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."

Comments

Even More Curiously

[eldavojohn]

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?

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 ... 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.

On the other hand, it's nice to see Apple getting a taste of its own medicine.

Re:Even More Curiously

[Sarten-X]

Or it takes 5 years to assemble the paperwork, funding, and lawyers.

I'm sure attorneys are just lining up to deal with the overwhelming defense Apple will surely have on hand, the sleepless nights before their work is torn apart in court, and the media circus if the case actually develops. There must also be rich folks out there just itching to donate money to a case against Apple, where a chunk of their other money is likely invested. Of course, everyone documents their ideas fully, with timestamps and complete lists of influences, too...

All legal matters take time. Big legal matters take more time.

Re:Even More Curiously

[halfEvilTech]

Except for those that read TFA - The patent is actually narrowly defined.

"However, the patent quite narrowly claims a system used to "throw" objects off a screen when the "velocity of the touch exceeds a predetermined threshold," It also describes some specific gestures to move objects on the screen, none of which appear similar to gestures used in either iOS or Mac OS X.

It's not clear from a cursory reading of the patent, nor from FlatWorld's infringement claims, exactly how Apple's products infringe. However, we discovered that some of Apple's own patents relating to the iPhone cite Milekic's original patent—it seems likely that the company was aware of the patent and did not believe its particular implementation of a touch-based interface infringed on its narrow claims"

Re:Even More Curiously

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Apple had its most profitable quarter, a good indicator that a lot more people have been recently exposed to infringing apple products. Maybe one of them was Slavoljub?

From the complaint:

Slavoljub ("Slavko") Milekic, Ph.D. ("Professor Milekic"), is Professor of Cognitive Science & Digital Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Are we meant to believe that somebody who is a professor at a school right in the middle of the fifth-largest city in the United States has never once heard of the iPhone or an iPad or an iPod Touch, or seen them in action, until this last quarter? Someone who has a patent on touch devices and would therefore be interested in such things?

Bullshit.

Re:Even More Curiously

[AeroMed45N]

It is referred to as laches - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity) - when a party waits well beyond the point when they knew they were being infringed, in order to allow the defendant to get in much deeper before asserting your claim. If this claim is valid (and it sounds like that is a big if) it would seem that the timing of their changes means it is highly likely they were thinking about infringement from that initial point. To allow Apple to create several generations of iPhones and then the iPad before asserting the claim sounds like a laches defense might be appropriate. (Though if I read it right, the laches defense comes after the infringement suit has been won, and in the process of arguing damages).

That said, I am not a lawyer, I don't play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I just have spent way too many hours with patent attorneys in my career.

Re:Even More Curiously

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there isn't. We also don't know if he has been trying to get them to buy a license and being blown off for several years.

Even though it's against Apple . . .

[InvisibleClergy]

...it's lawsuits like these which make me want to get out of programming as a profession.

Prior art: 1990

[jabberw0k]

I was a programmer for the "Earth Over Time" interactive videodisc in 1990. Produced by Digital Techniques Inc., of Burlington Massachusetts for the Interactive Video Science Consortium, the system was designed primarily for school-age children, and installed in dozens of museums worldwide including the National Geographic in Washington DC. Earth Over Time featured a touchscreen display of Continents which the user could "click and drag" to re-assemble Pangaea, the prehistoric proto-continent. This multimedia application (called an "interactive videodisc" in the days before "multimedia" was a common word) won several awards including an ITVA Golden Reel and the Best Overall Achievement Nebraska Interactive Videodisc award in 1990. I also have implementation notes from the project in my files.

Re:Seems to me...

[MightyMartian]

But he shouldn't just be pounded hard. His lawyer should be disbarred. I'm thinking if you started tossing lawyers, you'd see a lot of less of this, from the big guys as well as the small.

"Sure I'd love to defend your claim to have patented the lead or graphite filled stylus, but you see, I'll be disbarred for fraud and lose my livelihood, so take your pencil and shove it up your ass."

Re:Seems to me...

[Sarten-X]

Oh, really? I don't recall any matching the patent's claims:

When... the system detects that the velocity with which the image is being dragged exceeds a threshold velocity, the system responds by removing the image from the display without leaving any representative thereof in the display.

In other words, swiping your finger across the display to go to the next page of apps. Note that it is not covering "any touch-sensitive device", or "any device with a dragging mechanism", or any such nonsense. The patent's pretty specific.

The claims are the important part of the patent, not the Slashdot summary.