Too true my friend 95% global coverage with their OS is surely coming to an end soon.. Go Apple..
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USPTO Invalidates One of Apple's iPhone Design Patents in Apple vs. Samsung Lawsuit
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If the author cares, the title of the article is materially incorrect. No patent has been invalidated.
US Patent D618,677 (aka rounded corners) has been invalidated for the time being. Apple can (and probably will) appeal...which will drag the trial out another couple years.
Dashed lines are almost always for reference only, and are not part of the design being patented.
Perhaps what design patents need... but don't always have... is an optional claim description of non-obvious drawing details. For instance, sometimes it's difficult to tell if lines drawn to represent a glossy flat face are part of the patent or not.
Of interest: the USPTO rejection document suggests several ways for Apple to re-apply the patent as a new one with an older date of its own.
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Yeah, I don't think this particular argument is over-- that's why its a non-final ruling...
I've never done a design patent, so I'm not clear on the details, but reading the ones in question here it seems that Apple did include a description in the 2007 filings that wasn't included in the 2008 filing:
I don't know how the law works-- if you reference an earlier claim in a later one, does that statement carry forward? If so, then I think the correct interpretation is that the broken lines in the 2008 filing are for illustrative purposes only unless stated otherwise. USPTO seems to be saying not-- they interpret the broken line, probably combined with the color change, as excluding the home button from the claim.
I agree though-- more descriptive text would go a long way. Or more descriptive diagrams.
Some of this may be a patent strategy that backfired though-- Apple may have been keeping it intentionally vague assuming they'd have the legal muscle reshape the interpretation in court. I've seen that happen before where a company assumes the threat will come from smaller players and assume a larger company would be content to settle.
Nope. It has not been invalidated.
This is not a trial.
And appeal is not the next stage. The next stage is further correspondence with the patent office to finally determine if the patent should be revoked. An appeal could follow if the patent office issues a final decision, which would then revoke the patent.
Just saying... I'd say it's kind of in the weeds of a point, but the author made a point of putting this in the title...
Apple's pulling the wool over the patents office eye's ?
I think the more features Apple implements into iOS, the more infringements their will be against Apple ,or Samsung for that matter as well..
It still comes all back to, if u know whats out there, u wouldn't be doing it in the first place and there would be no reason to sit through this in court for no reason.
if i make x... then several years later i come out with a new product, i'm not going to try and do x again. because i already know its done.
I think the more features Apple implements into iOS, the more infringements their will be against Apple ,or Samsung for that matter as well..
It still comes all back to, if u know whats out there, u wouldn't be doing it in the first place and there would be no reason to sit through this in court for no reason.
if i make x... then several years later i come out with a new product, i'm not going to try and do x again. because i already know its done.
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In this case, I'd say yes. The patent in question is a divisional type, meaning that it's a separate invention which was part of what had already been described in the patent that it's claiming a priority date from. So the original description applies.
Right, it's specifically excluding the home button area, which the earlier patents did not.
The original patent (D558,758) filed Jan 2007 includes the entire original iPhone _except_ for the dashed (not included) speaker and home button and LCD part. The first continuation patent (D581,922) filed Jul 2007 shows the dark flat front panel but also leaves out the speaker and home button holes by dashing them. See left two images below.
The rejected patent (D618,677 - far right) filed Nov 2008 unfortunately includes a solid speaker grill (which immediately means it's not an invention that was already part of the original, oops). Plus it fails to color in the Home button hole, which is why the re-examiner said its dashes were showing a hole instead of just a non-included visual reference like the other two did.
The upshot is, the USPTO is saying is that this patent cannot claim to be part of the original patent shown far left, but is instead an entirely new design patent. Thus while it could exist as its own patent, it cannot claim the earlier date.
It might have been just a careless mistake on the part of the patent artist, but a possibly costly one.
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Thanks for the tutorial. What you're saying is actually pretty clear.
I wonder why they left the speaker out of the originals? Unsure how they'd want to evolve it maybe?
Less can be more when it comes to claims
If they had included the speaker grill and home button shapes, then someone could change those shapes and probably avoid infringement on the whole.
Yeah, that's the gambit though-- if you don't include it, it's not covered but if you do then something else isn't...Less can be more when it comes to claims
If they had included the speaker grill and home button shapes, then someone could change those shapes and probably avoid infringement on the whole.
Had this been an invention rather than a design, there would have been separate claims with and without the speaker, or maybe a independent claim without it and a dependent claim with it. Does an equivalent concept exist in design patents?
I believe that patents were "first to invent" back in 2008 and more recently changed to "first to file". If it was also "first to design" rather than "first to file" then the upcoming rounds could get messy...
Exactly, for utility patents you can have multiple claims, dependent and independent.
Design patents can only have one claimed design concept.
But... in the submitted drawings for that single design concept, you can include multiple similar "embodiments", which works out a bit like multiple dependent claims, even if it's not called that.
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In fact, upon further investigation I see that the original iPhone design patent mentioned here DID have more than one embodiment drawn (I was using an old viewer before and missed this).
It had just as you suggested, some drawings with, and some without, the speaker and the home button dashed.
So the only real problem with that 2008 patent was that non-shaded home button hole. That made it a new design, as explained previously.
Thanks for prodding me to look closer.
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