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Another Garbage Patent
*no comment* writes "Literally "garbage patent" that is, Apple was rewarded a patent for the "Garbage" icon in Mac OS X. The patent documents can be found at the USPTO by clicking here. More on this and other Apple patents are in this article over at the macobserver."
I would think it would make more sense to trademark the icon, not patent it. Wouldn't that give them a little more control over copies?
Although I hate hearing about google, red hat, apple, etc. owning some common detail such as Instant Messaging; one needs to keep in mind that these patents are often the only incentive-protecting mechanism that are available to companies.
If companies couldn't get a patent for something it would be much harder for them to profit and thus they wouldn't develop items/technology as quickly or at all.
To offset this "monopoly" that is legally created, patents have expiration dates. For example: Tylenol(acetaminophen) once cost 'too much' but once it's patent ran out other companies rushed in and the price dropped significantly.
Paying that higher price for some feature on a laptop sucks but would you rather not be able to buy a laptop because no one wanted to produce/invent it?
--Thei Antispamist A useless endevor that will cer
I don't see a single post defending this obviously frivolous patent, or Apple for filing it. I do, however, see your post assuming that people will defend it.
Methinks this says more about you than about the Slashdot population in general.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Have there got to be 5 posts every story about how /.ers (since we're all the same, remember) are contradicting themselves and we're a bunch of loonies? ::sigh:: :D
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
ANd I still say we should boycott the idea of "Software Patents" in general.
Intellectual property, in limit, should be patentable. The original idea was to provide governmental protection for inventors given they FULLY PUBLISH the idea set forth in the patent if and only if that "object" is non-intuitive.
What's turned out is software patents patenting damn near everything in sight. Who cares if it's new or not. These days, making software is becoming a legal minefield, and the USPTO isnt helping (dump dump dump). Even the process of playing a DVD you own can violate 10's of patents. That's why MPlayer is off the US shore.
So, I'm not against intelluctal property, but am against software patents until the UPSTO starts heavily regulating those types. Until then, I say we should violate EVERY software patent we can find until the rules are changed.
Before everyone gets their panties bunched, the article says it is a "design patent". Design patents are an odd category of patents which really are awarded for things that should be under copyright in the first place. They also are very specific; for example, I knew someone who had a "design patent" on an underwater headphone, but of course, only if it was in a very specific shape as well. Besides the greater specificy and focus on "form" and "appearence" rather than function (which is why it really is something that copyright applies better to, but I guess the patent office wanted more money), they have shorter lives and generally are handled differently.
I just have to point out that BMW and Mercedes control less that 3% of the auto market, and on top of that car sales are down over 16% this year. Does this mean that they are going out of business too?
Design patents are offered for those marks in which companies have proprietary rights. Because Apple won't be using the Garbage Icon as an indication of goodwill , it wouldn't qualify for Trademark status.
All in all this is much ado about nothing.
How is this different than a copyright, then? Apple already had a copyright, since you get one automatically unless you declare something to be in the public domain.
"This protects the image that is Apple's trash can, not the function of a trash can on a computer. From the USPTO [uspto.gov]: "
That's a bummer because that trash can was an interesting innovation. Anybody remember the olden days of computers back in the early 80's? People were afraid of them. One of the most voiced fears is "I'm afraid I'll hit the wrong button and wipe out everything!". The "you're putting it there, but it's not your final decision yet" approach was really useful in reducing people's fears that they'll break their computer.
Just because we take it for granted today doesn't mean it's wrong. (Though I do question why this is news and not patented back years ago when it was used...)
Can some explain why a patent is required for this. Since it will only ever exist as an image on a computer screen it seems more like art to me and would seem more appropriate under copywrite laws. The IANAL disclaimer applies big time here.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There will be a point when the whole system will have to be scrapped or totally overhauled. More such "garbage" patents will bring this day closer. I can't wait.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Thomson's brainless analysis was posted on February 20th in the Financial Post. As for the analysis itself:
1) Revenue fell from a year earlier. Making Apple the only computer company to have been hit by the sagging economy.
2) ... the same time Apple's sales were falling, PC sales rose. This tells us nothing about Apple's performance in comparison with competing companies. It only reveals Apple's performance vs. the aggregate of all competing companies. This includes not only Dell, Gateway, and HP, but also Bob's Cheep Komputer Shack. Such comparisons don't tell us whether the overal PC sales growth was fueled by one or two companies or was solid across the board (which it wasn't).
3) ... there aren't any new iMacs in Apple's future. I'll reread that statement and laugh when the next iMac (or the next consumer Mac, whatever it's called) ships. Does this crystal ball have a "reset" button?
4) ...has recently undergone a restructuring and is slowly fading into nothingness. I'm not sure what restructuring he's referring to here, but I'm also not sure how restructuring equals a slow fade to nothingness. Restructuring happens all the time in large organizations, and it can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how and why it is implemented. As to nothingness, why are there so many new O'Reilly books about OS X, so much interest in Apple on Slashdot (vs. 3 years ago), and so many positive reviews of Apple products in publications that include PC Magazine and InfoWorld?
As a final point, Apple, like any large company, engages in intellectual property development and protection as a matter of habit. It's not as if someone at Apple says, "Oh, shit! We'd better get off our asses and come up with a design patent on the trashcan!" The process can take *years* to implement, and at any given time, I'm sure Apple, like any other computer hardware/software company, is pursuing dozens of claims.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The problem with software patents is lack of code disclosure. If the patent judges could compare line-by-line a MS .asp page feature with a php/apache page, they would laugh most of this stuff out of court. Unfortunately, they can't force them to include the patented code, because code is also protected under copyright and trade secret. The patent office is allowing a "black box" style patent--without even proof of a working system. They used to require detailed specs and proof of actual working devices. Now companies like Rambus can draw some pretty pictures and then prosecute the people who actually spend time and resources building the thing. This goes aginst 200 years of precedent!
That alone should be enough to get these thrown out, but patents don't work that way. They are assumed to be sacred, holy, creative genius by the courts until someone spends the time and money to strike each one down. Our wonderfull legal system doesn't allow the courts to "see" what goes on in the real world, only what comes into court--they can't even overturn bad Laws until someone's hanged for breaking it!
It's a design patent, not a utility patent. Go learn the difference before you call it frivolous.
I am glad to catch your post!
Apparently I was wrong thinking that Patents were for processes, not for designs. Was under the impression that Copyright and Trademark were for designs.
Please enlighten?
Thanks in advance!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
That's what I thought. I'll never forget the first time I had to use a Mac. I tried and tried to get the floppy out but couldn't. I finally had to call up a mac friend and ask. The answer is so utterly counter-intuitive that I was shocked. I had been so brainwashed into thinking that Mac were designed for ease of use I couldn't believe that they'd do something so stupid. But they did!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I can actually see Apple using this. What better to stop the Windows users that have made and distributed programs that imitate OS X's Aqua interface than to begin by having another legal device to stop them with?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... Can we all get the stupid trash can off our desktops now? Honestly, does anyone leave it on and actually go rescue things from it? When I click delete, I want the file deleted, not moved somewhere to be found by a nosy roomate or something.
Just because something is cute doesn't mean it needs to be in gnome/kde/windows/apple/gem/whatever desktop.
When people first encounter lack of trash on a unix box, they come running to the sysadmin, who tells them "You cannot undelete files, there gone there gone."
Data isnt something to be hap-hazardly pushed about and retrieved from garbage cans. Back it up, keep track of it if its important. Trash cans encourage a lax attitude toward work habits on the computer.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - George Orwell
These aren't "innovative devlopments that deserve to be protected", this is Look'n'Feel Wars round XIV. I figured that we were done with this shtuph a decade ago. I guess not. (Good thing I renamed the "trash can" to "toilet" on my Atari ST, I might just need to reboot it sooooon...)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
You do that. I'll find a way to get cigarettes and Playboys to you for as many years as they get you for, too...
Not a popular opinion on this site but it's against the law and breaking the law is breaking the law, no matter how wrong you feel the law is. You'd better be damn sure they turn it over (like segregation, or slavery) if you go against it, and that they do it before you're caught. Even if the law is repealed, if you commit the crime while the law exists then you broke the law of the hour and are responsible for it.
Breaking patent and copyright law is thrown around much too trivially these days. While bad laws (horribly bad ones), they are as much laws as is fraud and larceny. Most people aren't caught, but the ones that are are hung by their toenails for years before they pull them out.
That would be the "recycle bin." Trash goes to the landfill. Coke bottles go to make your 49.95 Crate and Barrel wine glasses imported from Guatemala.
My guess is that a copyright only protects that particular set of pixels. Apple's (and other) desktops are rapidly gaining scaling and other functions, and the design patent probably allows them more flexibility with protecting the look of their trashcan. I mean, if MS were to implement an inverse vector algorithm or something they could probably argue that they didn't copy Apple's stuff, but they did copy the design. This protects that.
But hey, IANAL, so what do I know.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Not quite. The original idea of the trash can was to "remove" items. So for example, you have a file or folder on your computer, to REMOVE it you would drag it to the trash. Likewise, if you had a floppy or a CD in your computer, to REMOVE it, you would drag it to the drash. Not really all that odd, no more odd than having shutdown in the start menu.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
For starters, this is a bit offtopic considering that this patent is a design patent and has absolutetly nothing to do with software.
Secondly, and more importantly, whats so evil about software patents?
I happen to hold a software patent for an idea that I'm currently marketing. If it werent for the patent I would have _NO CHANCE_ at making any money on my idea. As a result, I would have had no reason to spend the thousands of hours researching it. **THE IDEA WOULD NEVER HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY**
It is completely unique and highly fuctional. How is this any different than designing a new device? If it has function and is unique it has function and is unique.
Why is the fact that its a patent on software make it evil?
That's more the jurisdiction of copyright and tradmark, not Patent. Besides, my parents had a wastebasket that looks just like that in my old bedroom at their place. What would Apple do if I went and got it, took a picture of it, and created a windows icon from it that people could use however they want?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In addition, 35 U.S.C. 171 requires that a design to be patentable must be "original." Clearly a design that simulates a well-known or naturally occurring object or person is not original as required by the statute. Furthermore, subject matter that could be considered offensive to any race, religion, sex, ethnic group, or nationality is not proper subject matter for a design patent application.
Anyone want to tell me that a trash can for things you want to get rid of is, O-rig-inal? Looks more like a well known object to me. If a trash can is orignial and non-obvious then a picture of my go-nads is uncommon and inoffensive. The patent office is insane and might actually consider a porno motif for design patent. I'll send them the pictures right away. I'm in the money, I'm in the money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Public Domain can mean openly available to everyone and not subject to copyright protection, or simply openly available to the public (i.e. for sale to the public).
But thanks for the mature reply.
And BTW -- the filing date is the date in which a patent is filed PROVISIONAL or otherwise. You cannot state Patent Pending until AFTER the filing date. (But you probably already knew this.)
And who bailed Apple out the last two times as they were going down in flames? Uh-huh. Yep, it's patented, which means absolutely nothing to MS.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Quoth Josh Crawley:
Until then, I say we should violate EVERY software patent we can find until the rules are changed.
ahknight responded:
Not a popular opinion on this site but it's against the law and breaking the law is breaking the law, no matter how wrong you feel the law is.
Except that Josh Crawley is advocating something called "civil disobedience" -- something that is a time-honored tradition for getting unjust laws changed.
Burning one's draft cards was also "breaking the law" thirty-five years ago but there were enough of us who were willing to go to jail rather than participate in a war we considered unjust-- that we made a point that is still being heard today.
Taking in a runaway "Negro" slave was "breaking the law" a hundred and forty years ago but enough people believed strongly enough in their principles to do it anyway.
Dumping a shipload of tea into a harbor was "breaking the law" two hundred and thirty years ago, but... well, you get my point.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
---For starters, this is a bit offtopic considering that this patent is a design patent and has absolutetly nothing to do with software.
The patent itself is moot, because art is covered under COPYRIGHT LAW.
---Secondly, and more importantly, whats so evil about software patents?
I never said that. What's evil is a government organization is OK'ing patents on damn near every aspect of computing. They dont care if it has prior art or not. If we had a decent system where all patents were checked for consistency and prior art, we wouldnt be in this situation.
---I happen to hold a software patent for an idea that I'm currently marketing. If it werent for the patent I would have _NO CHANCE_ at making any money on my idea. As a result, I would have had no reason to spend the thousands of hours researching it. **THE IDEA WOULD NEVER HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY**
You have to do that, as well as everybody else. Still the point is that the software patent sector is crumbling under its own weight, and rapidly.
---It is completely unique and highly fuctional. How is this any different than designing a new device? If it has function and is unique it has function and is unique.
A device has a purpose and is physical. Software is simply equasions... math. SHould I be able to "patent" calculus, or the pythagorean theorem, or hell.... even addition? If anything, software patents should be limited to very complex equasions with source included. In that guarantee, they will have royalties delivered to whomever uses that source. Also, a very limited patent time should also be given. Personally, no more than 5 Years.
---Why is the fact that its a patent on software make it evil?
It's the corruption already in the system. Not the patent itself.
"I happen to hold a software patent for an idea that I'm currently marketing. If it werent for the patent I would have _NO CHANCE_ at making any money on my idea. As a result, I would have had no reason to spend the thousands of hours researching it. **THE IDEA WOULD NEVER HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY**"
Maybe YOU would not have brought the idea to see the light of day, but there is a high probability that somebody else would have done it if you didn't, and it is very likely somebody else already has done it before you but didn't patent it. Tell us what your patent number is, and we'll almost certainly be able to find somebody who already has a fully functioning product that implements what your patent does, and they did it without owning or having knowledge of the patent.
Over 99% of patented software would have been created anyway by the patent holder or somebody else if software patents didn't exist. Also, over 99% of software accidentally implements somebody else's patent. Even the techniques that are advanced and original enough to possibly deserve the patent they received, like RSA encryption and MP3 compression, have had equivalent alternative unpatented implementations created by others.
Plain and simple, there is almost no software out there that would not have been created by somebody if software patents didn't exist, but there is a lot that has been aborted or delayed because of the minefield of software patents that exists.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
What about cheezy software patents where the basic idea is patented but no implementation is supplied? Then on top of that, the patenting company does absolutely nothing whatsoever to market the idea or even make it practical. They just sit and wait for someone else to do all the hard work of marketing and implementation so they can surface the submarine and fire volleys of lawyer torpedoes?
h tm ld/desktop1.gif
I would say that patents can work but the current system for them is horridly broken. The current patent office would hand out patents on the wheel if the application used sufficiently large words and creatively tarted up diagrams. A working patent system would be wonderful. No patent system whatsoever would be be better than the corrupt and inept monstrosity we're dealing with now.
As for Microsoft's "innovation" here is screenie of a NEXTSTEP desktop that predates 95:
http://www120.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/intro.
I would say in a multitasking gui, the idea that you have to do SOMETHING to organize those tasks is pretty obvious.
Most big companies try to reward employees for submitting patents on behalf of the company. This usualy involves some bonus to generate some interest at doing these sort of things. So the fact that the patent has been submitted for approval does not necessarily means Apple intends to use it OR that anyone in Apple actually thinks this is reasonable. This is just the behavior of a big and inefficient company where engineering time is not considered scarce. Similarly, the USPTO just "handles" the application without involving any real thinking. People get money for processing these patents -- not for sorting them out. Nimrod.
The quote stands for any instance. Rejection of unjust law is one of the ways changes get made - and since there's little or no direct responsibility from lawmakers (a flaw in our system thats gotten worse over time), direct action is one of the few ways to make major changes.
Civilization? So, if I'm living quite contentedly by the side of a beautiful river with an abundance of fish and game, fertile soil for growing grains - and you come over the hill with sharp bronze objects riding on the backs of large four-legged creatures, rape my women and kill my men - the land is now yours?
Is that fair? You go to hell, Homo Sapiens Sapiens!
Get my point? This fundamental system of depravity started +/-40,000 years ago, get used to it.
I hate Grammar Nazi's
I would expect people would be able to make a point without resorting to insults and flames.
I don't insult you, I label you. You are an idiot, and I find nothing insulting about saying it. If a wall is white, and I say it is white, it's not insulting. Because you take offense in what you are, it is of no concern to me.
"Information that is published and which is generally accessible or available to the public" Definition [ncsu.edu]
Ok, if you are talking about Import/Export controls than I will say that you are correct in your understanding of Public Domain. Unfortunately, your definition is only applicable for import and export of goods. Discussing anything else, especially Intellectual Property and Copyrights, your definition is completely wrong.
Repeat after me, "Mr. Sane is wrong." "Public Domain, in the context of the discussion, which is Intellectual Property; of relation to the sales and licensing of Windows 95, is defined as something free for use without any attachments of copyrights or patents." See also, encumbrance and a vast array of other definitions that you would do well to learn.
On a side note, I love it when people post websites trying to justify their incorrectness without reading the entire page and understanding the scope of what they are trying to prove.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.