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I'm confused. The claims are "1. The ornamental design for a portable display device, as shown and described."

No mention of rounded corners. This is the patent I'm looking at is this not the right one? Certainly looks noticably different from the TC1100.

Here's the argument for non-obviousness from the patent:

One problem associated with using touch screens on portable devices is the unintentional activation or deactivation of functions due to unintentional contact with the touch screen. Thus, portable devices, touch screens on such devices, and/or applications running on such devices may be locked upon satisfaction of predefined lock conditions, such as upon entering an active call, after a predetermined time of idleness has elapsed, or upon manual locking by a user.

Devices with touch screens and/or applications running on such devices may be unlocked by any of several well-known unlocking procedures, such as pressing a predefined set of buttons (simultaneously or sequentially) or entering a code or password. These unlock procedures, however, have drawbacks. The button combinations may be hard to perform. Creating, memorizing, and recalling passwords, codes, and the like can be quite burdensome. These drawbacks may reduce the ease of use of the unlocking process and, as a consequence, the ease of use of the device in general. Accordingly, there is a need for more efficient, user-friendly procedures for unlocking such devices, touch screens, and/or applications.

Apple was trying to come up with a way to prevent butt-dialing and other unwanted device actions. The point of using a sliding motion is that it's unlikely to happen via random touches, but is reasonably intutive.

Microsoft's video doesn't really show a slider. It shows touch buttons that look visually like sliders. But you can trip them just by touching in the active area for the desired state. This is shown in the video where the demonstrator runs their finger down a column of switches and they all switch. Apple requires an explicit "click and drag" operation to unlock.

It may seem trivial, but if nobody did it before the patent, and everybody wanted to do it after the patent, it's a valid invention. "Obvious" does not mean "obvious in hindsight".

Apple's patent claim is for a portable device that uses a single image. The video does not demonstrate a portable device, nor is it done using a single image. Notably, as shown in the screen capture or TFA, two different images represent ON vs. OFF.

https://www.google.com/patents/US8046721

To be clear...you are stating why this video may not apply to show that the Apple's patent may be non-novel, because it may be an improvement over the prior art, however, that certainly doesn't mean it's nonobvious, right?

Note: I haven't read the actual patent's claims so I have no idea if there's anything nonobvious in there (patent claims != title, unlike what most /.'ers think), but your points of "on a portable device" and "done using a single image" sure don't seem nonobvious.

These are the same kind of idiots that seriously think apple patented a rounded rectangle,

US D690,300 S

1. The ornamental design for a portable display device, as shown and described.

It's easier to see all of the images from this link: http://www.google.com/patents/...

They filed a patent for a rectangular tablet with rounded corners on Sept 14, 2012, and were granted a 14 year patent term on Sept. 24, 2013. But don't let reality get in the way of the Dunning–Kruger effect. That would be silly.

Apple's patent claim is for a portable device that uses a single image. The video does not demonstrate a portable device, nor is it done using a single image. Notably, as shown in the screen capture or TFA, two different images represent ON vs. OFF.

https://www.google.com/patents/US8046721

You're referring to the civet, more like a cat than a rodent. If you search for "cat poop coffee" you'll find all kinds of information that you probably would rather not know.

Electrical transmission lines operate at hundreds of kV so we must have insulators up to the task.

Those transmission lines don't have insulation. The wires are completely bare. When they attach to towers, they use huge ceramic insulators which look like this.

There's no way you can route 100kV into a car and not have it explode.

If you need to sell some stock or commodity within a second of buying it, then something is wrong

Oh, yeah? Then, please, tell me in your infinite wisdom how long I should wait? Ten years? Twenty?

The fact is that ANY delay in a feedback system tends to destabilize it. In mechanical systems this is called "backlash" and there is extensive research on how to eliminate it and cope with the problems it causes. Anyone who proposes to artificially introduce backlash in a feedback system know nothing about what he is talking about.

In a market it would be trivially easy to manipulate prices if an artificial delay were involved, especially for the bigger traders. Put a buy order for a million shares and watch the prices rise, then sell at the higher price that would result a half second later. The same principle would work no matter how long the delay is.

Markets work so well because there is negative feedback in many different loops all over the economy. Some of these loops have shorter response times, other are slower to respond. If you invent an artificial delay that overlaps everything, this creates a well defined eignevalue that anyone with the proper technical knowledge could exploit.

And if you want to be super-pendantic the three worlds as developed by Zhou were actually the first world as the superpowers (US and USSR), the 2nd world as the allies of the superpowers (e.g. NATO and Warsaw pact countries), and the 3rd world as the non-aligned nations.
Source

Besides that, with the fall of communism and the revolutions in the late 80's the definitions of first world, second world, and third world have moved to those of economic prosperity. So your definitions fail to meet both the modern standard, and the historical one.

Actually it's a warts-and-all trip down memory lane: Early California Oil: A Photographic History, 1865-1940. Lots of warts to put it mildly, dumping the tanker is just one that sticks out in my mind. Oil companies used to overdrill fields as a matter of course, another memorable photo is of a couple of cottages separated by only 20 feet or so, with a derrick in between them.

Google already has several TV interface devices on the market. There's Google Chromecast, of course. Google also sells a set top-box used with Google Fiber That also comes with the Google Storage Box, which is a 2TB file server for storing downloaded content. There's the old Google TV, which is mostly Android software inside.

So Google has this covered already. They have a device for viewing TV over the Internet, and they have a cable box for their cable system. They're probably going to tweak the UI on one of those and promote that as a new product.

Google already has several TV interface devices on the market. There's Google Chromecast, of course. Google also sells a set top-box used with Google Fiber That also comes with the Google Storage Box, which is a 2TB file server for storing downloaded content. There's the old Google TV, which is mostly Android software inside.

So Google has this covered already. They have a device for viewing TV over the Internet, and they have a cable box for their cable system. They're probably going to tweak the UI on one of those and promote that as a new product.

There is only so much information you can store in a couple square cm, if you want it to be able to be reliably retrieved by a camera, qr code or not. Your comment.

Grishnakh, now that the hooraw on this particular thread has blown past, I suggest taking a close look at Henry Ford's expressions of opinion before using this particular example again.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Not trying to shame or crank you, especially with your uber-cool username. You make a valid point, it's just that the example wasn't quite the best. Thanks for your valiant, but futile, attempt to add intelligence to the discussion.

Just looked at some of the questions and they look mostly like standard read input and spit out an optimization answer. As someone else said on Slashdot years ago, the problem with such puzzlers is they select for people who like solving complex tasks, not for people who like avoiding such tasks and like helping others avoid them (as in people full of diligently applied hard-working laziness). For a company like Google that supposedly prides itself on making easy to use software, this would seem to indicate they generally are hiring the wrong sort of person (as much as the world and/or Google needs some great algorithm designers and implementers). What about the skills to know what is a good question to ask? Of course, our entire mainstream pipeline of schooling engineers and scientists has that sort of problem...

Related by the then Vice-Provost of Caltech, David Goodstein:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully underrepresented among the scientists, because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system of education is designed to produce precisely that result."

See also: http://books.google.com/books/...
"In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. "The Difference" is about how we think in groups--and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity--not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities.
"The Difference" reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup.
Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences f

A copy and paste that went bad, one more attempt

The PC won the computer wars (the players being Atari, Amiga, and the Mac which ran the Motorola 68000 chip) because it was backward compatible (to the 8080). That compatibility was broken in the early 2000's by both IBM and Microsoft due to AMD and the 64 bit architecture.

http://books.google.com/books?...

There was a chance in the early 90's to take make the 68000 chip the processor of the masses, but backward compatibility is what won IBM the market, and the chip Apple, Windows, Linux, and AMD use.

The reason was software, no matter what chip IBM came out with, ones older software would work with it. And the wall the computer wars hit everytime.

----
I found the link through a search but "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" By Scott Mueller - is a hell of a good book, whatever version.

First hit on Amazon for search: "Core i3 desktop"

http://www.amazon.com/M11AA-US...

$479 for a computer running Windows 7 Pro

**
$9,117,900.00
Pounds to Dollars conversion
https://www.google.com/search?...

**

The UK government is only willing to spend as much as 18,235 new personal computers cost. The cost of replacing those 800,000 XP-running computers is 43x higher than this budget, so sure, it saves them a lot of money up front, but they're still stuck with a bunch of shitty XP boxes. Someone should fire their CEO and CFO for making such a terribly short-sighted decision.

This what you nerdholes continue to gloss over: There is a lot more to a successful OS then its technical capabilities.

Technical capabilities has nothing to do with it, it was backward compatibility.

The PC won the computer wars (the players being Atari, Amiga, and the Mac which ran the Motorola 68000 chip) because it was backward compatible (to the 8080). That compatibility was broken in the early 2000's by both IBM and Microsoft due to AMD and the 64 bit architecture.

http://books.google.com/books?...

There was a chance in the early 90's to take make the 68000 chip the processor of the masses, but backward compatibility is what won IBM the market, and the chip Apple, Windows, Linux, and AMD now use.

The reason was software, no matter what chip IBM came out with peoples older software would work with it. And the wall the computer wars hit everytime.

Personal foul, 15 yard penalty for Type I Error when attempting to correct spelling. Repeat the down.

But I wall you all to STFU about it because any solution will end up destroying the world economy.

Sounds like alarmism to me. What does the economics profession say? I suppose they are just another bunch of people who you think are stupid.

Yes, just like the other state universities in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
(WGU is a state university in those states).

https://www.google.com/search?...

BTW, you might want to read the first link in those search results for the search you posted. Quite obviously you didn't bother.
It sure is amazing that a school with only 43,000 students each year has a couple who were unhappy.
WGU graduates more students every year than Harvard, Princeton, and Yale put together. With that number, there's certainly going to be a few people who are unhappy that they didn't accept a certain class for transfer or whatever.

scam much?

One lucky skydiver!!!

Especially if he's a Bob Shaw fan! ;-)

Zimbra ... doesn't even have a desktop client.

Yeah totally doesn't have one.

None of which will run on a desktop and so are completely beside the point.

Why do they have to run on a desktop? The mobile clients are perfectly usable and much more useful given that you aren't tied to your desk.

Dismissing obvious bias is valid. PRMan's bias is obvious, shown by the use of absolutes.

As for 60 Minutes' dubbing being obvious, Google can show us just how many people noticed or cared. Looking at the first several results, the only "LOTS of people" were Tesla enthusiasts already.

The point I'm making is that the claim that inaccurate sound is widely noticed is primarily the result of heavy confirmation bias. Incidents where a rough cut or particularly awkward clip were used are remembered because they align with the observer's preconceived notion. Incidents where the sound was mixed well are not remembered, because the audio quality was not notable.

"Early to bed and early to rise make a man healthy, wealthy and wise".

http://books.google.com/books?...

Another caveat, and a much more important one at that: there is something called TRD: Treatment Resistant Depression. SSRIs have been proven to have barely any effect at all (https://www.google.com/search?q=SSRI%20ineffective ).

What seems to be way more effective is ketamine: https://www.google.com/search?... But it suffers from not being easy to administer (40 mins IV drip), not being approved for treatment in depression. And maybe most importantly (or tinfoil hat): there's little money in it...

Another famous coding competition of interest, Google Code Jam is about to start... (registration ends in a week),

... the sound track of a floppy boot for my laptop.

https://www.google.com/#q=yout...

Lots of choices.

Aluminum/aluminium isn't as simple as "dumb Americans mangling English". Case in point: http://books.google.com/books?... (*British* chemist Humphry Davy, in 1812). It's an "acceptable variant", apparently :)

> Which is a largely fabricated phenomena constructed
> by corporations to sell you a product

Partly. These things always 1) start in a genuine way, then 2) others see the originators and want to be like them, and then 3) when there's enough demand, companies step in to supply it. No company created rock and roll, or hip-hop, or skaters, or surfers, or punk music. The first 2 steps are always natural and genuine.

> Will Wheaton was never a "geek" or "nerd"

You do know that he got his start on a little science-fiction show, right? Actors in nerdy roles are perceived as nerds. And perception is reality. He may not have thought himself a nerd, but everyone treated him as if he was.

> He wasn't a persecuted Poindexter

Oh really? Do you think there's an appreciable difference between being picked on in school and the whole damn Internet picking on you?

I am working on Fedora builds for it -- pics of it on my bench here and here.

I am working on Fedora builds for it -- pics of it on my bench here and here.

I just checked - NASDAQ is up significantly over DOW and S&P500, just like the dot-com days (98-99), whereas for the most part between 2001 and 2008, NASDAQ was on the same level as the other indices.

Google Finance

Seriously, why can't we have cables that fit into each other as well as be symmetrical. Oh wait, that's thanks to the patent system. At least this is progress and maybe we will have one standard for most types of application (not holding my breath).

I have a FTA system which is half setup, cobbled together from some spare parts plus a new receiver and LNBF.

The terrain near my house has proven to be unfriendly. I live on the west side of Puget Sound, so the satellites are already fairly close to the horizon. We're in a old-growth forest area; most of the trees around my house are around the 100' mark. We're just on the other side of a few hills which block antenna reception from any of the local networks, hence my tinkering with FTA equipment.

Even so, Satellite AR shows that I should just be able to pick up AMC 6 which has the NBC feeds. Alas, despite a few hours of trying, I haven't been able to get a signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"Nunez descends into the valley and finds an unusual village with windowless houses and a network of paths, all bordered by curbs. Upon discovering that everyone is blind, Nunez begins reciting to himself the refrain, "In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King". He realises that he can teach and rule them, but the villagers have no concept of sight, and do not understand his attempts to explain this fifth sense to them. Frustrated, Nunez becomes angry, but the villagers calm him, and he reluctantly submits to their way of life, because returning to the outside world seems impossible.
Nunez is assigned to work for a villager named Yacob. He becomes attracted to Yacob's youngest daughter, Medina-Sarote. Nunez and Medina-Sarote soon fall in love with one another, and having won her confidence, Nunez slowly starts trying to explain sight to her. Medina-Sarote, however, simply dismisses it as his imagination. When Nunez asks for her hand in marriage, he is turned down by the village elders on account of his "unstable" obsession with "sight". The village doctor suggests that Nunez's eyes be removed, claiming that they are diseased and are affecting his brain. Nunez reluctantly consents to the operation because of his love for Medina-Sarote. However, at sunrise on the day of the operation, while all the villagers are asleep, Nunez, the failed King of the Blind, sets off for the mountains (without provisions or equipment), hoping to find a passage to the outside world, and escape the valley."

While I loved the cartoon version of "A Connectuct Yankeee in King Arthur's Court", plus similar stories ("Lest Darkness Fall" etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... and even "Coneheads"), in practice, it seems that being significantly different in cultural outlook from a backwards society can be a huge handicap leading to isolation (e.g. "Stranger in a Strange Land" or the religious story Doug Adams called being nailed to a tree 2000 years ago for suggesting people might try being nice to each other).

Another take on all that:
http://www.fromthewilderness.c...
"Start building your lifeboats where you are now. I can see that the lessons I have learned here are important whether you arethinking of moving from city to countryside, state to state, or nation to nation. Whatever shortcomings you may think exist where you live are far outnumbered by the advantages you have where you are a part of an existing ecosystem that you know and which knows you. If the time comes when it is necessary to leave that community you will be better off moving with your tribe rather than moving alone."

What did brilliance in the end get Tesla? Or Semmelweis? Or Shelton? Or Gatto? or CH Douglas? Or Charles Fourier? Or even Galileo? Or Dee Hock founder of Visa and the Chaordic Commons or Michael Philips founder of MasterCard? Or Theodore Sturgeon and "The Skills of Xanadu"? Or Doug Engelbart and "The Mother of All Demos" and the mouse? Or even Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls and others with the increasingly forgotten-but-continually-badly-re-invented Smalltalk (e.g. Ruby & Java & many others)? See on Kay in particular:
https://www.google.com/search?...

How many of them have most people even heard of? Yet they provided many of the better ideas that shape our lives today. There are many other mostly forgotten people we could add to that list, even if there may be some small subgroup of fans at some point in time. And the people I list are even on the upper end of the scale as at least having been recognized as mostly ignored or forgotten despite being brilliant, unlike legions of other people who have contributed to society such as those who bred potatoes or apples or r

There's the speakers, the earphone jack, the charging jack, the silence switch, the on-off switch

I thought you said you had an iPhone? Theon-off switch is not recessed, it's just a button coming from the top.

The other holes are mostly too large to matter - but in fact I have had lint build up in the headphone jack that had to be cleaned.

You are also ignoring that none of those things really need cleaning to function, whereas even very small amount of cruft means visual impairment. Well, except for the headphone jack - it's pretty robust but as I said after some time I did have to clean it once.

Look, no, a magnet can't - because it can't enforce lateral alignment.

A set of magnets very well can. Perhaps you'd care to explain why some external lens makers already use magnetic mounts if it cannot work? I have some lenses that mount this way on the phone myself, it works great which is why I suggested the idea. I just don't use them much because they want you to glue a metal ring onto the phone over the lens, but if it were built into the phone...

Don't you feel pretty stupid claiming something cannot work without checking to see if people are doing it already? Have you never used magnets that were the shape of a tourus? They instantly align the same way, held quite strongly...

You don't seem to be coming at this from the angle of having any practical experience at all. As I have said, I have a number of external lenses I use on the iPhone. Perhaps you should try listening to someone who knows what the hell they are talking about? I mean, you have already brought great shame to yourself and anyone digging up this point would probably think twice about hiring you.

I'll let you have the last response, because you idiots do prattle on so and I'm too busy to help you further...

Given the amount of options we have already of not having to drive ourselves to get anywhere

Really?

Just try getting a cab here.
It's not happening. There are millions of people stuck in that situation.
I guess you could walk, bike, or ride a horse, but it'll take several days to get anywhere important.

Okay, you're right about the X...I'll give you that one.

But there a have been plenty of folding wing aircraft, and no, I'm not talking about sweep wings. The first were way back in the 1930s

https://www.google.com/search?...

And yet, Canon and Nikon (and many others) all have patents on their specific mounting mechanisms (one example of many, I won't do all your googling for you). It's almost as if coming up with a new way of doing an old thing with additional/different abilities/functionality lets you patent your specific new method. Weird, huh?

Maybe because everyone else that has ever done this also patented it for their specific version?

Examples:
Nikon F mount: https://www.google.com/patents...
Pentax K mount: http://www.google.com/patents/...

Oh, but EVIL APPLE OMG!!! The hypocrisy around here is astounding.

Maybe because everyone else that has ever done this also patented it for their specific version?

Examples:
Nikon F mount: https://www.google.com/patents...
Pentax K mount: http://www.google.com/patents/...

Oh, but EVIL APPLE OMG!!! The hypocrisy around here is astounding.

you have to put up with a motorized dish, or you need to fill your yard with several dishes

Look, ma, no motor!

Anyhow, ATSC OTA is plenty enough for me. Good thing I'm not a sports fan.

It seems every other week some genius thinks he can solve the stolen phone epidemic with a magical "kill switch". These people need to be slapped repeatedly with a clue-by-four, because as long as phones have value as parts or can be resold to fools, they will still be stolen.

But okay, let's imagine for a moment that all cell phones are suddenly equipped with a kill switch that makes them disappear upon being reported stolen. So, you believe desperate criminal types who are mugging people for valuable electronics are simply going to throw their hands up and shout "Curses! Foiled again!"?

This kinda reminds me how Bitcoin fans can go on and on about how secure the blockchain is and how amazingly difficult it would be to game the system. So, of course, the criminals simply resort to good old fashioned scams and schemes to nefariously obtain Bitcoins.

Sounds a lot like Google TiSP (albeit, a few days early).

I wear a wrist watch most of the time. I wear a belt loop watch when I think I might bang up a wrist watch.

Not that I think that form factor is going to light the world on fire, but I find them as convenient and accessible as a wrist watch, and they're not as unabashedly quaint as a pocket watch.

when climate scientists study old paintings and take the colors they find there as both accurate and, in effect, "literally true" this is SCIENCE and must be respected as such.... but when religious people take their "holy book" (which, whether it's "Holy" or not is at least a written document whose many chapters can be documented to be unchanged over thousands of years) seriously in the field of archaeology to aid in the interpretation of things like the locations of ancient cities and the identification of objects etc (not even the religious claims of the book) this is ANTI-SCIENCE and labelled as "dubious" because "everybody KNOWS" the document is just allegory and artistic and should "obviously" not be taken literally... hmmmmmmm...

I would like to submit another piece of art to demonstrate that climate was much better in the 1980's (in the super-polluted days of the evil Reagan) than it was in 1912: Consider Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 and compare with, for example this example of 1980's art. Clearly the climate of the 1980's, even with all of its corrupt capitalist pollution was far better for the health of female humans.

Climate science has become the state-sponsored religion of the left. We must all listen to the preachers, our children must all attend the state-run seminaries and recite the liturgies. We must all pay a portion of our incomes (both in direct taxes and in increased costs of goods and services), some of which fund the scholars, scribes and keepers of the holy texts. We must restrict our behaviours to obey the required moral codes (gay sex may now be OK, but don't you DARE toss a log on the fire! i.e. we've not reduced the religious rules, only changed them to conform to the new religion). Anybody who dissents will be labelled as a heretic and be driven from the public square, whilst the more-earnest follwers call for them to be jailed, "re-educated", or killed. Oh, and given that most people are never going to do any of the climate science themselves (just as most never became theologians in the old religions), for the vast majority of adherents this "new" religion (which is really only the newest form of earth-worshiping paganism) is taken on blind faith.

I think that I actually agree with Blackberry on this one, though I'd think this would fall into trademark territory more than patent technology. Maybe the curved ridges on the keys somehow have a patent I guess...

Rule of thumb: IP law is so complicated that it's safe to assume that (1) TFA got it wrong, (2) the Slashdot summary and title got it wrong, (3) all slashdot posters (including me) got it wrong, with the sole exception of NewYorkCountryLawyer. I think the only way is to read what the actual filing said, and then look up patents, and then look up the claims section of those patents.

As far as I can tell, Blackberry complained that Typo Keyboard infringed one or more of:

* US Patent 7629964 - a patent about the invention of a particular angling+placement of keys on a handheld mobile device where the keys are optimally placed and angled to allow two-thumb typing. It looks like there was thought and extensive user research into figuring out that particular angling and placement. While it was obvious that some kind of angling+placement would be good, I guess no one had done the inventive work to figure out that particular angling+placement.

* US Patent 8162552 - a patent about the invention of a particular ramping of individual keys for the same end. I know that HP had beveled keys before. This patent is for a particular angling and beveling and crest and so on. Again it looks obvious that some kind of beveling is useful, but I guess no one had done the inventive work to pick out this particular angling and beveling. It looks like anyone who used a DIFFERENT angling and beveling wouldn't infringe on this patent.

* US Design Patent D685775 - a design patent which is very specifically for Blackberry's design. Design patents are for the ornamental shape of a functional item, and only apply when the design is novel and not the obvious shape for devices. I guess we didn't have the particular Blackberry proportions or layout on other devices before.

* Blackberry's trade dress. Trade dress is about the recognizable look of a product, that would let consumers readily recognize whether something is distinctively a Blackberry from its distinctive shape, colors etc.

I don't know on the basis of which of these the temporary sales ban was enacted. But I do know that Blackberry keyboards are indeed nicer to type on than any other phone keyboards I've used, and it really does suggest there was something non-obvious about their research into key placement and contours and their particular results. And I do think that Blackberry keyboards have a distinctive recognizable look. From photos, that Typo keyboard really did look a heck of a lot like a Blackberry in both its overall form. If indeed it also copied the particulars of Blackberry placement/beveling, rather than using any of the INFINITE other possible placement/beveling, then it seems like a slam dunk for Blackberry.

I think that I actually agree with Blackberry on this one, though I'd think this would fall into trademark territory more than patent technology. Maybe the curved ridges on the keys somehow have a patent I guess...

Rule of thumb: IP law is so complicated that it's safe to assume that (1) TFA got it wrong, (2) the Slashdot summary and title got it wrong, (3) all slashdot posters (including me) got it wrong, with the sole exception of NewYorkCountryLawyer. I think the only way is to read what the actual filing said, and then look up patents, and then look up the claims section of those patents.

As far as I can tell, Blackberry complained that Typo Keyboard infringed one or more of:

* US Patent 7629964 - a patent about the invention of a particular angling+placement of keys on a handheld mobile device where the keys are optimally placed and angled to allow two-thumb typing. It looks like there was thought and extensive user research into figuring out that particular angling and placement. While it was obvious that some kind of angling+placement would be good, I guess no one had done the inventive work to figure out that particular angling+placement.

* US Patent 8162552 - a patent about the invention of a particular ramping of individual keys for the same end. I know that HP had beveled keys before. This patent is for a particular angling and beveling and crest and so on. Again it looks obvious that some kind of beveling is useful, but I guess no one had done the inventive work to pick out this particular angling and beveling. It looks like anyone who used a DIFFERENT angling and beveling wouldn't infringe on this patent.

* US Design Patent D685775 - a design patent which is very specifically for Blackberry's design. Design patents are for the ornamental shape of a functional item, and only apply when the design is novel and not the obvious shape for devices. I guess we didn't have the particular Blackberry proportions or layout on other devices before.

* Blackberry's trade dress. Trade dress is about the recognizable look of a product, that would let consumers readily recognize whether something is distinctively a Blackberry from its distinctive shape, colors etc.

I don't know on the basis of which of these the temporary sales ban was enacted. But I do know that Blackberry keyboards are indeed nicer to type on than any other phone keyboards I've used, and it really does suggest there was something non-obvious about their research into key placement and contours and their particular results. And I do think that Blackberry keyboards have a distinctive recognizable look. From photos, that Typo keyboard really did look a heck of a lot like a Blackberry in both its overall form. If indeed it also copied the particulars of Blackberry placement/beveling, rather than using any of the INFINITE other possible placement/beveling, then it seems like a slam dunk for Blackberry.