
UI/UX Patterns You Literally Cannot Design: Design Patents from Tech Companies - xTWOz
https://medium.com/@christiet/ui-ux-patterns-you-literally-cannot-design-design-patents-from-tech-companies-21ae9643dc9e
======
com2kid
I was on a team designing for new a form factor of device, solving problems
that had never been solved.

In retrospect, much of what we did may have looked obvious, but it wasn't. It
was the result of countless hours of design sessions, user studies, and
working through multiple on device implementations to see what worked.

Just as much work was put into the design as into any other invention.

When the iPhone came out, people were amazed at how well everything worked, at
how obvious everything was. A lot of that was due to the focus on design,
making everything just right. Slide to unlock was genius in it's simplicity!

Soon those design elements became "the obvious way to do things" and people
then got upset at Apple for "patenting the obvious".

It wasn't obvious. Ask Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft about it. They all made
smartphones for years before iPhone came out.

I get that patents in general irritate people, but I'll argue that if a
company has spent a lot of resources researching how to do something properly,
that having a way to protect that investment isn't a bad thing for society.

It also helps prevent stagnation, as other ways of accomplishing the same goal
now have to be researched.

It can be a bad thing if there is exactly "one true ultimate design" that a
single company gets a lock down on, but do any of us think that is really
likely given the _incredibly_ narrow scope of design patents?

~~~
Latteland
I think there's huge potential for patented ui patterns to follow the same
problematic sequence as regular patents - patent trolls, and the "it's like
xyz, but on a computer". yes, there were brilliant ideas in the original
iphone, but there were also repurposed things from other domains.

If I am a super rich person like the founder of intellectual ventures (world's
greatest patent trolls), I could just have a team of 100 people iterate
through many different design possibilities (there are some things with only
so many solutions) and patent them all, and then they could get a tax on the
whole industry. Need a file chooser control, we own all potential ones.

~~~
com2kid
IV actually has an interesting methodology where inventors can license their
patents out to IV and IV will licence those patents out to larger companies to
make actual products.

That, for awhile at least, was their core business model. As part of that
agreement, they _have to_ fight to defend the patents of small inventors who
have literally entrusted their life's work to Intellectual Ventures.

I went to a public presentation by IV awhile back where they talked about
their reputation as a patent troll and how they've tried to back off on the
lawsuits and do more and more to work with partners to get products to market.

IV also does a lot of original research in hard sciences. If you remember that
mosquito laser thing, they've spent a lot of time trying to make an actual
product out of that. Turns out making a death laser that only kills harmful
species, and is safe around people is rather hard, and involves a lot of
original engineering work, and then a ton of work going through the government
regulatory process. (Rather strict rules about lasers and all that!)

One of the coolest things they talked about was putting that laser tech to use
on farm lands to zap bugs that harm crops! How they described their bug
species recognition tech was incredibly cool! Obviously it doesn't take care
of all types of bugs, but it is the coolest way I've ever heard of to reduce
pesticide usage, and to do so in a way that is hyper-targeted at only harmful
insects!

Anyway, they make cool tech, and if anyone ever gets a chance to see them talk
about what they do, I'd recommend it.

tl;dr Hacker News meetups have some cool speakers.

------
anoncake
> And lastly, if you have something really unique, consider creating a patent
> for your company with the help of the legal team.

Ctrl-f ethic... nope

Ctrl-f moral... nope

No critical thinking in sight here.

