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Apple Patents Portrait-Landscape Flipping
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted a patent to Apple for Portrait-landscape rotation heuristics for a portable multifunction device (USPTO), which covers 'displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers.' Perhaps the USPTO Examiners didn't get a chance to review the circa-1991 Computer Chronicles video of the Radius Pivot monitor before deeming Apple's invention patentable. Or check out the winning touchArcade trivia contest entry, which noted the circa-1982 Corvus Concept sported a 15-inch, high-resolution, bit-mapped display screen that also flipped between portrait and landscape views when rotated, like our friend the iPhone. Hey, everything old is new again, right?"
The others used other gravity sensors like little metal balls and contact sets or mercury switches not accelerometers. And they weren't touchscreen devices. Trivial differences, but different technology. Better to argue it was obvious than say the others represent prior art. Still accelerometers in portable media players and phones is pretty much an Apple thing for display orientation, since everyone before had an attached keyboard!
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Did the Radius monitors use accelerometer data? Nope, they used a positional switch mounted on their stationary base. Since this specifically addresses use of accelerometer data (no fixed mount on a netbook or smartphone) that isn't prior art here, sorry. Making in-jokes about the patent system mocks its all-to-real deficiencies, of which this is not one. Oh, and way to write a terrible headline - Apple hasn't patented portrait-landscape flipping. You really did read about this before writing.....didn't you?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And taking an existing invention and putting it into something smaller is patentable innovation? Come on. Even if that is the way it works (which I'm pretty sure it isn't) - anyone with half a brain can see that's stupid and not the intention of patents.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Forgive me, but that's like saying something like:
"Yes, you have prior art for an alarm clock, and for a radio, but my patent is for an alarmclock radio!"
The same reasons why you would want a display that can auto-rotate the contents based on screen orientation on a large fixed display would be equally applicable to a portable one, thus making the invention fail the obviousness requirement.
Duh-- If you are holding something in your hand, you would consider it useful for it to rotate when you turned it over, so you arent reading it upside down or sideways. Same with rotating a fixed display.
Looks like the AC above you has prior art.
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It's a cheap kind of accelerometer.
In the Pivot monitor, it's a mercury switch, operated by gravity (acceleration at 9.8m/sec^2).
Apple could have used a mercury switch and done the same thing and the user would not have noticed the difference. The only thing about an acelerometer chip is that it's a mercury switch without the mercury (I'm oversimplifying, of course).
--
BMO
Because someone has to be first regardless of who. That's hardly an argument against obviousness. Screens have been rotating for decades. The sensor devices have been in cameras and other devices for about as long. Cameras have demonstrated this long before Apple did it. Somewhere out there in the patent jungle, there is a patent on this as applied to cameras. I think this is more than enough... more than enough to prove that the USPTO needs to learn to say "hell no."
Not Apple, it was Nokia who did it first on a phone. And it's annoying as hell. It can be disabled (a must for sanity), but then you get warnings all the time about the "orientation lock". You see, I'm secure with my orientation and please get the hell away from trying to get me to change it.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You are missing the point entirely. Steve Jobs has invented acceleration! That's what all the fuss is about.
Stupid question I know, but Apple is NOT patenting rotation, but rather two gestures to lock the screen in either portrait or landscape mode, regardless of detected orientation. Whether or not such a matter is patentable is another kettle of fish.
On a related matter, Apple long ago bought a patent from British Telecom that appears actually to be for screen rotation.
Look at Google. They've (seemingly sensibly) not accumulated a huge portfolio of patents. The unfortunate consequence of that is that Android is going to get squeezed more and more by patent claims.
Patent trolls' strongest weapon is the fact that they don't make anything, and so there's nothing against which a counter-claim can be made.
The long-term bright side of this is that sooner or later Google and others will have no choice but to mount a campaign for sweeping change in the patent system. But until then, small developers will find it harder and harder to produce useful software and devices without spending all their income defending patent claims.
Can you name a product that used them together the way the iPhone and iPad do? If not, then, apparently, it's not sufficiently obvious to all the other consumer gadget makers out there otherwise somebody else would have done it.
Nokia N95. 3-axis accelerometer used to orient screen. 2006.
Motors existed. Bicycles existed. By your logic, the first motorcycle shouldn't have been patentable.
Putting two things together than previously existed most certainly is patentable.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Unenforceable but widely applied patent is an extremely powerful tool in big corporations' hands. It can be used as a part of a package to hit smaller companies who simply do not have the resources to debunk such attacks, as a deterrent to competition, as an additional bargaining chip in patent negotiations, etc.
The sheer amount of effort and costs associated debunking the patent against a crack team of lawyers backing it up, and en-masse usage where focusing on these elementary patents takes away from harder aspects of the case are what makes it valuable.
Since when has prior art stopped the USPTO from granting a patent?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
And my Kodak C743 has done EXACTLY that WELL before Apple ever thought of it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
if big business back in the 1980s had come down on Apple like Apple comes down on joe blow hacker nowdays, Apple could never have gotten out of the garage.
a linkage to make the engine connect to the wheels, thats a patent.
a method to make the engine work reliably, thats a patent.
a device to crank the engine through a battery, thats a patent.
"stick motor on wheels" should not be a patent.
Motors existed. Bicycles existed. By your logic, the first motorcycle shouldn't have been patentable.
Putting two things together than previously existed most certainly is patentable.
Putting a motor on a bicycle involves a large number of non-trivial technical challenges that I'm sure you don't ignore. The particular ways to overcome those problems can be patented, not the idea of a motorcycle itself. In fact, the first motorcycle hasn't been patented, and that's why we have had motorcycles from different manufacturers since the beginning of the history of motorcycles. And that has been good for motorcycle buyers and for the progress of motorcycling.
The Apple patent was filed on December 19, 2007. The Nokia N95 had an accelerometer for automatic UI rotation and was released in September 2006. It wasn't touch-screen, while the Apple patent is applied to a touch-screen device. It is therefore a clear example of obviousness: what can be done on a non-touch-screen phone, can obviously be done on a touch-screen phone. Common reality-distortion field influence where something doesn't exist or is unuseful until it gets added to an Apple gadget.