

Apple v. Samsung - Meet the foreman of the jury - hornbaker
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/25/apple-v-samsung-meet-the-foreman-of-the-jury/

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danielweber
Did the guy invite media interviews, or has the media just taken it upon
themselves to pick his life apart in great detail for him doing his civic
duty?

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larsberg
That poor guy will _never_ be able to go out for Korean food again...

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learc83
Woah, I can't believe this guy got through voir dire. He has a patent, seems
like something Samsung would have really wanted to avoid.

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guelo
I wonder what phone he owns. People seem to develop a strong personal
attachment to their brand of smartphone.

~~~
lomegor
I think I've read somewhere that none of the jury's had a Samsung phone or an
iPhone and that few of them had smartphones.

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wamatt
Steve Jobs: "Good artists borrow, great artists steal"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

therefore... oh wait

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nirvana
I think this is actually bad news. Since the guy has a patent to his name,
that means he understood what patents are. (EG: protection for unique
inventions, not monopolies on features or ideas.)

If the jury had been completely non-technical, and subjected to the nonsense
propaganda you see so much these days (that patents are "trivial" and that
they cover ideas) and _still_ found in Apple's favor, then this would bolster
the trust one can have in the court system.

Further, it is kinda funny that the foreman of the jury has more technical
knowledge than many of the posters on "Hacker News", who seem to have no
patents and little understanding of what patents are.

~~~
JoelSutherland
Hi, I'm a poster on Hacker News and I can read.

Here is the core claim from the '915 patent:

    
    
      A machine implemented method for scrolling on a touch-sensitive display of a device
      comprising:
    
      1. receiving a user input, the user input is one or more input points applied to
      the touch-sensitive display that is integrated with the device;
    
      2. creating an event object in response to the user input;
    
      3. determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by
      distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display
      that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to
      the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation;
    
      4. issuing at least one scroll or gesture call based on invoking the scroll or
      gesture operation;
    
      5. responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a window having
      a view associated with the event object based on an amount of a scroll with the
      scroll stopped at a predetermined position in relation to the user input; and
    
      6. responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view
      associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in
      the form of the user input.
    

Here is text from the paper
(<http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/person/rekimoto/papers/chi02.pdf>) that accompanied
this 2002 video (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waSXkJBKT1s#t=2m20s>) of this
exact same behavior:

    
    
      Figure 12 shows a map browsing system. The user scrolls the map by sliding a ﬁnger
      along the sensor surface. If the user touches the surface with two or more ﬁngers,
      by changing the distance from the ﬁngers to the surface, he/she can control the map
      scale. Simultaneous control of scrolling and zooming is intuitive, because the user
      feels as if his or her ﬁngers are ﬁxed to the map’s surface.
    

It is true that I don't understand patents very well. But, those are the same
thing.

Since you seem to understand the patent system well enough to drop
generalizations about the HN population, would you please explain how this can
be and also why it should be.

~~~
skue
IANAL either, but I would certainly not presume that your example describes
the same thing from an IP standpoint.

For example, you could start with the first sentence in Apple's claim: it
applies to a "touch-sensitive display." What you cited incorporates a touch-
sensitive sensor without a display that responds similarly. It's not
unreasonable to say that a projector screen is not the same as a display.

~~~
JoelSutherland
I don't buy that. A projector is a display, right? Otherwise this sentence
would be possible: "I showed my powerpoint the the executive board without
using a display".

Either way it doesn't seem relevant since it is capacitive and display-
covering transparent capacitive panels have been in existence since at least
1983. (Bob Boie, Bell Labs)

If it was relevant, shouldn't Samsung be in the clear for their AMOLED
displays since the patent only mentions LCDs? (elsewhere in the doc)

~~~
skue
You realize you are making the OP's point?

He alluded to HN posters who make broad IP statements without the experience
or training to back them up. I'm not arguing the other side -- I was just
trying to point out that the issue may be more complex than you assume. Take
of that what you want.

~~~
JoelSutherland
I haven't made any IP statements, broad or otherwise.

I agree that the issue is surely complex. It does seem fair to assume that I
can use logic and literacy to at least isolate the items I don't understand.
If you look a few comments down, we seem to have reached that point.

