Apple Tries to Patent iPod User Interface

harlows_monkeys writes "Apple's trying to patent several aspects of the iPod user interface. This one is particularly interesting because the claims are written in fairly clear and simple language, easy to understand by anyone. If this one is granted, it won't be because an overworked examineer was confused by deliberate obfuscation by the application (which is what I think happens for a lot of the ridiculous patents). About half the claims are for things that were implemented in prior players (e.g., Archos), and the other half are for things that are in many other common device interfaces (DVD players, PVRs) and the only novelty is that Apple put them on a portable music player."

Comments

Too far?

[ScooterBill]

It's a pretty slick interface and one that would also be easy to copy. I can't fault Apple for trying to protect against a horde of Asian clone iPods. If a patent is granted and Apple has the common sense to only enforce it in obvious cases of someone copying the interface, then great. If they get the patent and then sue anyone and everyone who has something that sort of works like the iPod, then that sucks.

M

APPLE PATENTS EVERYTHING

[Anonymous Coward]

Being, you know, a corporation which does research and follows the "patent shield" theory, Apple patents EVERYTHING they come up with. Including their interfaces. Including their *themes*. Go look over Apple's patents. They really do try the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach.

Once it starts seeming like Apple is considering *using* said patent, then thi will be news. Until then, this doesn't tell us anything. I've never seen Apple attempt to use any of these patents. Even when they were harassing creators of Aqua schemes, they never resorted to patents, always arguing in terms of copyright...

Re:APPLE PATENTS EVERYTHING

[90XDoubleSide]

Example:

United States Patent D478,999
Jobs , et al., August 26, 2003

Staircase

Claims: We claim the ornamental design for a staircase, substantially as shown and describe

(I know it's a design patent. It's still a funny thing to find when you're going through a technology company's patent filings :)

Well, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was Microsoft doing this

If Microsoft were trying to patent the Apple iPod they'd deserve all the flames they could possibly get...

"There is nothing new under the sun."

[dbirchall]

At this point in history, the vast majority of patents that are filed draw upon previous inventions. Very few people think far enough outside the box to come up with things that bear no resemblance to those which have come before, and share no parts with them. Does that mean inventions that combine or enhance existing technologies and methods in ways that have not been seen before should be barred from being patented? Some Slashdotters seem, from their knee-jerk reactions, to hold that view.

Perhaps if I went searching through old articles, I would find someone posting that the Segway wasn't worthy of being patented, because it used gyroscopes, handlebars, wheels, and even a grip-throttle - all of which everyone knew had been around for ages in other devices.

Perhaps a flying car wouldn't be worthy because it used parts from cars and airplanes, both of which have been around in some form or another for a hundred years.

See where I'm going here?

If you take enough different ideas or things from enough different places, and put them together in a way that hasn't been seen before, and the result is something that significantly improves upon what had been seen before, to the extent that people look at it and say, "Wow, that's sure new and different," you've basically had an original idea. Sure, you've been standing on the shoulders of giants - but so has everyone else.

Re:Steve Jobs will own the patent?

[nacturation]

Jobs should get some credit. It was, after all, his reality distortion field the engineers were influenced by.

Hierarchical Menus and Playlists

[Ohreally_factor]

1) Apple can do no wrong. Drink the Kool Aid, bathe in the warm glow of the Reality Distortion Field, and shut up.

2) This patent seems to involve the graphical display of content and features of a MP3 player through a hierarchical menu structure and through playlists.

3) They are patenting a feature on a physical device, not a software method. They're not patenting the software. The technology they are patenting is embodied in a physical device.

4) A patent can be based on other work, even other patented work. If any previous art that Apple has built on is patented and that patent is owned by another company, Apple must still pay that other company. If a third party wants to license the technology, they must pay both Apple and the other company.

5) Patents mostly suck, unless Apple applies for them, because of 1).

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The extent of the patent is coverd by the claims. Apple is trying to take a huge bite with paragraph 34:

While this invention has been described in terms of a preferred embodiment, there are alterations, permutations, and equivalents that fall within the scope of this invention. It should also be noted that there are many alternative ways of implementing both the process and apparatus of the present invention. It is therefore intended that the invention be interpreted as including all such alterations, permutations, and equivalents as fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention.

Apple had already threatened to sue iRiver for attempting to use the scroll-wheel and a similar user interface in the iHP-120. iRiver went with the 'clit' manuevering device instead. If the iRiver iHP-120 had the same easy to use iPod interface while retaining all those features it could've been an iPod killer.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats no excuse for utter hypocrisy.

Re:Where is the outrage?

[Bull999999]

What did you expect? May people here are outraged that "for-profit" corporations acutally exist for profit!

Re:Question

[sahala]

Basically it'd be at best a major nuisance, and at worst force everyone else to have ungainly user interfaces.

How would it force everyone else to have "ungainly" UIs? If they can't directly copy the iPod interaction design then *GASP* they would instead have to innovate and come up with a new and perhaps better way of going about playing music on a portable device. Imagine that...

(At least accepting that iPod's UI is good and easy to use, my (admittedly limited) experience with it was one of great frustration personally.)

Well there you go...you even say that you find the iPod frustrating to use. It's quite entirely possible that someone could come up with something better, perhaps the design to rule them all even to suit your taste in device interactions.

Re:Question

[peachawat]

If history is any indicator, the portable music player market could forget having a user interface even remotely similar to Apple's in any shape, form or fashion.

Yes and they should. And the market should come up with a user interface that is better, more intuitive than iPod's. And original. The keyword is be innovative. When it came out, the iPod UI doesn't look like anything on the market at that time. And I think Apple deserve credit for that. Now every player wants to look and feel like iPod.

Is it a Slashdot mindset that it is always bad if you can't copy anything at will? Why can't other player maker come up with better UI? Why can't we come up with something better and original? Why does every Linux Desktop UI has to look like Windows or Aqua?

Re:That's a very neutral summary

[udippel]

They're patenting aspects of the iPod user interface.

Parent has read the claims. Most posters haven't, before they started bashing.

Parent has done a great job in pointing out the main weakness: Apple doesn't ask for technicalities, but design. Essentially.

Claim 26 is the most precise one: They ask for protection for an Interface Design Aspect that automagically changes the underlying interfaces along with the user interaction.

This is a clear sign of a patent system flawed over time, since the idea is not basically a technical one. Imagine your mail-client (or just look at it) and imagine you click on the sender of a mail and the interfaces changes to display all mails of that sender. You click on a subject and all mails of this subject come up. Not a bad one, no. I'd even agree that it may be discussed if the author should get royalties. But a patent ? Only over my dead body. (I quit the Patent Office to have a life !)

This is the typical kind of software patentry where you describe a rather vague idea, ask for a patent and sue the implementer.

I can only call on everyone - in US and EU - to put all efforts into stopping this madness.

Donald Knuth on patents

[sidles]

Since 1994, Donald Knuth has lobbied against algorithm patents. Perhaps we ought to ask whether interface patents are not just as destructive of freedom and human rights.

Do interface patents "take away [our] right to use fundamental building blocks" (in Knuth's words)?

Here is the text of Knuth's letter.

Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks
Box 4, Patent and Trademark Office
Washington, DC 20231

February 1994

Dear Commissioner:

Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes. I find a considerable anxiety throughout the community of practicing computer scientists that decisions by the patent courts and the Patent and Trademark Office are making life much more difficult for programmers.

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that patent law did not pertain to software. However, it now appears that some people have received patents for algorithms of practical importance--e.g., Lempel-Ziv compression and RSA public key encryption--and are now legally preventing other programmers from using these algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under which the computer revolution became possible, and I fear this change will be harmful for society. It certainly would have had a profoundly negative effect on my own work: For example, I developed software called TeX that is now used to produce more than 90% of all books and journals in mathematics and physics and to produce hundreds of thousands of technical reports in all scientific disciplines. If software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably have ever thought of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else doing so.

I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between "numerical" and "nonnumerical" algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. All data are numbers, and all numbers are data. Mathematicians work much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It's like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?

I realize that the patent courts try their best to serve society when they formulate patent law. The Patent Office has fulfilled this mission admirably with respect to aspects of technology that

Re:Steve Jobs will own the patent?

[clifyt]

Quite a few times the inventors / designers at Apple will point at Jobs ideas as the one that got them to the current design.

Case in point, the Lamp Style iMac came from him. Ives had come up with several LCD prototypes -- and they were probably all cool as hell in their own right -- but Jobs wasn't satisfied. While some upper management were touring his wine fields, he took the designers to a plantings of sunflowers and pointed out that the head of the plant was HUGE but didn't seem unwieldy and was natural. He asked the guys to think about that and how the flower's head was supported when redesigning the new iMac (for the 30th time).

The new iMac is directly a result of this and Jobs' idea on how it should work. you can see it in the machine when you look at it and think about it.

There are dozens of these stories out of the net from the designers of the hardware and the software where something that might have been a throw away comment from someone else became the core of what Jobs got out of his engineers (sometimes for good / sometimes for the bad).

So, from past experience, it is only prudent to accept he might have had a good deal of input even if others with the practical experience are listed (that was for the grandparent post as I agree with the parents post :-).

Simple things get patented all the time

[baxissimo]

I'm with you that this doesn't seem like a very patent-worthy innovation. But when you think about it, when you go to a fast food restaraunt or coffee joint, even the plastic lids on the cups are patented. They've been patenting things like that for as long as I can remember. And what's the difference from lid to lid? Basically just a little industrial design. If that's the standard, then yeh, I have to say the iPod is at least as innovative as the plastic lid I got on my last cup of coffee.