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Apple Patents Using Apps During Calls

Posted by Soulskill on from the that-sounds-a-great-idea dept.

bizwriter writes "Apple has had quite a week in patents for the iPhone, and it's only Tuesday. First was the victory at the International Trade Commission over HTC. And now there's a shiny new patent on switching to an app during a live phone call (#8,082,523). There may be non-infringing ways of doing something similar, but they probably will be clumsy in comparison."

19 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. Prior art by Lexx+Greatrex · · Score: 5, Informative

    The IBM Simon was a touch screen smartphone with features identical to those claimed in this patent. It was first announced in 1992. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon

    1. Re:Prior art by Fjandr · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's far older than the other obvious prior art: BlackBerry.

    2. Re:Prior art by Fjandr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Addendum to my previous comment:

      Ah, the filing date does precede the BlackBerry when used with a touchscreen. So, since the method of selecting the app is the only difference, someone needs to file a patent on a method of switching to an app via spoken word, wireless neural net, holographic interface, etc.

      A patent being differentiated by flipping a switch with your finger versus flipping the switch with a stick is not a significant enough difference to warrant a patent. The USPTO needs to be burned to the ground, the ground salted, and the patent reviewers driven underground to live forevermore as the troglodytes they really are*.

      *Hyperbole.

    3. Re:Prior art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's about time all these stupid patents were dismissed.

      Can you imagine what the car would be like if they had all these stupid patents in place. You can't use wheels, can't use steering wheel, can't even as much as use a wind shield, and the stupid list would go on. Maybe a triangular shape that cannot take passengers springs to mind.

      The dumb assess should be thrown out, prior art or whatever. Bunch of losers.

    4. Re:Prior art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think the prior art clause died a month or two ago. Legislation was signed that turned the whole thing into a "first to file" system. I hope I'm waaaaaaay off base.

      You are. Prior art is just as relevant as before w/r/t novelty, first-to-file only affects the case where multiple entities apply for patents on the same valid (i.e. novel, non-obvious, etc. invention.

      I could explain at more length, as I did to the two people I've previously corrected on this, but it's getting old. How long till we can have one article about patents without this silly misconception coming up?

    5. Re:Prior art by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually you could do this on the old Razr moto phones from the feature phone era.

      I suspect Apple is hanging their hat on the phrase "portable electronic device with a touch screen display", believing that doing what had been done all along somehow becomes new and patent-able simply because you added a touch screen into the mix.

      I think this gets tossed the first time they try to enforce it.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    6. Re:Prior art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's far older than the other obvious prior art: BlackBerry.

      You misspelled Palm.

    7. Re:Prior art by Zero_DgZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm sure there's a lot more prior art even than that. My N900 can do this via the touchscreen. You can also switch apps any time when anything else is going on by pressing ctrl + backspace, which even breaks you out of things that are "supposed" to be full screen only. It doesn't predate the release of the original iPhone, but I think its release and certainly its development predates the filing of this patent.

      Harken back to the dark days of the original Windows CE/PocketPC based smartphones, many of which had touchscreens (like the PPC version of the Treo) and all of which supported multitasking and had nothing preventing you from tapping Start and going on your merry way to do something else while in a call.

      Even my old Samsung R450 let you do limited stuff while in a call, like get at your address book, notes, and calculator.

    8. Re:Prior art by niftydude · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The original iphones couldn't multitask - even though every other crappy windows mobile touchscreen smartphone of the time could.

      I remember at the time Apple was criticised for bringing multitasking into iphones so late in the game.

      Now they've added multitasking in, years after everyone else, and they're claiming the patent????

      --
      You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
    9. Re:Prior art by Lexx+Greatrex · · Score: 5, Informative

      No where on that page does it say you can take a phone call, and switch to one of the other apps will still on the call.

      From page 34 of the user guide for instance: "You can get to the Mobile Office screen from any screen by touching [icon]" There is no restriction prohibiting this function from the In-Call screen.

      User guide (PDF) http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/bibuxton/buxtoncollection/a/pdf/Simon%20User%20Manuals.pdf

      Interestingly the user guide page 20 states: "The ln-Call screen will appear as the Phone feature places the call. For example, this can be useful if someone sends you a phone number in an electronic mail message. Just mark it and dial." Which is also clearly prior art in relation to the Apple lawsuit against HTC.

    10. Re:Prior art by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple of course have become the masters of patent first, searching existing product features, checking to see if they are patented, if they are not patented, they immediately patent them.

      Apple seems destined to become the number mega patent troll as their range of fad products die off. They are getting uglier and uglier as each day passes.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. How do I patent????? by axlr8or · · Score: 5, Funny

    Taking a shit while using a phone? I wanna do that. You know, maybe if we just spread a little butter on these people, they will eat each other and their children. Sounds good to me.

  3. Are you sure about that? by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What they don't realise though is that shit like this puts people off.

    Who does this "put off" other than techno-geeks that read sites like /.? I don't think the average consumer is taking Apple's heavy-handed patent tactics into account when they are picking out their next smartphone. This is a win-win for Apple; they make it cumbersome for their competitors to have basic functionality on their devices and can use said cumbersomeness to argue that their products are more consumer friendly. Meanwhile nobody outside of communities like this one cares about the tactics they are using. Heck, even within this community we've got our share of apologists for Apple/Google/Microsoft/other-boogieman-of-the-day.

    In the long term this argues in favor of patent reform. That will be an uphill battle though; most policymakers are woefully ignorant about this issue and even the ones who are well informed don't find it a sexy enough issue to spend political capital on. One can only hope this issue becomes more mainstream as the court system bogs down under the load of nonsense patent litigation.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  4. Economics of the Patent Office by Scowler · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Our US Patent Office is economically incentivized to approve patent applications, regardless of their merits. If a patent review officer approves a patent application, that means revenue rolling into the institution as the patent is granted and registered. If the patent application is denied, that means outgoing $ as the applicant may litigate the matter and/or appeal.

    If our "forward"-thinking Congress really wants to do something about patent reform, they should change the economic model of our patent office, such that the funding of the office is neutral in regards to whether patent applications are approved or denied.

    1. Re:Economics of the Patent Office by Scowler · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Just to follow up, a few ideas that I wish Congress would consider...

      #1 Force more patent application appeals into arbitration, and away from the court system. Make the applicant pay for the cost of the arbitrator.

      #2 Change the accounting model. Proceeds from granted patent applications should NOT count as revenue towards the patent office and its continued operations, but should directly go into the US treasury.

      #3 Provide a formal process for taking into account newly found prior art for patents already granted, including an arbitration process that has the power to revoke such patent. The arbitrator should show some deference to the granted patent, of course, and the cost of such a process should fall squarely on whichever entity is trying to get the patent erased from existence. This would, however, provide us all a way to quantify how well all the attorneys and lawyers involved in a patent application are doing: how many times have they had a patent revoked due to lazy research and missing prior art?

    2. Re:Economics of the Patent Office by green1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To be perfectly honest, I'd abolish them altogether. I honestly do not believe they are necessary for innovation. I believe that people will still make the "better mousetrap" without being able to patent it simply so that they can make money selling it. First to market is often worth a lot.

      As for the benefit of documenting your invention in the patent for when it becomes public domain, that pretty much vanished years ago anyway, and even if not, reverse engineering is often more reliable than reading the patent document anyway.

  5. Evil enough yet? by Coolhand2120 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And exactly when does Apple receive the moniker: "Lord of all evil"? Can we vote to change Apple's logo on /. to a spinning flaming skull circa interweb 1999? Can someone please tell me what it is that Apple has innovated? Not only did they not make their own OS (last I checked FreeBSD is not a product of Apple inc.) but they steal from the open source community. (Logic:if they don't plan on playing nice they really don't deserve to benefit from the eons of man hours that went into creating the OS they so arrogantly tout as their own. That's just my opinion of course.) So what exactly did Apple innovate, invent or create? All I see here is a more up to date version of the windows mobile phones that came out in the late 90's.

    Everything they've "invented" is nothing but mashups of technologies that already exist in software frameworks made by people other than Apple. Even the combinations they've selected existed long before the iPhone was created. Voice controlled AI? Ya, we were already doing that a long time before Apple abandoned their PPC hardware platform for the "not as good as the PPC" Intel platform. They are a decade late to the smart phone race, but they claim to be the most prolific innovators in the market. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the patents involved know without equivocation that Apple's arguments are worse than baseless, they are an insult to anyone who has used this technology for the last 20 years. And now they aim to cripple their competition, not thorough making a better product, but by using the perverted rule of law as a cudgel to prevent fair competition.

    Apple really is the new root of all that is evil.

  6. Re:Doubtful by scot4875 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Do the other applications on that phone change appearance when a phone call is in progress? It would seem not.

    But even if those phones' applications don't, Android phones' do. Not only does the notification area show the state of the phone call, but the individual applications can query the state of the phone and update their interface if they want. Most don't, because it's generally an unnecessary and barely used feature anyway.

    --Jeremy

    --
    Jesus was a liberal
  7. I'm going to end this right now by symbolset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A method, comprising: at a portable electronic device...

    All of these software patents require a device to instantiate. So sell a mobile phone that downloads on activation all of the OS and user experience. The device on sale doesn't violate the patents because it doesn't include the feature, and the software download that includes the feature doesn't either because the patent requires a device and the software doesn't include a device.

    Problem solved. Maybe I should patent that - but I won't.

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