Multitouch Gesture Patents Could Prevent Standardization

ozmanjusri brings us a Wired report on Apple's efforts to patent the multitouch gestures used on their laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The article discusses concerns over how this could affect the standardization of certain gestures in developing multitouch technology. We've previously discussed the patent applications themselves. Quoting Wired: "If Apple's patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater. That's an outcome many in the industry would like to avoid. Synaptics, a company that by most estimates supplies 65 to 70 percent of the notebook industry with its touchpad technology, is working on its own set of universal touch gestures that it hopes will become a standard. These gestures include scrolling by making a circular motion, moving pictures or documents with a flip of the finger, and zooming in or out by making, yes, a pinching gesture."

Comments

Middle Finger

[religious freak]

I say they all deserve a middle finger gesture if they can't work out a sensible standard. Apple should especially be chastised for trying to patent this stuff. It's like patenting an 'x' for denoting closing a window.

It makes sense for competitors to collaborate on certain things to move the industry as a whole forward.

Re:Middle Finger

[Smallpond]

There's nothing wrong with patenting a specific implementation, assuming it is a novel design. What is unfortunate about software patents is that I can't write a program to do the same thing done in a different way and avoid the patent, because software patents are on the idea. The implementation is usually described as "software means obvious to one skilled in the art".

Look back at Wang's patent on the SIMM. It only covered 9-bit parity modules. 36-bit SIMMS did not violate the patent. Hardware patents are forced to describe an implementation.

Re:Middle Finger

[fermion]

What they are in fact doing is patenting a new method to interact with the computer. Interaction with the computer has become increasing complex, from a several switches, to a few dozen switches on a keyboard, back to a single switch that is used with a context sensitive position data, to a small touch area that responds to patterns of pressure and motion.

Apple is patenting the method that makes the touchpad functional. In a way, they have a reason to do this as they were innovating the touchpad while everyone else was adding buttons to mice and arguing that the touch pad would never be as good as the mouse. These people lack creativity. It is easy to add buttons to a mouse, or a scroll wheel, or add USB ports to a computer, or other trivia that most firms rely on to imply innovation. But the trackpad is now a competitor to the mouse, and unless one has had issues, I see the mouse and mouselike interfaces going away on anything that is not a desktop machine.

OTOH, one reason that this patent may not cause too much trouble is that the engineering to make gestures happen may be expensive, and therefore we are much more likely to see cheap knockoffs, safe from the patents, rather than infringing duplication. For instance, MS did not go with a iPod style control on the original Zune, but the cheap click pad. Likewise, MS developed an affordable navigation pad on the new zune, rather than moving to a full touch screen model. Most manufacturers who wish to stay below the cost of the Apple product has done the same.

Re:Middle Finger

[PietjeJantje]

Apple did not creatively innovate multi touch gestures nor mp3 players nor phones, they marketed it into a successful high-end products for "cool" people, which is something else. Multi-touch has been pioneered since 1982 (wikipedia). This is more equal to patenting double-click or one-click ordering. It's about creating a barrier of entrance to competitors.

up to their old tricks again

[nguy]

In the 1980's, Apple tried to claim ownership of all modern GUIs; they lost on a technicality.

Multitouch as an input method goes back a long time; it wasn't put to much use because the hardware was expensive and GUI library developers were still coping with bigger issues.

Apple shouldn't be allowed to monopolize multi-touch, in any shape or form: not only would it be bad public policy, Apple simply didn't invent this stuff. Pretty much the only patents that should be valid in this space in 2008 are patents on better multi-touch hardware and low-level firmware.

Re:up to their old tricks again

[DECS]

That's not even remotely true. Apple invested well over $60 million (in early 80s dollars) into developing the Lisa desktop interface, along with the followup Mac desktop in parallel between the late 70s and 1984. By the time the Mac arrived, Apple had been showing the tech off for 2-3 years, so rivals began copying a lot of the same ideas. Apple didn't sue any of those rivals apart from two that were transferring a copy of Apple's tech directly to IBM's PC.

Apple didn't sue Atari's TOS, the Commodore Amiga, Berkeley System's GEOS, DRI's GEM/1, Acorn Archimedes or any of the other graphical desktops. It only sued Microsoft and HP, which was selling an add-on for Windows that made it more Mac-like. [1]

The reason Apple sued Microsoft to stop it was because Apple had entered an development contract with MS in 1982, giving MS early access to Mac technology. MS agreed not to release a competing product for IBM's PC until the Mac was delivered, but found a technicality that enabled it to announce Windows 1.0 in 1983. Even though Windows 1.0 was unusable garbage, it cloned enough of the Mac ideas to create a product concept that could make the PC look useful, and create the suggestion that Windows would deliver something similar to the Mac. It didn't even come close until 1995, more than a decade later. Windows was a vaporware distraction based entirely upon theft of ideas Apple released to Microsoft as a trusted partner.

Interestingly, Wikipedia presents this as a revised history where Microsoft invented Windows 1.0 first and suggests Apple copied it for the Mac. Windows Enthusiasts like Rob Enderle have also stated that Microsoft developed the Mac OS for Apple, despite the fact that at the time, Apple was already a huge company turning out blockbuster products and engaging in major R&D, while Microsoft was still a contract developer that simply relicensed Unix and DOS adding very little value, and didn't really develop any of its own original products for another ten years. Microsoft didn't even invent Excel, it only cloned the existing VisiCalc inside Apple's Mac GUI. It bought Word directly from Xerox. That's why those of use who were paying attention find it hard to swallow the idea the Microsoft has some significant history in the original development of the GUI. It did not.

Even MS knew that it infringed enough upon Apple's technology that it could not sell Windows 1.0. Despite showing off an early preview in 1983, MS didn't sell Windows 1.0 until 1985, partly because it had to keep working on it, and partly because it had to force Apple into licensing its Mac technology first. MS used the threat of porting Mac Excel to the PC as leverage to obtain a license from John Sculley's Apple for Mac interface ideas that were unique to Apple (as opposed to GUI ideas that had originated at Xerox PARC or other places). MS then used that 1985 license to copy even more of the Mac UI for Windows 2.0, which served almost entirely as a vehicle for porting Mac Excel to the PC.

No PC makers preinstalled Windows on their machines until Windows 3.0 in 1990. Apple's 1986 suit against MS was limited to copyright ideas about the user interface, because at the time, there was no established concept of software patents. Recall that Bill Gates was also warning the world that software patents would be a bad idea and stifle competition. He believed that at the time (1990) because he wanted full access to Apple's technology without paying for it. After MS began patenting its own software ideas, the company changed its tune. It now threatens to sue open source using its patent pool.

In a world where everyone patents every idea they think might ever have any value, and where companies are all sued by small inventors who have patented ideas that may seem obvious but end up getting millions awarded in claims from the court, the idea of patenting every line of research isn't evil, but necessary.

Open Source developers are at the mercy of lots of patent nonsense, so they critically need to cont

Call it what it is, please thank you.

[shyberfoptik]

What they are in fact doing is patenting a new method to interact with the computer.

No, they are not. They are patenting gestures. Don't make this more magical than is necessary.

What bothers me is that they prattle on and on about this kind of interaction being "intuitive." If the gestures are "intuitive," doesn't that by definition mean that they are already "inside" every person? That is, the gesture-as-representation-of-information, if it is "natural," is something discovered, and not invented. If this is not the case, then it's not "intuitive." So which is it?

If I develop an interface that interprets "waving goodbye" as "turn off computer," can I patent "waving goodbye?" Can I make it illegal for everyone else to use this very "intuitive" gesture?