Apple Wins Mobile Patent On Displaying Lists, Documents

walterbyrd writes "Apple yesterday was granted Patent no. 8,223,134 for 'Portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying electronic lists and documents.' According to the patent's description, the technology relies upon a touch-screen display and includes both the function for displaying lists and documents, and how they look on a mobile product."

Comments

who owns the uspo?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like Apple has controlling shares in the USPO

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Tancred]

We (U.S. citizens) do, and we should be telling our congresscritters that this has to stop.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[BlueStrat]

You've wasted time in your life that you'll never get back... "Hopefully soon to be" is not "is"... try speaking to the current congressperson...

You mean continue talking to the guys that routinely ignore their constituents, lie to us in the face of obvious factual contradictions, and only listen to those throwing hookers, bags of cash, and coke at them?

That's worked so well so far, hasn't it?

The definition of insanity comes to mind.

Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.

Strat

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Tancred]

You claim to know a lot about this person I haven't even named. No wonder you're cowardly posting anonymously.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Jeremi]

Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.

Be careful what you wish for -- there's no reason to expect that the replacement politicians would be any less corrupt than the current ones, and every reason to expect that none of them would know what the hell they were doing for the first year of their first term in office. The result would be a completely dysfunctional government after every election.

The goal shouldn't simply be to have new representatives, the goal should be to have good representatives. And the way to get good representatives is to change the electoral system so that the path to getting elected isn't "raise the most money", but rather "best represent the views of the largest number of constituents". Only then will have you have politicians who are motivated to listen to people rather than to money.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[I_am_Jack]

Toss all incumbents out. Demand term limits. Eliminate career politicians.

Because of course anyone who replaces them will spring from the forehead of Athena, walk on water then turn it into wine, poop vanilla ice cream, and give us all sweet fuzzy kittens to make us happy when we're sad.

Why not try to create a better informed electorate? One which understands that software patents deter competition and stifle innovation.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[AliasMarlowe]

where the 3D porn watches you!

Your ideas are intriguing, and I wish to subscribe to your kinky newsletter.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[BlueStrat]

Why not try to create a better informed electorate? One which understands that software patents deter competition and stifle innovation.

What does it matter how informed and clued-in the electorate is if the politicians won't listen?

Don't get me wrong. I fully support efforts to inform and involve more people in the process. First, however, one must have a government that will respond and be accountable to the electorate. Career politicians have the time to form networks of cronies in and out of government to secure their positions and power, and to insulate themselves from public accountability.

As far as the new politicians, if they lie about their intentions and/or behave badly they must be voted out. There's no "Pre-Crime" that can determine this ahead of time. The electorate can only try to vet candidates as well as possible, and kick them to the curb if they prove untrustworthy.

The only course we can take to truly protect ourselves against government corruption is to limit the amount of power and wealth they control, and the amount of time they have to abuse it. Nobody is going to try to bribe/influence a politician to get government subsidies, for example, if said politician/government hasn't the power or wealth to provide such subsidies.

This in turn will be a disincentive to those contributing/spending large amounts of campaign and lobbying money, since their returns on their "investment" will be greatly reduced or eliminated. The framers of the Constitution knew this, and deliberately hamstrung the central government for precisely these reasons.

The more power and wealth government controls, the more money it's worth spending to those seeking influence. The reverse is also true, which is the point.

Strat

Re:who owns the uspo?

[erroneus]

Many of us do... the problem is the other "legal personhoods" speak louder and more frequently and with more money.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Xest]

I think it's probably harder to fix the electorate than fix the system, because the electorate is in many cases kept dumb by the system, because the system benefits from an uninformed electorate. If you want to fix the electorate you fight an uphill battle because those with the power to easily change this are working against you, whilst you, a minority, have neither power nor numbers.

Despite this I largely agree that the suggestions put forward by the GP aren't necessarily going to fix much. The fixes that are needed (not just for the US, but even countries like the UK) are:

1) Political campaigns funded purely by the public purse, relative to past popular support performance, with a cap such that the largest party has no inherent financial benefit over say, their next 2 or 3 closest competitors.

People don't like paying for politics, but this is simply the only way to ensure that parties campaign and perform in the interests of the public, rather than lobbyists. I would argue that any cost involved in this sort of thing to the tax payer would be more than made up for by the savings of having competent government that doesn't spend money handing useless contracts to lobbyists who got them in power etc.

2) A representative voting system.

There is an argument that representative voting systems like PR create governments that have little strength, but this is clearly false as Germany has proven having had coalition governments since the war. Ultimately minority or coalition governments are forced to compromise. In the UK people complain about our current coalition, citing things like the increase in tuition fees to £9,000 but they miss the fact that if it weren't for the coalition the Tories were actually going to push fees of £12,000. Our coalition has made a lot of mistakes, but it's naive to think the Lib Dems haven't had at least some degree of moderating influence on the government. The NHS changes were similarly far far worse under purely Tory proposals. Even with our shitty example of a coalition government, the coalition has led to moderation and has still been better than the alternatives - a Labour or Tory majority.

3. Limit media ownership.

Limit media ownership to say, 10% of the media, to ensure that no one media mogul can have undue influence on the media. Having a strong public broadcaster like the BBC which has a legal obligation to be impartial is also of major benefit.

Unless you do these sorts of root and branch changes you cannot have a healthy democracy, it will always be more easily corrupted, much less representative of the people and far more representative of vested interests and lobby groups.

It's unlikely America especially would ever go for these changes because many Americans have been fed bullshit about how the state is evil, but this has simply been used as a method by which to ensure corporations are strong enough to be able to control the state, which is then used as the tool by which to act against the interest of most Americans which creates this obscure feedback loop of Americans then thinking the state is evil and supporting laws that make corporations more powerful. Similarly the idea of state funding for political campaigns would probably be seen as too socialist in America, where socialism is defined to be synonymous with communism which is defined to be inherently evil because America lost the Vietnam war and failed in Korea to attain complete victory etc.

Just as religion and state should never be mixed, neither should corporate interests and state, and the only way to remove that separation is with the likes of implementations of ideas such as points 1 and 3 above. Point 2 works to limit corporate interests by itself, because it forces politicians to listen to the people if they want to be elected, it forces them to pursue moderate policies that at least half-please everyone, rather than extreme policies often pushed by corporate interests that make some people happy, whilst destroying the lives of others.

Until you solve this problem of the merging of state and corporations, you cannot have a healthy democracy and again, just as you cannot have a healthy democracy when there is a merging of religion and state.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Digicaf]

The result would be a completely dysfunctional government after every election.

If only we should be so lucky.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Greyfox]

I think Apple has a patent on telling your congresscritters this has to stop, on a mobile device. This is the same pattern we saw with all the "On the internet" patents a few years ago. I suspect Google Glasses are just an end-run around a lot of these mobile device patents, and wouldn't be surprised if Google is just quietly shoveling all these "On mobile device" patents back into the office updated with "On Google Glasses."

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Tancred]

Well, I was going to go beating up patent trolls vigilante-style, but I have this agreement with Commissioner Gordon to keep a low profile. So instead I find the good candidates, donate and do phone-banking and canvassing.

Re:who owns the uspo?

[Tancred]

Just because we (U.S. citizens) are largely apathetic about this topic doesn't mean we don't own the USPTO. It's only our collective apathy that allows you corporations to effectively control the USPTO.

I don't get it

[slashmydots]

I don't quite see the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, waiting around, suing someone for using it, spending millions defending it in court, and getting the patent thrown out and paying the competitor's legal fees.

Re:I don't get it

[Skarecrow77]

I wonder... can I get a patent on filing stupid patents?

I mean just think, that will pre-empt thousands and thousands of these things.

it'll be a god damn money pit.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't quite see the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, waiting around, suing someone for using it, spending millions defending it in court, and getting the patent thrown out and paying the competitor's legal fees.

By suing someone you slow down their ability to bring competing products to the market.

Re:I don't get it

[CosmeticLobotamy]

It's not general, the summary is just dumb. As far as I can tell, it's a patent on a scrollbar that disappears when you're not dragging the view. If that's right, it's certainly a crummy patent, but not a general one.

Re:I don't get it

[LordLucless]

How about the business model of filing an idiotically general patent, suing a new entrant to your market before they have millions of dollars to defend themselves in court, sucking their coffers dry and driving them out of the market, thus ensuring your market position?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

How about clicking the link and reading the description. It's actually pretty specific about it.

I mean, fuck Apple, but don't just jump on that bandwagon.

"Abstract
In a computer-implemented method, a portion of an electronic document is displayed on the touch screen display. The displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document. An object is detected on or near the displayed portion of the electronic document. In response to detecting the object on or near the displayed portion of the electronic document, a vertical bar is displayed on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document. The vertical bar has a vertical position on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document that corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed portion of the electronic document. After a predetermined condition is met, display of the vertical bar is ceased. The vertical bar is displayed for a predetermined time period when the portion of the electronic document is initially displayed."

Re:I don't get it

[justforgetme]

Good! Because for a moment I was thinking Apple went haywire and patented the <li> tag!

Re:I don't get it

[Taco Cowboy]

can I get a patent on filing stupid patents?

No, you can't

Simply because there has already been a lot of precedences

But you can try your luck on getting a patent on filing not-that-bright patents, since nobody has done that yet
 

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for that. We had to display the list of comments in the wrong order because of a new apple patent.

Re:I don't get it

[jeti]

The lawsuit costs the competitor money. For smaller companies, the costs can be ruinous. Apple has a hundred billion dollars to burn to prevent competition.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a very general patent. The broadest claim is:

1. A method, comprising: at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display: displaying a portion of an electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document; displaying a vertical bar on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document, the vertical bar displayed proximate to a vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein: the vertical bar has a vertical position on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document that corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed portion of the electronic document; and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar; detecting a movement of an object in a direction on the displayed portion of the electronic document; in response to detecting the movement: scrolling the electronic document displayed on the touch screen display in the direction of movement of the object so that a new portion of the electronic document is displayed, moving the vertical bar to a new vertical position such that the new vertical position corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed new portion of the electronic document, and maintaining the vertical bar proximate to the vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document; and in response to a predetermined condition being met, ceasing to display the vertical bar while continuing to display the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical extent that is less than a vertical extent of the electronic document.

For a first claim, that's very specific.

Well there's your problem...

[Tr3vin]

The fact that we use the term "win" so often when talking about software patents shows how we really need to change how they are handled at the very least. If we could get it to the point were companies earned patents then it wouldn't be so bad.

you don't see a business model

[circletimessquare]

But Apple's law firm does, and you nicely described all of the revenue generating functions.

Of course there's a difference between a business model predicated on bringing something of value to society and the business model of a rent seeking parasite that only owes its existence to an unaddressed inefficiency.

Re:you don't see a business model

[tuppe666]

But Apple's law firm does, and you nicely described all of the revenue generating functions.

Of course there's a difference between a business model predicated on bringing something of value to society and the business model of a rent seeking parasite that only owes its existence to an unaddressed inefficiency.

I am happy for you to call lawyers, accountants, advertisers etc Devils sperm, but they are there to advise management who take the decisions. I'm not sure why we quite see the blame shifted onto the lawyers is beyond me.

Re:you don't see a business model

[don.g]

Does it make you any less of a dick because someone else paid you to be one?

Re:you don't see a business model

[circletimessquare]

Legal status quos that do nothing for society and only generate busy work for lawyers is a simple matter of parasitism.

Of course there is valid and important work lawyers do for society.

Now be intellectually honest and admit there's a whole bunch of other lawyerly work which is unjustified, wasteful and useless.

I think the word they like is "frivolous".

Re:you don't see a business model

[jaymemaurice]

Does it make you any less of a dick (or vagina) because someone else paid you to be one?

There, I fixed that for you.

~your friendly Norwegian Microsoft Developer’s Conference Incorrectly Politically Correcting Department.

Re:you don't see a business model

[wienerschnizzel]

why we quite see the blame shifted onto the lawyers is beyond me.

It's not so hard to understand

A hired hit-man that actually performs the murder is generally seen as more despicable as the person who hired him. And even if you might disagree you surely must see why that hit-man would take so much heat from the public.

Patent Images

[grouchomarxist]

I couldn't see the images in the link above, but this site has them:
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/07/apple-wins-another-major-iphone-ios-interface-patent.html

Re:Prior Art

[harperska]

Did your GUI include a scrollbar-like UI element that was only visible while you were touching the screen? If not, no, your GUI is not prior art. Yes, the patent in question is stupid, but it is not overly broad like the summary makes it sound. And not reading what the patent is actually covering just makes you look dumb.

Re:UITableView

[harperska]

No, they patented the behavior of the scroll bar in UITableView, not the view itself like the summary makes it sound.

New Method

[Archangel Michael]

________ with a touch interface! Patent awarded!

Re:don't hate the player hate the game

[SurfsUp]

And what is wrong with hating the hateful player that plays the hateful game? Apple has gone out of its way to make itself perfectly hateful so I for one must comply.

What did she agree to do?

[Taco Cowboy]

Okay, so your soon-to-be congress-woman candidate gets elected and becomes a real congress-woman

What she agrees to do now?

I mean, what can you expect _anyone_ in the Congress to do, while the USPO is protected by corporations, patent trolls, and the lawyer union?

No it isn't

[alvinrod]

Actually you're wrong. In the first claim of the patent they explicitly state the following: "and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar;"

Essentially if you have a scroll bar in your implementation, you can't be sued with this patent as it's explicitly stated that it's not a scroll bar.

Also, it was filed in March of this year. It would be pretty damned easy to show prior art or that in fact your own implementation of this existed prior to Apple's filing of their application.

Re:No it isn't

[LordLucless]

Actually you're wrong. In the first claim of the patent they explicitly state the following: "and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar;"

They say that. But they don't offer any definitions of a "scroll bar", and they go on to describe exactly the function of a scroll bar.

Essentially if you have a scroll bar in your implementation, you can't be sued with this patent as it's explicitly stated that it's not a scroll bar.

You can be sued for anything. They may not be successful in their suite, however...

Also, it was filed in March of this year. It would be pretty damned easy to show prior art or that in fact your own implementation of this existed prior to Apple's filing of their application.

...assuming you can afford the requisite legal costs to actually make it to court and argue that claim, along with the slew of other patent violations you'd undoubtedly be served with at the same time.

Re:No it isn't

[LordLucless]

"In some portable devices, scroll bars are used to indicate the position in the document or list of the displayed portion. But scroll bars are fixed user interface features that take up valuable display screen area on an already small display screen."

It's a scrollbar that disappears when you aren't using it. They're just trying to divorce it from the usual scrollbar to make it seem more novel.

If someone is hit with a frivolous lawsuit and have a loose million, they have legal recourse available and could conceivably countersue Apple for court fees.

FTFY

If you don't think that this patent is valid, find some prior art. Otherwise if no one else has up to this point been using this idea, perhaps its more novel than most would consider now that it has been patented.

Patents need more than to be novel. They need to be non-obvious to one skilled in the art. Just because you're the first to do something, doesn't mean you get a government-enforced monopoly on it. It's supposed to be something that significantly contributes to the body of human knowledge, something significant enough to be worth placing restrictions on the rest of the populace in order to find out how you did it.

As for nobody using it, Ubuntu's had something very similar for over a year. Of course, this wasn't on using a touchscreen, so of course, that makes Apple's implementation totally novel and innovative.

Record-setting?

[blind biker]

Is this the most idiotic patent awarded to Apple, yet?

The tragedy isn't (just) that Apple had the gull to submit this shite to the USPTO, and it's not just a tragedy that it has been awarded: the other tragic fact is, Apple is actually going to use this shit, to thwart competitors.

Re:Patent Experts

[drkstr1]

Who the fuck cares what it says? You shoud not be able to patent a god damn UI concept. I don't care how detailed the patent describes it. (I assume you are the same AC farther up, exclaiming how detailed the patent is, like that somehow fucking matters) ...ending rant before my BP spikes...

Re:Apple no longer a product company

[MacGyver2210]

Steve's dead, man. Nobody left at Apple has the balls to throw out aggressive new products like the Jobs did. As much as I hate the guy and his company, he definitely knew his shit when it came to generating hype out of thin air.

The "A Better Informed Electorate" oxymoron

[Taco Cowboy]

Why not try to create a better informed electorate?

 
While you may believe that a "better informed electorate" is the key to solve the problem, I'm telling you this fact:
 
90% of the human population just-don't-give-a-fuck about 90% of the things that happen around them
 
All they want is to have an easy life, get laid, and be fed
 
Most of them just do-not-care-enough to lift their little finger to make any change, unless their livelihood got threatened
 

Re:The "A Better Informed Electorate" oxymoron

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why not try to create a better informed electorate?

While you may believe that a "better informed electorate" is the key to solve the problem, I'm telling you this fact: 90% of the human population just-don't-give-a-fuck about 90% of the things that happen around them All they want is to have an easy life, get laid, and be fed Most of them just do-not-care-enough to lift their little finger to make any change, unless their livelihood got threatened

Then they deserve the government they get.

Re:The "A Better Informed Electorate" oxymoron

[JazzLad]

Then they deserve the government they get.

But what about the rest of us?

Reading the patent

[ihavnoid]

What the patent seemed to describe was the thin vertical bar which appears when you touch the screen(which represents the vertical location of the current screen) and vanishes the moment you put your fingers off.

An easy way to circumvent this patent is to display the scroll location whether you touch the screen or not. The thin bar may have been a significant display estate on the good old years, but as the display resolution increase, it may be a better idea to display the bar continuously anyway.

Not sure if the patent is actually innovative, though. It seemed to have an awful lot of clauses to avoid an awful lot of prior arts.

Re:Patent Experts

[StripedCow]

You shoud not be able to patent a god damn UI concept.

Indeed. Imagine somebody patenting the steering wheel of a car, or the order of the pedals, or the order of the gears. That would be ridiculous. You'd never be able to switch brands of car.

Now besides USER-interfaces, I think actually that one should not be able to patent interfaces in general. Because any patent in this area will block interoperability and, as a result, innovation.

Gaaah!

[Un pobre guey]

Let it be known henceforth and herafter that 1) using any kind of electronic device to store, process, or display any kind of information, and 2) providing graphical, aural, tactile, or physical controls to manipulate, browse, or otherwise act upon the data are obvious to all skilled in the art and therefore not patentable !

Jesus Fucking Christ...

Auto-hiding scrollbars have been around for ages

[knarf]

Auto-hiding scroll widgets have been around for ages, on everything from flash-driven text display widgets through video games. Even the 'touch screen' magic does not make this innovative, as touch screen equipped kiosks have been around for a long time as well - just show one of those displaying such a flash widget from the early 2000's and this patent meets its maker.

To be honest it should not even be necessary to point at auto-hiding scrollbars to defuse this patent. In essence it comes down to auto-hiding visual interaction widgets after a period of user inactivity, so all those auto-hiding pointers (from the lowly inverse block cursor in text-based interfaces to the mouse-driven arrows and other shapes in GUIs) should be enough.

Even on a mobile device.

Or on a touch screen.

Or on a combination of both.

Or on the mobile touch-screen-driven rounded cornered internet.

Why has the USPTO not been reined in? Is it all lawyers supporting lawyers supporting lawyers (ad infinitum) or does the political establishment still believe this is the way to further progress in the arts and sciences?