

USPTO Preliminarily Invalidates Apple's 'Steve Jobs Patent' on the iPhone - mtgx
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/12/07/u-s-patent-office-preliminarily-invalidates-apples-steve-jobs-patent-on-the-iphone/

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revelation
_detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying
one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a
command for the device, and processing the command._

So literally the function of every touchscreen device ever? Touchscreens have
been around since 1970; this was filed for in 2006.

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brian_cloutier
Once again, reading snippets from a patent does nothing. You might as well
read a copyrighted story and exclaim in horror "Well this is rich, he's trying
to claim 'Once upon a time' for himself!"

A patent does not claim every single thing that is listed. An infringing
device must contain every single thing listed in the claims.

Claim 7 is my favorite: "The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one
heuristic of the one or more heuristics, a contact comprising a simultaneous
two-thumb twisting gesture corresponds to a 90.degree. screen rotation
command."

~~~
gjm11
> _An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in the claims._

An infringing device must contain every single thing listed in _at least one
of the claims_. If you infringe on any single claim, then you infringe.

Usually what happens is that claim 1 is really broad, and then there's a sort
of tree of claims with claim 1 at the root and more specific claims further
down the tree. The early claims may well get invalidated when an infringement
case goes to court, but the patent-holder hopes that the later more specific
ones will survive and still be broad enough to cover what their rivals are
doing.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I agree with the general point brian_cloutier is
making.)

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DigitalJack
If you want to see the prosecution history and documentation of a patent, you
can go to the PAIR portal of the uspto[1]. After going through a Captcha, you
can then search for a patent# or application #, and then click on the "image
wrapper" tab.

It's very enlightening to see patents go through rejections and resubmittals,
and what the explanations are for rejection or why a rejection should be
reconsidered.

[1] <http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair>

~~~
kyrra
If you look the patent up on Google Patents, you can download all the "Public
PAIR data". It's 56MB for this patent.

Inside of the zip there is a file located at:
12101832-image_file_wrapper/12101832-image_file_wrapper.tsv

It's a tab-delimited version of the table on the USPTO site for "image file
wrapper". It also has all the PDFs in that directory.

<http://www.google.com/patents/US7479949>

~~~
monochromatic
Very cool! I did not realize Google Patents had this capability.

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ChuckMcM
I find this an interesting side effect of patent-a-geddon. The government
looks stupid, and politicians are only human and don't like to be associated
with 'stupid' so they react.

The result has been a tremendous amount of "light" being shown on the patent
process, the people who run the process, the goals of the process, the effects
of the process, and perhaps most importantly the stuff that makes it through
that process.

There is a lot of stuff that could use some "light" therapy. The danger is
that Congress is a blunt instrument at best and a complete disaster at worst.
So one has to hope that enough tension is created such that the good people
are empowered to fix things, but not so much that the bogus people can use it
to do more harm than good.

~~~
arbuge
Given the vast sums of money that patent trolls are blood-sucking out of
legitimate software and web companies these days (see another post currently
also on the front page of HN), I'm personally quite looking forward to a
massive swing of the pendulum in the other direction.

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jessaustin
Wow, scrolling down from that article was a hilarious reminder how much more
cogent HN comments tend to be than any other comments on the interwebs. "Grrr!
USPTO is mean to Apple! How dare they! I'm mad!" Etc.

~~~
duaneb
> Wow, scrolling down from that article was a hilarious reminder how much more
> cogent HN comments tend to be than any other comments on the interwebs.
> "Grrr! USPTO is mean to Apple! How dare they! I'm mad!" Etc.

Really? It seems like the entire internet is anti-patents, even apple fans.

~~~
miahi
I don't think HN or the Internet is anti-patents, but anti-stupid patents and
anti-patent trolls.

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xntrk
Maybe the USPTO finally decided to look for prior art?

~~~
DannyBee
No, i believe this was due to a second re-exam request (they denied the first)

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linuxhansl
Finally this is (seeming) insanity is brought to the spotlight.

Here's to hoping that between invalidating trivial patents like these and
initiatives like Twitters "Innovator’s Patent Agreement" (which requires all
inventors to agree before a patent can be used offensively), the current
situation will finally come to an end.

~~~
lukifer
The problem with Twitter's patent agreement (and others like it) is that it is
not legally binding. However good their intentions now (and I believe they are
genuine), sooner or later the company will come under new management, or have
their assets sold for scrap, at which point all those "defensive" patents get
weaponized and used for extortion.

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larrys
I'm wondering if nefarious advance knowledge of this office action was a cause
for the drop in Apple's stock as shown here:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL+Basic+Chart&t=1m](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL+Basic+Chart&t=1m)

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josteink
May Apple get a big one up the rear. Asshole patent-trolls keeping the
software-business back.

~~~
monochromatic
I don't think you know what "patent troll" means.

