but then ended going beyond the initial agreement when they applied the whole thing to the first Mac. They were only allowed to use Xerox tech on the Lisa. Nothing else.
.
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I'd like to see a citation for that claim. I've never heard it said that the agreement only applied to Lisa. I'd be flabbergasted to see that Jobs every would have agreed to a deal that only applied to one product.
I call BS, but await the citation.
 
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