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Patented Gestures Detailed
An anonymous reader writes "Annalee Newitz wrote a fresh/interesting/informative piece on the io9 site about 10 Gestures that are already patented; unsurprisingly by the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo. But it's the other patent holders on the list that seem more interesting to me: Xerox, Lucent, Palm and lesser known Gesturetek have very broad patents for this tech."
There's a gesture I often make to MS products, but it's been done so often by so many people that the prior art makes it unpatentable.
That is how I understand it, anyway.
TFA, on the other hand...
"Interestingly, Nintendo did not patent any gestures at all in the creation of the Wii controller, instead focusing entirely on patenting facets of the device. Their patent covers a controller that contains an accelerometer, but not the gestures used to operate it."
*rolls eyes*
I read it. They patented communication. That a particular action is interpreted as a sign of a particular intent.
Consider the hand signs used by the deaf, or the action in the title I used. An action is a symbol recognition for any intent is communication.
Patents can apply to a way to recognize an action. Or a way to apply a signaled intent.
But a symbol, and that is all a gesture of any sort is, is way beyond what should be covered.
This doesn't let you off the hook for not reading TFA, but the article was horribly written. It doesn't link to several of the patents they were talking about. It confuses patents with published patent applications. It quotes titles, abstracts, and drawings as indicating what's patented, instead of quoting the claims.
All in all, none of the patents or applications discussed in TFA actually covers the gesture itself. Instead, they cover the technology used to recognize the gestures (and one design patent, not linked in TFA, covers the design of Apple's "slide to unlock" UI).
I can understand the physical technology that enables touchscreen technology being patentable. How the hell is it that finger gestures can be patented?
Couldn't prior art be argued given that many of these movements are performed on a regular basis in real life? Just because it's a virtual interpretation of that action shouldn't make it patentable. Apple's slide patent, for example, should automatically be invalided for this reason. Aren't these all things that could be copyrighted instead?
It just seems absurd to me.
Microsoft also owns a patent on throwing chairs around.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Like, perhaps, eyes?
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
NONE of these should have been granted a U.S. patent. This is ridiculous!
U.S. law (Section 101 of Title 35 U.S.C.) defines what is patentable subject matter: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." Gestures are not processes, machines, manufactures, or compositions of matter, so they are NEVER supposed to be patented.
Gestures are basically signals, and signals are specifically NOT patentable. The Federal Circuit has ruled that signals are not statutory subject matter, because articles of manufacture (the only plausible category) do not include intangible, incorporeal, transitory entities (in In re Nuitjen, 500 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2007)).
This is another example of unwarranted interference by the government in the free market. Is there really a need to grant monopolies to companies for specific gestures? No. It's not justified by any law. What's more, it harms society. Just imagine if each car company had to have a radically different interface due to patents - it would harm safety! This just worsens the digital divide, with no legal or societal justification.
We need the courts to require a re-review of every patent, at no cost to defendants, before any case is tried, and for the courts to assume that the patent office is a registration of claim, not anything meaningful. There are too many bad patents to believe otherwise.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and speak only for myself. I'm sure not impressed by the work of some lawyers, though.)
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
So would it be legal to write an iPhone app to recognize gestures and then display who patented that gesture? Then if I create a new gesture I would be able to tell if it's legal? Or how about a synthetic gesture generator that would create and automatically fill out a patent application for all possible gestures, for say n numbers of strokes?
http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/emacs/trunk/annotate/head:/lisp/strokes.el
I once made a fun video demo with GNU Emacs and Strokes-Mode on an HP TouchSmart Tablet PC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw8SQqmHPbI
The source code for the gestures I made are here, along with a few tweaks to make strokes-mode behave better with a touchscreen. https://github.com/dto/emacs-gestures
Keep in mind, I used Strokes-mode to create the gestures shown in the video---no gestures are included, you can create them yourself by just drawing them into strokes-mode. My point in setting up this repository would be so that GNU Emacs users could build a library of gestures amongst ourselves, and share code to adapt GNU Emacs better to touchscreen/pen environments. Which sounds like it could fall afoul of some patent or other. Right?
Interestingly, Apple publishes here an older version of Strokes-mode: http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/emacs/emacs-39/emacs/lisp/strokes.el
Even more interestingly, Apple's version says "This file is part of GNU Emacs. GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version."
Well, "any later version" could be GPLv3, which contains this passage:
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it."
(pasted from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html )
Anyone think this could be relevant? --dave
Portable Ojbject Oriented Programming has been on my laptop for years.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.