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Patent Suit Targets Every Touch-based Apple Product
suraj.sun writes with news that a new patent suit has been filed against Apple over all of the company's touch-based products. From the article:
"According to the complaint (PDF), Professor Slavoljub Milekic conceived a system that used a touchscreen that allowed children to move virtual objects around the screen, which he used to build interactive displays for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, in 1997, and filed for a patent on his design that same year. The patent in the suit, U.S. Patent #6,920,619 named 'User interface for removing an object from a display,' was issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in 2005. According to the lawsuit, Milekic formed FlatWorld Interactives in 2007 to 'promote and commercialize' his invention. Curiously, FlatWorld was incorporated on January 2007, just weeks after Apple announced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo. In July 2007, just after Apple shipped the original iPhone, FlatWorld filed a reissue request for the patent, which appears to have been done in order to modify some of the patent's dependent claims."
Curiously, FlatWorld was incorporated on January 2007, just weeks after Apple announced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo.
Why is that curious? What's curious to me is that this patent was issued in 2005 and Apple began releasing infringing devices with massive publicity and advertising in 2007. Now five years later he finally gets around to filing suit? Just after Apple experiences the most profitable quarter in history of any tech company and the news outlets proclaim that Apple has too much money?
... right now the patent ecosystem is this mentality of having a huge patent war chest because if you're producing a lot of anything, you're infringing on someone's rights and the odds are you'll pay for it at the time you're making the most money. This is unfair that Apple priced out these devices and sold millions of them with the possibility that they may be paying a hindsight licensing fee for each device.
Either this lawsuit was timed perfectly or Slavoljub Milekic has been living without human contact for five or more years until recently arbitrarily realizing that Apple has been infringing on his "intellectual property."
Patents wouldn't be so bad if everyone who had them cleared their throat from the beginning and got all this out of the way and agreed upon
On the other hand, it's nice to see Apple getting a taste of its own medicine.
My work here is dung.
This worked out so well for Apple the last time a Professor claimed patent infringement:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/us/david-gelernter-discusses-patent-claim-against-apple.html
Yep, it would affect an industrial PC I used circa 1996 with a touch-screen to emulate a mouse. Yep, some things could be dragged around in a standard windows app with that setup. Hmmm I guess touch screens have been infringing this for a while now.
I know what you mean... I'm close to releasing an app; it's for a niche market and probably small enough to fly under the radar, but I hate the thought of some random asshat coming along to levy a tax on my work, or for some corporation with a competing product to crush me in court. Just because the patent office saw fit to grant a patent for being somewhere first (rather than for hard work leading to a genuine invention), and because I have a 1-click buy button with rounded corners in my app. And yes, as a programmer in someone's employ, this can hurt you too, if the trolls decide to go after the cool startup or struggling innovator you work for.
Way to foster innovation (which was one of the purposes of modern patents).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
windows did all of that in WFW3.11 for pen computing.
": is there video or discussion of someone using a touchscreen for manipulating objects on a screen prior to 1997? It seems the answer must be yes, but I can't find a smoking gun"
Look up any of the early tablets. There are several that pre date 1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing
1991-1995 That pretty much is a giant smoking gun of "prior art"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Regardless of application, I feel that all patents are a bad idea. Inventing something gives you an edge over the competition, not just because you're the first to do it, but because you possess intricate knowledge while your competitors are playing catch-up. If that means that a year from now, you will be driven out by market forces, then so be it. The way patents are used today, they artificially inflate prices by forcing producers to enter protectionist contracts, also known as "licensing". You're allowed to produce X widgets at Y price, under Z abusive terms, for the low-low fee of $(X*Y*n) or else we sue you for ($X*Y*2n)^4.
Outside of the IP industry, this is often called racketeering. Instead of breaking your legs and smashing your shop like Little Joe and his thugs, IP trolls use weaponized tomes of law. I think I prefer the thugs, because it's harder to claim self-defense when you kill a gang of lawyers.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Hello? Yes, this is the Office of Licensing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You might have heard of us? Yes, that M.I.T., professor. It has come to our attention that your patent 6920619 is based on Intellectual Property that is the undisputed creation of this Institute.
Yes, that is correct. No, I'm sorry, but your pathetic attempt to rip off the "Put That.. There" project has not escaped our voracious I.P. monetizing department. Yes, I realize you obtained a patent in 1997 for this. It's not our fault that both yourself and the Patent Office failed to make note of the P..T..T project, which has continuously been a research project here since 1979, generating over three dozen major peer-reviewed papers and at least four PhD thesis.
No, we don't take "I didn't know" as valid remuneration. We do take Visa, MasterCard, Discover, AmericanExpress, Diner's Club, and other credit cards. The entire contents of your bank account will also be a start.
Yes, you plagiarizing twit, your Patent is invalid. Yes, we have a lot more lawyers than you (we get them from Harvard, at wholesale prices). Yes, you owe us for copyright infringement, too, since your interface design (as documented in the patent submission) is a direct copy of the 1990s work in P..T..T , and U.I. and industrial design is copyrightable (big shout out to Apple, there!).
We await payment in the sum of a mid-size country's G.D.P., and no, we don't take first-born children. That would be Harvard.
End-of-line.
Actually, the only mistake I appear to have made was in crediting Apple with the swipe-to-unlock patent. It seems the truth is more complicated.
Read that article and the associated claims, and tell me how, in your professional opinion as a patent attorney, the "progress of science and the useful arts" was advanced when the USPTO granted a 20-year monopoly on all likely implementations of the slide-to-unlock gesture.
This oughtta be good.