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Scribbling On Digital Photos
JagsLive notes a patent application filed in the US by Nokia for a way to 'scribble on the back' of digital photos. Nokia's approach is similar to the iPod's Cover Flow, except that Nokia users will be able to flip through their snaps, select one, and then turn it over and annotate the back just using SMS-like text entry. The scribble becomes an integral part of the saved photo.
Man, I thought we were past the days of "well established process" + "the internet" or + "a computer" = brand new shiny patent.
Clearly the patent office hasn't learned anything, and apparently we have yet to exhaust the pool of basic processes that can be "reinvented" for a computer. Sad.
This already exists as EXIF comments in the jpegs. I can add these remarks and sort them using the comments in most modern photo viewing programs.
The only "innovation" I can see here is the fact it makes a nice animation flipping the photo over. Hardly patent-worthy.
Seriously, we need to have people that grant patents with some experience in the field they're granting patents.
i think you're missing the point.
any moderately intelligent computer user sees how absurd this patent is because this is a trivial and non-innovative function. it's like patenting a drop down menu, 1-click checkout, or a pop-up window.
patents were legally established to encourage innovation in a way that rewards inventors but would ultimately serve the public good. that is why they were designed to give inventors a financial incentives to provide ingenious solutions to complex problems, which would then be released into the public domain after the patent expired. and in this way, the patent system would nurture the spirit of innovation and grow the public corpus of technological knowledge.
you can't claim a patent on self-apparent software features because they are obvious to any programmer who is looking to solve the same problem and thus do not qualify as personal inventions. whether it there is prior art plays no importance in this issue.
if it's an obvious feature, and it's a common problem, then of course there will be prior art. but that's an incidental result. a patent for an obvious solution to a trivial but uncommon problem would be equally invalid regardless of whether there is prior art or not. so it has neither to do with prior art nor any fundamental issue against software patents.
patents as these contribute nothing to society, nor do they add anything of value to the public corpus of human knowledge shared by our society.