Pinch-to-Zoom and Rounded Rectangles: What the Jury Didn't Say

CharlyFoxtrot writes "Steve Wildstrom at Tech.Pinions takes on some of the what he calls folklore surrounding Apple v Samsung, investigating what was and wasn't part of the case and how the media got it wrong: 'There's one serious problem with the first sentence, which was repeated dozens of times in stories in print and on the Web. Apple only has a limited patent on the pinch to shrink, stretch to zoom gesture that is a core element of touch interfaces. And the 826 patent wasn't in dispute in the Samsung case because Apple never asserted it. In fact, this particular patent does not seem to be in dispute in any litigation.'"

Comments

toothpick in my anus

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care - Government & Stealth Malware

In Response To Slashdot Article: Former Pentagon Analyst: China Has Backdoors To 80% of Telecoms 87

How many rootkits does the US[2] use officially or unofficially?

How much of the free but proprietary software in the US spies on you?

Which software would that be?

Visit any of the top freeware sites in the US, count the number of thousands or millions of downloads of free but proprietary software, much of it works, again on a proprietary Operating System, with files stored or in transit.

How many free but proprietary programs have you downloaded and scanned entire hard drives, flash drives, and other media? Do you realize you are giving these types of proprietary programs complete access to all of your computer's files on the basis of faith alone?

If you are an atheist, the comparison is that you believe in code you cannot see to detect and contain malware on the basis of faith! So you do believe in something invisible to you, don't you?

I'm now going to touch on a subject most anti-malware, commercial or free, developers will DELETE on most of their forums or mailing lists:

APT malware infecting and remaining in BIOS, on PCI and AGP devices, in firmware, your router (many routers are forced to place backdoors in their firmware for their government) your NIC, and many other devices.

Where are the commercial or free anti-malware organizations and individual's products which hash and compare in the cloud and scan for malware for these vectors? If you post on mailing lists or forums of most anti-malware organizations about this threat, one of the following actions will apply: your post will be deleted and/or moved to a hard to find or 'deleted/junk posts' forum section, someone or a team of individuals will mock you in various forms 'tin foil hat', 'conspiracy nut', and my favorite, 'where is the proof of these infections?' One only needs to search Google for these threats and they will open your malware world view to a much larger arena of malware on devices not scanned/supported by the scanners from these freeware sites. This point assumed you're using the proprietary Microsoft Windows OS. Now, let's move on to Linux.

The rootkit scanners for Linux are few and poor. If you're lucky, you'll know how to use chkrootkit (but you can use strings and other tools for analysis) and show the strings of binaries on your installation, but the results are dependent on your capability of deciphering the output and performing further analysis with various tools or in an environment such as Remnux Linux. None of these free scanners scan the earlier mentioned areas of your PC, either! Nor do they detect many of the hundreds of trojans and rootkits easily available on popular websites and the dark/deep web.

Compromised defenders of Linux will look down their nose at you (unless they are into reverse engineering malware/bad binaries, Google for this and Linux and begin a valuable education!) and respond with a similar tone, if they don't call you a noob or point to verifying/downloading packages in a signed repo/original/secure source or checking hashes, they will jump to conspiracy type labels, ignore you, lock and/or shuffle the thread, or otherwise lead you astray from learning how to examine bad binaries. The world of Linux is funny in this way, and I've been a part of it for many years. The majority of Linux users, like the Windows users, will go out of their way to lead you and say anything other than pointing you to information readily available on detailed binary file analysis.

Don't let them get you down, the information is plenty and out there, some from some well known publishers of Linux/Unix books. Search, learn, and share the information on detecting and picking through bad binaries. But this still will not touch the void of the APT malware described above which will survive any wipe of r/w media. I'm convinced, on both *nix and Windows, these pieces of APT malware

Re:toothpick in my anus

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody Seems To Care"

your god damned right, I dont give two shits, now kindly fuck off

ps: ending your post with eof is lame

Re:toothpick in my anus

[chilvence]

Dear sir: make your point succinctly or.... DIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Re:toothpick in my anus

[Arker]

An excellent reminder of several points many people may well be smugly ignoring.

That said, you show a good bit of the old conspiracy-paranoia stuff too.

"Search enough, and you'll arrive at some lone individuals who cry out their system is compromised and nothing in their attempts can shake it of some 'strange infection'. These posts receive the same behavior as I said above, but often they are lone posts which receive no answer at all, AT ALL! While other posts are quickly and kindly replied to and the 'strange infection' posts are left to age and end up in a lost pile of old threads."

Well, doh, what do you expect to happen? You keep implying this is the result of some cover-up or wide-ranged conspiracy, which is no more rational than the smugness you criticize.

When someone posts something like that, there are two possibilities. There is your APT, sure, and there is what we call user error. The odds are pretty heavily in favour of the latter, but either is *possible.* I've heard these tales from customers, not strangers on a message board on the internet but customers whose machines I am being paid to fix, many times over the years. I've investigated. I've found some user error, some hardware failure, some essentially run of the mill malware with some twist or other on occasion, the most interesting one apparently having been planted by an overzealous PI hired by a real mensch of an ex-husband, but the sort of attacks you are talking about? Never seen that. Dont know anyone that has.

Does that mean it doesnt happen? Of course not. We all know those sorts of attacks are now happening, between state level attackers. And I suspect it's been going on longer and much further along than most would imagine. All true.

But think about this, that guy posting? I've been called to fix his machine, or someone apparently much like him, a few times now. He has such a sophisticated piece of malware that there is nothing I can do to even prove it exists, yet it is not sophisticated enough but what he knows it is there. Just think about that one for a second.

I am convinced these people are often under psychiatric care, and need to be. I, myself, am not a psychiatrist.

So I dont need to be part of any conspiracy to skip over that post and use my time to try and help someone I *am* equipped to help.

As if...

[relyimah]

As if anyone would actually read up on something before commenting? /. is a great example of this... I read articles months ago with what Apple was actually complaining about (buttons, etc.)... pinch and zoom was never an issue. The media says and the sheep follow....

Re:As if...

[bob zee]

the media says and the sheep follow... i totally agree. nobody ever thinks about the money. seriously. think about the money. does the 'media' make money if no one listens? does the media make money if the sheep never follow? i hate to say it, but it always boils down to money. more clicks on your webpage equal money. more people watching your tv channel equals money. create a headline that grabs attention and you are effectively grabbing wallets. once you throw the money perspective on everything, these things become clearer. believe me, i am not knocking money. i love money. i want more of it. money CAN buy me love. we just need to be smarter about things. all of us - myself included.

Re:As if...

[msauve]

Why read up, when even the author of the linked article doesn't?

The Apple '915 patent, which was at issue, does assert a claim to "pinch/zoom." Claim 8 includes:

responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of the user input.

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Nilay Patel of the verge, an actual honest-to-god copyright lawyer not just someone who plays an expert on the web, disagrees in his aptly named "The myth of pinch-to-zoom: how a confused media gave Apple something it doesn't own":

"So let's just be extremely clear about this: the jury ruled that 21 of 24 accused Samsung phones infringed claim 8 of Apple patent 7,844,915, which specifically covers a programming interface which detects if one finger on a screen is scrolling or two or more fingers are doing something else. It is one possible step along the road to pinch-to-zoom, but it is definitely not pinch-to-zoom itself. And — crucially — it may not be that hard to design around."

Maybe read up there too ?

Re:As if...

[msauve]

In exactly what way is "scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points" not "pinch to zoom?" I'm not defending the patent - there's more than ample obviousness and prior art. The link you gave simply describes ways around the claim to "pinch to zoom," it doesn't disagree at all.

The claim very clearly does describe "pinch to zoom." To say that it doesn't is simply disingenuous. That's different than saying it's a valid claim.

Oh, BTW, the link's counter-example, scrolling with two fingers, doesn't work with Google Maps, it causes a change in pitch instead of scrolling (at least it does on my non-Samsung, Android phone, running ICS).

Re:As if...

[msauve]

BTW, I've never met a lawyer who could be called "honest to God." They'll take whichever side they're paid to.

Re:As if...

[pipedwho]

And more crucially: Is that claim negated by prior art? And should it have been considered obvious to a "person skilled in the art"?

From the comments of the jury foreman, he (they) seemed to misunderstand what prior art actually is. And thus had a conflict of reasoning in applying the patent loosely to the device in question, while requiring prior art to exactly match the device in question. Whereas, the prior art should have been loosely matched to the patent, and not to the infringing device - thus negating the claim in the patent. (Assuming the prior art did actually apply.)

I've noticed that people involved in the patent system (lawyers and inventors) seem to develop an increasingly more stringent view as to how closely prior art must be to invalidate a claim. Reworded, that means that their interpretation of novelty has the bar lowered to the point where the concept of obviousness gets watered down to be meaningless. So any 'invention' that is different in the most minor or pointless way becomes fair game for an IP grab.

Now that would be fine if infringement of the patent was taken as strictly, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If the claims are looked at more broadly when applied to "infringement" than they are when applied to the prior art that would invalidate them; then the patent system becomes a stumbling block rather than a way to 'promote science and the useful arts'.

Re:As if...

[axlr8or]

Put something in there about Obama or Romney. This is slashdot. If you look at my Karma it's terrible because I told people who believe in politics they are stupid. So, if you wan't someone to read an article on slashdot, make it political.

Re:As if...

[akamad]

I think the issue is that the pinch-to-zoom patent that Apple has is more limited than most people think. Here is a write up on the patent: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/ So the patent seems to be for pinching and zooming, then letting go and pinching and zooming again as one action. I'm no patent expert, but I'm not sure if that's the same as doing those two things separately as two actions.

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Ah, but it doesn't mention pinching, what it is is a method to determine an action based on the fact if 1 (resulting scrolling) or 2 fingers (resulting in a gesture) are on the screen. It doesn't define the gesture, whence the workaround mentioned in the article of having 2 finger scrolling so this patent is circumvented because there is no differentiation being done based on the 1 finger -> scroll, 2 fingers -> gesture method. Or so I gather, I am no lawyer.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

But you love all that terrible karma, or you wouldn't post off-topic. You're such a bad girl, nobody understands you.

Re:As if...

[msauve]

"Ah, but it doesn't mention pinching"

It doesn't have to. It mentions "scaling," which covers both pinch and spread. Additionally, the other counter-example in the link you provide draws a distinction which may not even exist - between "scroll" and "pan." Where's the definitive, legal, definition which say that scrolling can only be vertical or horizontal? Why can't I scroll diagonally?

Re:As if...

[msauve]

No. That's the '826 patent, which is different. Prior art/obviousness for that one is that it is an attempt to duplicate the function of a trackball (acceleration, intertia, multiple strokes, etc.).

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

No, "scaling" is what the interface does as the result of a gesture, pinching is what the fingers do which again is not defined in the document. There's a reason the patent is called "Application programming interfaces for scrolling operations": it focusses on scrolling and how that operation is distinguished from a gesture. And a gesture is just defined as having 2 ore more input points without further elaborating on the state of those input points.

Scrolling is defined in the full patent text as :

"Scrolling is the act of sliding a directional (e.g., horizontal or vertical) presentation of content, such as text, drawings, or images, across a screen or display window. In a typical graphical user interface, scrolling is done with the help of a scrollbar or using keyboard shortcuts often the arrow keys. Gesturing is a type of user input with two or more input points. Animating operations include changing content within a given time period."

So, they only mention the 2 axis.

Re:As if...

[the eric conspiracy]

They are advocates. That's what they are supposed to do.

If they took your money but not your cause that would be dishonest.

Re:As if...

[msauve]

You don't know what exempli gratia means, do you?

Re:As if...

[msauve]

"They are advocates."

You misspelled "whores." HTH! HAND!

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Well aren't you fancy with all your latin :). It means "for example" of course, I also know that in a legal text if you don't define something exactly lawyers will find a way around it. You brought it up, I don't think the directionality of the scrolling matters only the difference between the scroll action and the resultant end-of-screen bounce (what this patent is really all about) and how that's different from a not further defined gesture action resulting in scaling.

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

For those following along at home, this is what happens when a lawyer does describe a pinch to zoom gesture :

"1. A method, comprising: detecting at least two first contacts on a display surface of a multi-touch-sensitive display device; detecting a first motion associated with the at least two first contacts, wherein the first motion corresponds to a multi-touch gesture; adjusting a parameter of a graphical object in accordance with the first motion; detecting a breaking of the at least two first contacts; after detecting the breaking of the at least two first contacts, detecting at least two second contacts on the display surface; detecting a second motion associated with the at least two second contacts, wherein the second motion corresponds to the multi-touch gesture and the at least two second contacts are detected within a pre-determined time interval after the breaking of the at least two first contacts is detected; and continuing to adjust the parameter of the graphical object in accordance with the second motion.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the parameter is a non-linear function of a displacement of the first contacts during the multi-touch gesture.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the parameter comprises a magnification of the graphical object.
[...]"

Simple, right ?!

Re:As if...

[tsotha]

Yep. And sometimes lawyers do refuse to take cases, either because they don't think they can win or because they don't think they can be an effective advocate. Those two things are usually related, of course, but not always.

Re:As if...

[AK Marc]

That's why the system is broken.. They should take the "side" of protecting your rights. Even if you are a murderer, you have rights. They should not be advocates in the sense that they need not believe in your innocence, nor advocate it (except where doing so is done to protect your rights). But they should be advocates for the truth. In fact, currently they theoretically hold a duty to the court above the duty to their client, though in practice, they have a duty to neither.

Re:As if...

[BillX]

Interestingly, the '826 pinch-to-zoom patent could be more correctly called "double pinch to zoom": it covers a more narrow implementation in which the system recognizes a user doing a pinch-to-(activity) gesture followed by a 2nd pinch-to-(activity) within a preset time, maintaining the activity state in between. A naked pinch-to... activity (or any number of them) isn't covered if the system doesn't explicitly connect the repeated pinches together. This is probably why Apple hasn't asserted it. (And between you and me, an oddly-specific qualifier in an independent claim is almost always is a smoking gun pointing to prior art on the claim sans-qualifier.)

Re:As if...

[mosb1000]

Maybe I'm just more literate than the average reader, but this clearly doesn't cover "pinch to zoom." This allows the user to resume a multitouch operation for a period after removing his fingers from the glass to essentially allow him to continue his adjustment further than he otherwise could.

Re:As if...

[DeadCatX2]

I actually went and read that link. I'm assuming that the claims it presented "untangled" (i.e. without all the "the method in claim x" crap). Allow me to excerpt the parts I think are relevant, from the link you provided to The Verge.

- determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation;
- responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a window having a view associated with the event object; and
- responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in the form of the user input.

Ultimately, this boils down to patenting "scroll with one finger or pinch-to-zoom with two". All the other claims are generic stuff required to make any program (e.g. events, storage, etc). Google claims to get around the 915 patent in Jelly Bean by making one finger pan. A pan is two dimensional and therefore designs around the 915 claim.

So while it may technically be true that Apple has not patented "just" pinch-to-zoom, they have patented the combination of "one finger scroll, two finger pinch-to-zoom". Your argument seems to be that it's okay for Apple to patent the combination of these very basic and natural actions and gestures because this isn't that hard to design around?

I'm sorry but when you have to explicitly go out of your way to avoid doing natural things in order to avoid being sued for patent infringement, then patents have jumped the shark in a pretty big way. Like the 163 patent for "double tap to zoom (and resize text)" - another perfectly naturally way that humans interface with clickable objects, now forced to jump through ridiculous hoops covered in patenty fire.

Re:As if...

[FrangoAssado]

From what I understand, it's a technicality (which might be another reason to dislike patents, if you will):

• 1) to infringe that patent, you must infringe every element of claim 8
• 2) one of the elements of claim 8 describes distinguishing between one touch (to scroll) and two or more touches (the "pinch" gesture)
• 3) so, you CAN implement "pinch to zoom" without infringing this patent; all you have to do is (for example) make two touches scroll as well as "pinch to zoom"

Re:As if...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

. Your argument seems to be that it's okay for Apple to patent the combination of these very basic and natural actions and gestures because this isn't that hard to design around?

He's saying it isn't a broad patent.

Re:As if...

[msauve]

"the resultant end-of-screen bounce (what this patent is really all about)"

Try to follow along. The "bounce" patent is '381, not '915.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

But to advocate truth presupposes everyone knows what the truth is. But if that's the case, why would we even need a trial in the first place? The purpose of the court is to uncover truth, and the mechanism by which that's done in our system is to have a party argue the merits of each side. Perhaps that's not the best system, but by and large lawyers are playing the part they're supposed to in it.

Re:As if...

[WaywardGeek]

Sorry, but no. That's what happens when random slashdotter's try to describe a patent that they believe means "pinch to zoom" when in fact it does no such thing. This patent clearly describes a more complicated gesture.

The reason Apple is not defending pinch to zoom is they didn't invent it. It was clearly demonstrated in the original Ted talk that inspired Apple to peruse multi-touch technology. I've been involved in two situations where I found that one of my patent claims was not valid due to prior art. In the first case, the patent examiner had already approved my claims, and he argued with me that my claims were still valid. He restricted my claims in the most minimal possible way to avoid the prior art when I pushed the matter. That's fine... I think he was trying to be good to a rare inventor who was trying to be honest about prior art. In the second case, my customer (I was a contractor for Zvi Orbach) told me after we'd submitted a patent why it was invalid due to prior art at Chip Express. I called the patent office, and was advised that I should not attack claims I'd filed for a previous employer. I had already quit, in part due to this issue, though Zvi had given me many other reasons to stay away from him.

Re:As if...

[WaywardGeek]

Er... my point to my rambling comment is that Apple clearly lacked an honest inventor in this case. Their lawyers will naturally try to keep their clearly invalid multi-touch patent on the books, never suing anyone with it, simply because they know it's invalid. It's only the inventor who breaks the law by not bringing prior-art to the patent office, and as I found out, there is zero penalty to inventors who break this law.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

So do Mozilla gestures count? Because I've been using mouse gestures for AGES now... Perhaps long enough to predate this patent.....

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, I've never met a lawyer who could be called "honest to God."

I know plenty of lawyers that are honest to God. None of them are honest to anyone else.

Re:As if...

[AK Marc]

But to advocate truth presupposes everyone knows what the truth is. But if that's the case, why would we even need a trial in the first place? The purpose of the court is to uncover truth, and the mechanism by which that's done in our system is to have a party argue the merits of each side.

I agree with you. You read my post to argue, not to listen. The adversarial system in the US does not try to uncover the truth. It only advocates in an adversarial manner, with a focus on what you can prove, not what is closest to the truth.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine two fingers on the display, with constant distance, being rotated like they are turning a knob. Turning the imagined knob to the right enlarges the image, turning it to the left shrinks the image. That is a two-finger-gesture to zoom, but not pinch-to-zoom.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's precisely how patent authors attempt to game the system. When you're filing the application, the patent's very, very specific. Once granted, you'd like to read on everything and the kitchen sink.

I believe in these Apple patents, Apple's tapping a bit of new (to me, anyway) territory. I've read hundreds of patents for various reasons (researching prior art, working with legal teams on defenses), and they're usually the bizarre mix of legalese and techspeak that you read here. But Apple also seems to be working to obfuscate the meaning of the patents, not from a legal standpoint, but for trial. In saying relatively simple and basic things with as much complexity as possible, they're targeting the fact that these things are usually decided in court by non-engineers. If the jury can't fully understand what's going on, and they're told or led to believe this patent covers X and that one Y, they may very well just go along. Particularly if they live in Apple's neighborhood. And without a clear understanding of the patent, it's impossible to judge prior art, even if you think you understand that well.

It's telling that, after reading a few dozen discussions of '915 and few others on tech blogs full of actual engineers, there's still a great deal of confusion about what's actually being said. Sure, most of us are probably skimming these over coffee or lunch, one would hope the jury spent more time. But I claim most "regular folks" would lack the tools to fully understand this stuff, even if they spent weeks on it.

Re:As if...

[hazydave]

Gestures are ancient news.... I used an Apollo computer running Mentor CAD software back in the mid 1980s. It supported all kinds of mouse/puck gesture commands... but I'm not sure you could draw an equivalence to one finger or two. Of course, there's the usual chorded-mouse stuff -- gesture with button vs. no button, which kind of does the same thing (the Apollo puck actually had four buttons; they switched to a three-button mouse as standard with the newer systems, by the late 80s).

Re:As if...

[jythie]

Patents are almost always more limited then people think. Usually when a case gets media (even niche/blog) attention someone comes up with a good soundbyte for describing the patent then everyone takes that for the whole document.. completely ignoring all those sections that explain the details regarding what it actually covers....

Patent reporting has gotten as bad as science reporting.. I might despise software patents, but I rarely trust the accuracy of stories about them.

Re:As if...

[AmiMoJo]

Actually it seems like you don't even need to do that since Apple hasn't bothered to sue anyone over it yet. Presumably there are other specifics to the patent (didn't read it, natch) that prevent them from wielding it.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

than.
than.
than.
THAN.
THAN!

Re:As if...

[jythie]

I don't care.

Re:As if...

[DeadCatX2]

So in other words, exactly what you quoted. Because it isn't a broad patent, it's okay for this combination of actions and gestures to be patented, since it's not hard to design around the patent.

I'm sorry but I still disagree. People did one finger scrolling before Apple, people did pinch to zoom before Apple, but Apple gets to patent the combination? In my opinion that's wrong.

Re:As if...

[the eric conspiracy]

Truth? What is that? Surely you cannot propose that a system of justice can infallibly determine the truth. A lawyer of course is much less capable than that.

There have been plenty of legal cases where it seems obvious from the facts available that the defendant is guilty of the crime.

Except he is not.

Your lawyer is not there to judge your guilt. He is there to advocate your position in court as part of the process of hopefully finding the truth.

The system may be broken, in particular by the way your pocketbook can influence the results.

But while the system we have sucks, it sucks less than all the others.

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yeah I confused myself there. This one is the scrolling patent, then there are separate bounce and pinch patents.

Re:As if...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Because it isn't a broad patent, it's okay for this combination of actions and gestures to be patented, since it's not hard to design around the patent.

"Since it's not hard to design around" is not a factor in how they got the patent.

People did one finger scrolling before Apple, people did pinch to zoom before Apple, but Apple gets to patent the combination?

The patent isn't for "pinch to zoom' or 'one finger scrolling'. It's for a particular... a very specific means to that end... just like the other guy posted. Scroll up and take note that the claims are not 3 words long.
 

Re:As if...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Ultimately, this boils down to patenting "scroll with one finger or pinch-to-zoom with two"

No, scroll with one, or gesture with two, where gesture is any operation that follows 2 or more simultaneous inputs.

Your argument seems to be that it's okay for Apple to patent the combination of these very basic and natural actions and gestures because this isn't that hard to design around?

I don't care about patents. We could throw away the whole patent system tomorrow and it's be no skin off my back. It wouldn't change the fact Samsung is copying Apple here. But as long as we are operating within this system you have to apply its rules consistently and that means you can't just throw out cases because you don't like the claimant because that's just arbitrary. That's what I'm doing: arguing within the logic of an illogical system.

Re:As if...

[bware]

It only advocates in an adversarial manner, with a focus on what you can prove, not what is closest to the truth.

What is truth? If it can't be proven, then it's just opinion.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this right. You're defending a patent like this, which is pretty damn obvious because the media got a fact wrong, in a case where overall, Apple behaved quite poorly? I call this obvious because I can reasonably forsee that someone else could have easily come up with this idea, and there were no lengthy periods of society suffering over the absence of this feature.

Do you think the verdict stifles or encourages innovation? Do you think that supporting patenting of such triviality helps anyone?

I can understand why a patent lawyer encourages such triviality, but it doesn't help anyone, except rogue companies and greedy lawyers.

Re:As if...

[AK Marc]

Even if proven, it's still just an opinion as to whether it was proven. But the truth, is never an opinion.

Re:As if...

[AK Marc]

But while the system we have sucks, it sucks less than all the others.

The only time I see that is from the people who know nothing of the others.

Re:As if...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 2002 Minority Report movie, pinch to zoom and inertial principe are already present and 2 year after, Apple patent the same action...

The whole thing is insipid.

[chilvence]

It really is insipid. Samsung is being sullied. Apple is being painted as a bully. Why? Because of legal mumbo jumbo. If the laws did not exist, then they would just work it out between themselves and we wouldn't have to hear about it! Ask yourself: were the laws created by someone that actually contributed something to human society?

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[bob zee]

you have been reading the dictionary again!

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't have to take it to court. They could have worked out between themselves. But they didn't. We have laws for when people don't work it out themselves. Now I disagree with a lot about patent and copyright laws but if you don't understand how laws contribute to human society you need to study human behavior more. Ask yourself, how is a society even defined without laws? That's what makes society functional. Laws provide a common framework of expectations.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[jd2112]

Yes, but the lawyers for both sides are getting richer. That's what's important.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[pipedwho]

The problem with that reasoning is the assumption that the law in question is reasonable in the first place. "Working it out" may have involved a ridiculous settlement far exceeding any reasonable demand in a world where that law did not exist.

Let's say there was no patent system. If that were the case, there would be no dispute in the first place.

Now, let's say the patent system did exist, but had a much higher expectation of "inventiveness" and "non-obviousness" than it currently does. Again, the dispute would be easily resolved as it would be clear where copying had taken place.

However, the current system is comprised of ambiguous laws and patents that have so little (if any) inventiveness that they are almost entirely comprised of prior art (and anything left is obvious to anyone 'skilled in the art'). Now the courts are forced to sort everything out and verdicts become pot-luck.

With laws that bring entitlement where entitlement should otherwise not exist, there will always be a conflict that cannot be resolved anywhere but in the courts. Samsung had no way out, but to either pay Apple money, or go to court and take the chance of either paying or not paying. Apple held all the cards and had no reason to back down.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[mhsobhani]

Yes, but the lawyers for both sides are getting richer. That's what's important.

No. That is just the side effect.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[Arker]

If the laws did not exist there would be nothing to work out. This isnt a case where any sort of attack or theft has occured after all. It's a dispute over a statutory monopoly privilege - it's a problem invented and created by lawyers many of whom profit from it.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[Skapare]

But it is the same group of bastards that make the damned laws in the first place. It's all a scheme to shake everyone down for more money.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[GPierce]

Without laws, society is defined by who has the biggest club - kid of like our current legal system.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[AK Marc]

No, that's the intended effect. Why do you think so many politicians are lawyers? So they can write laws that earn trillions for their fellow sharks. Same reason I'll never be out of a job in IT, the people that make electronics will never make it so that the average person can do anything interesting with it.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[artor3]

But at least the clubs used in our current legal system are metaphorical. I much prefer them over the very real clubs that would bludgeon me to death because some other tribe is mad that I picked berries on their side of the river.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a law, people are forced to work things out between themselves. Sometimes that's bad, when a victim's family takes revenge on a murderer. Sometimes that's good, when someone takes offence to a mixed-race couple in public, but has to tolerate them because there aren't any anti-miscegenation laws to charge them with.

This court case, and user interface patents in general, are a shining example of patent law being a Bad Thing. There are other cases, certainly, in which patent law is a Good Thing. Whether patent law's net effect is Good or Bad is up for debate.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[beelsebob]

A brief history of how the first legal system actually sprang up (thought to have happened in southern England)... People argued about stuff, and couldn't agree. The community said "fine, we'll have a big meeting on top of this hill, and we'll decide who's right". In those days, who was right was decided based on how many people you could get to swear an oath to god that you were right, and not based on facts and juries, but it was a start. Legal systems exist exactly because people couldn't sort it out between each other, so a higher power was made to decide who was in the right.

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[hazydave]

They could have worked out between themselves. But they didn't.

"Working it out" is driven by your motivations.

I had dealings in the 80s on the receiving side of an IBM patent suit (working for Commodore). They hit us up with all sorts of patents. And over 90% were bogus, based on various criteria (doesn't apply, prior art, etc). But IBM's goal was basically eliminating themselves as a target, not taking all of your money or trying to block your product. So they had a flat license fee for 3+ patents. And an inevitable part of that fee negotiation was securing a cross license for your patents. They were pretty nervous about someone coming along with some big patent hammer and going after them.

And there was another concern -- when you know many of your patents are fairly bogus, you never really want to go to court. IBM in the mid-80s had been taking full advantage of the gold rush that was the start of the PTO allowing software patents without having a single examiner "skilled in the art" of software engineering. They had a crazy number of patents, but if they had established a record of lots of patents being tossed out, it would have been publicly embarrassing, and potential to cause all sorts of licensees to re-negotiate. Settling these things out of court keeps the proceedings fairly civil, and very private.

If Apple's still following Steve Jobs plan to kill Android, their goal isn't simple co-existence and getting paid for what they're due, but blocking Android where possible, creating FUD otherwise. This suit began well before Mr. Jobs died, and it was hardly the first -- Apple's been suing Samsung everywhere. And, in general, losing.

And of course, if you don't think you did wrong (or you're very sure your opponent doesn't have a strong case), you may well fight back. That's what got me reading 30+ IBM patents at a time back in the 80s... IBM was after Commodore for the Amiga, which wasn't based on any the IBM PC patents they so easily pressed against most computer companies. Some was also positioning -- IBM was after cross-licensing, and if the Amiga wasn't covered by IBM patents, or perhaps very few, that changes negotiations, or even leads to court cases (you're not going to court to invalidate 100 patents, but you might if you only believe 2 or 3 actually apply, and those have ample prior art).

Re:The whole thing is insipid.

[jd2112]

Yes, but the lawyers for both sides are getting richer. That's what's important.

No. That is just the side effect.

Not to the lawyers.

As The Bezel Turns...

[Anonymous Coward]

On This hour of As The Bezel Turns will Steve Jobs really come back from the dead? Will we finally know if Tim Cook switched the paternity result test disowning his own sons Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Will the wedding of Melissa Meyer and Jerry Yang be stopped at the eleventh hour by her bitter rival Carly Fiorina? Did Samsung CEO Kun Hee Lee recover from his sudden bout of amnesia?

Oh, nevermind, it's just another rehash of the fucking patent trial. Please make it stop.

How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like the 5th or 6th article related to the trial aftermath that has been accepted by Slashdot editors. What gives?? Does this have such a resounding life-or-death import on the tech industry to warrant such attention? Or are we really stooping to feeding the iHaters to this degree?

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I submitted this article because firstly this has been such a huge story in the mainstream press that it's good opportunity to investigate how reliable the information coming from them about tech matters is and secondly because there is a lot of confusion even among geeks about what was at stake in this trial resulting in a low signal to noise ratio in the discussions. Personally I do also believe we are at a defining moment in the modern computing industry so even if this lawsuit may end up being of little to no importance the close attention is warranted.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

I can absolutely guarantee you that there will be no post for this article shedding a new insight or angle that hasn't already been posted twice before. The mainstream press has reported the story wrong but they report every technology story wrong, so nothing new there. And how can this possibly be a "defining moment"?? There have been thousands of patent cases won and lost in the past, and there will be thousands more in the future, and the result of this case seems to not be unusual or trendsetting in any way at all.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[LordLucless]

Does this have such a resounding life-or-death import on the tech industry to warrant such attention?

Yes, yes it does. The current patent system is choking the life out of the tech industry. At first, everyone said they were just building up patent war chests for "defensive purposes". Patent trolls destroyed many of the little guys, but the big companies were largely untouched. Now Apple has unloaded it's patents against Samsung - both major companies, both with large swathes of patents, and Samsung at least has its fingers in many, many tech pies. It's not little companies getting shaken down for lunch money any more, it's superpowers taking swings at each other. And with things like the pre-emptive ban of Samsung's products, it's not a tidy little gentlemanly fight in the courts, either. The patent war just went hot.

Now, that's all a little dramatic, but it's essentially true. This case could quite possibly be the tipping point for the patent system - one way or the other - and people in technical fields are (or should be) extremely interested in the outcome.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Meh, maybe someone will actually read the article and take away a new insight or learn something they didn't before, I know I did. I'd call that a win. The comments here will be ... well like they always are, good or bad that's Slashdot.
I don't think this court case is a defining moment, but the rise of smartphones and tablets is and at te very least all these court actions expose what the main players are thinking, where they come from and where they want to go. At the same time there's the entire discussion that keeps raging about patents and what should and shouldn't be patentable. I think it's definitely interesting and worth following closely. Also: huge arguments about tiny details, it's what geeks do best.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

This case isn't even close to being as "impactful" as RIM vs NTP, or IBM vs SCO. It just generates more clicks because it involves Apple. Plenty of other industries have waged patent wars against each other (like automotive, pharmaceutical, etc) and they have all come out more or less ok.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[TubeSteak]

Personally I do also believe we are at a defining moment in the modern computing industry

There have been many "defining" moments in modern computer history.
What's so defining about this particular moment with its clone army of touchscreen phones?

so even if this lawsuit may end up being of little to no importance the close attention is warranted.

This lawsuit is important becase two 800 lb gorillas went nuclear with injunctions instead of settling with the usual cross licensing agreement.
Which is to say, why they are fighting is less important than the fact that they are fighting.
Apple injunction hearing against Samsung phones set for Dec. 6

Hopefully we don't have any more articles about the case until then.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[CharlyFoxtrot]

There have been many "defining" moments in modern computer history.
What's so defining about this particular moment with its clone army of touchscreen phones?

Look around on trains and subways or coffee shops: personal computers are going mainstream in a way they haven't before, crucially even among those we would consider to be tech-illiterate. Like the Mac (or Lisa) decades ago(*), we're defining a new way of interacting with our computers that'll probably be with us for a good long time and it'll impact more people than ever before.

(*) Because I know someone will bring this up, yes there was Xerox but the Mac, with all the changes it made to the Xerox model, was the one who went out into the world, got copied by everyone and became the archetypal GUI.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[achlorophyl]

I think there's a "third ideal form" in the Apple vs. Samsung case -- the Platonic Idea of a generic smartphone.. In other words, what any object/ device needs to exemplify in order to _be_ a phone or tablet in the modern world. In my scheme, the iPhone would be an approximation of this Ideal, even if the Samsung phones resemble them both. It should not be a crime to imitate a generic idea. No one should have a monopoly on an idea.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

The current patent system is just fine. Get over the fact someone not only thought of something first but was the first to patent it, even others also thought of it. Get used to licensing patents to develop your new software or device.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's both patents and trademarks.

I'm an enthusiast in the airsoft hobby. This is my experience over many years.

In this branche, everything is made in asia (China, Tokyo and Taiwan).
Distributors outside asia register the trademarks of companies in the east, then use that to sue anyone who tries to buy from the factory instead of the distributor.
They've even gone so far as to trademark old, common words used on products, then used that to sue competiting distributors and strongarm dealers into submission.

Furthermore, and this is an old thing, if you take a look at airsoft weapons they often have the RS trademark copied onto them too (they're replicas after all).
Now, i can understand the RS trademark holders beeing a bit miffed about this, but it's the distributors who register the RS trademarks.

It's halfway legal.
The distributors con the RS trademark holder into selling them a limited license, then use that license to control the market. It has NOTHING to do with making sure that customers don't buy fake products (Which is a valid concern regarding for example Nike shoes copied in china).
Everybody has copied the same basic design, build it in their own way and then slapped on their own name. And people recognize this, they don't get conned. Product A is product A and product B is product B, even though they may be designed from the same rifle, vest or whatever. They are sold as their own, not as fakes.
Here's how it happens.
Manufacturer A produces an airsoftgun with RS trademarks. It's succesfull on the market. The RS trademark holder doesn't care (they never do).
Distributor B decides to make a deal with RS trademark holder.
Distributor B sues everything into oblivion. Distributors, shops and manufacturors.
With all competitors off the market (for that particular airsoftgun), they find a manufacturor that can make a really cheap version of the product, then sell that product at a very high price because there's no alternative on the market now...

They even trick the customs to look for "fake" copies of their products. That is, the same product which was bought outside the country instead of from a local vendor who buys it from the distributor.

Or even with manufacturorers trademarks themselves. Distributors register the trademarks of manufacturores from asia in EU, USA etc and abuse it. The manufacturor will happily sell to you, but once you put it up in your shop, the distributor owning the trademark will threaten to sue you if you don't stop selling.
It's like Ford registering Honda and suing anyone who sells Honda because they own the trademark. It's really bizarre that it's even legal.

They even use it for price fixing. If you don't sell at a certain value, they will stop dealing with you, and you can't get it anywhere else or they'll sue you.
Or they'll use it to prevent a competing product from...competing. Say a distributor sells brand A springs, and then another spring manufacturor comes on the market. The distributor will then register the new brand, but not sell any of their springs, keeping a monopole on springs and preventing people from getting brand B springs.

They also registor common terms used to define airsoftguns as trademarks. Terms like Blowback and BB Pellet. Anybody who has dealt with firearms knows what blowback is, and it's roughly the same in the airsoft world.
Yet they're allowed to register Blowback as a trademark? That doesn't even make sense. It's like registering "Diesel" as a trademark and suing anyone who sells a "Diesel" car for trademark violation.

It's not just bigmchuge companies like you read in the news duking it out. It happens at sub-20000$ amounts too, and it hurts even more here because people are small and fold easier.

We really, really need a patent reform. Or we need to hold the people who issue patents and trademarks up to the law.
I bet the same thing happen in other markets too.

AC because i work at an airsoft shop and don't want to get blacklisted by distributors.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[jedidiah]

You don't get a 20 year patent for merely "thinking about something". You actually have to invent something.

Get over it?

You first. Restrict yourself to 20 year old tech. Then get back to us.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[jedidiah]

Yes. This is a defining moment. If we leave things to the corporate shills, then the future will be owned by a single company in a much more destructive manner than what we saw last time with Microsoft.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to sleep Rip. The USPTO has not required you to submit a working model with the patent application for years.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I disagree. If the Google model wins not only will we end up with a system where device support is non-existant, app quality is low and letting developers make money is a low priority (the current state of Android "ecosystem"), and we'll all end up paying for it all by trading away our privacy and our data because that's the real priority and reason Android was ever even developed. I prefer the Apple way because I think it'll end up creating a much better (if not exactly ideal) environment for both end users and developers. Of course if a third path should open my opinion might change but that doesn't look likely any time soon.

ALL remaining parties are "corporate shills" by the way. The true free as in speech alternatives died at the hands of the Android juggernaut.

Re:How many article submissions on this topic??

[Rakarra]

Personally I do also believe we are at a defining moment in the modern computing industry

There have been many "defining" moments in modern computer history.
What's so defining about this particular moment with its clone army of touchscreen phones?

I'll respond, even though this is a two week article (I was on vacation..)

I feel this moment is defining not due to the actual results of the Samsung case but due to the type of precedent it sets. It represents a clear shift, showing that the courts are happy to protect this sort of thing now, while they didn't back in the 80s when Apple and others were filing (and losing) their "Look and Feel" lawsuits. It opens the door for far more litigation over interface patents.

Whether Samsung has to change the interface or design of some phones... meh, that's not really historic. It's the precedent that this sets that matters.

Strawman Argument

[PeanutButterBreath]

I’m not sure where the idea that pinch and stretch was at stake originated.

Simple. It originated among people disingenuously insinuating that this trial was all about pinch-to-zoom and rounded corners. In fact, these are simply rhetorical shorthand for the obviousness and prior art that should have undermined Apples claims.

OTOH, I get writer is saying about the sorry state of writing. He knocked that one out of the park.

Re:Strawman Argument

[jmerlin]

I'd like to point out that it seems to me that patent infringement and considerations of the prior art and obviousness are being inverted lately. Prior art should be a very wide concept, because of obviousness. As I understand the patent legislation that I've read, if it's obvious to any expert given the current state of the art (later deemed the prior art), it doesn't meet patentability criteria. Instead, with modern patent trolls and people like the foreman in this case, everyone seems to be making arguments that would dramatically shrink what defines prior art and obviousness by requiring an identical and exact copy of an existing thing (which could, however, be a claim for a copyright infringement), rather than allowing for obviousness to any expert. Simultaneously, when considering infringement, which should be that of an identical and exact copy in part or whole of a patented thing, it seems like people are trying to apply obviousness by claiming "well, it's obvious if you changed our patent in these ways that they would be infringing, so you see, they're infringing". I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work the other way around.

Re:Strawman Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

people disingenuously insinuating that this trial was all about pinch-to-zoom and rounded corners

Well of course not - instead, it was about

''bounceback behavior of screen objects when you try to scroll beyond the edge of the display''

that's way better than rectangles with rounded corners or pinch-to-zoom.

The guy does definitely have a point wrt to tech writers not investigating - that would take time, time in which your readers will happily jump ship to another site, such as The Verge (which does tend to hold to better quality as well, for now).

Re:Strawman Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, The Verge - looks like a cross between Mashable, Fast Company, and The Daily Beast.

Re:Strawman Argument

[hazydave]

It did actually involve rounded corners -- that became the focus of many pundits and bloggers, simply because that was such a public thing in Europe, the various "it does", "no it doesn't" decisions over the Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad, the "Community Design" that doesn't look like either one of them, etc.

This was on the table. The jury rejected it -- they agreed with the UK judge: the Galaxy Tab is just not as cool as the iPad :-)

RE

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Ironic note at end of article

[whoever57]

From TFA:

How did so many get this so wrong? I fear it betrays something ugly about the way tech reporting worksâ"and doesnâ(TM)t workâ"these days. Depth, expertise, and reflection are all lacking. So is serious research

The note at the end:

Note: The original version of this post said the jury had rejected all claims regarding the rounded-corner design. The jury in fact rejected all claims only regarding willful infringement. On the simple question of infringement, the jury rejected a majority of claims, but did accept five regarding the iPhone. The corrected version appears above.

In an article complaining about how the press were so wrong, the author made a factual error. Perhaps he should have spent more time in "Depth", "reflection" and "serious research" that other authors are apparently lacking!

Re:Ironic note at end of article

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, this is the author of the article. I made the error because I picked up the wrong table from the verdict form. A coo enter pointed it out almost as soon as Te post went up AMD I posted a corrected version as quickly as I could get the correct screen grabs prepared. The mistake dodn't really change anything substantive, but I shouldn't have made it. But after all that has been written, I'm still seeing people post nonsense about rounded rectangles.

Re:Ironic note at end of article

[larry bagina]

did somebody patent your spell checker? :)

Re:Ironic note at end of article

[squiggleslash]

Maybe I'm missing something but if you complain that a lot of focus was on one patent, claiming it wasn't brought up, when it was...

Leaving aside the irony for a moment, consider what it means.

Yes, you may still be right about "Pinch to zoom", but I'll be honest, virtually all the snarks, jokes, criticism, etc, that didn't go into heavy detail, have been on rounded rectangles. You may have come across other comments on pinch-to-zoom, but they're hardly the majority. And if they're not the majority, then an article sliming the majority of the commentariat for getting the trial issues wrong is no longer relevent or appropriate.

And, BTW, you even managed to attack Samsung's comments on rounded rectangles. Might you, possibly, have paused a moment before writing that wondering, perhaps, if Samsung knew just a little more about the trial and the patents raised in it, than most? That if they make a comment implying something was a part of the trial that, well, perhaps the information you got suggesting it wasn't should be looked at again.

*SHOCKED*

[whisper_jeff]

Wait, so the "news" got the facts wrong and didn't bother doing even a little bit of research for their stories before "reporting" their "news"? I'm *SHOCKED*. Shocked, I tell ya!

Re:*SHOCKED*

[jader3rd]

I'm *SHOCKED*. Shocked, I tell ya!

Well gambling has been going on in the establishment.

Groklaw also did a shameful job

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculously biased reporting from Groklaw also contributed to the tech confusion about the verdict. PJ's litany of lies was a daily feature on the front page of Slashdot for weeks, bringing out of context quotes to the useful idiots here who seemed to really enjoy them.

Re:Groklaw also did a shameful job

[genkernel]

Hrm, that "litany of lies" seems rather informative to me...

#irc.troll(talk.com

[Anonymous Coward]

persp3ctiVe, the

Google Warned Samsung They Were Infringing

[Anonymous Coward]

From the jury foreman:

"One of the most decisive pieces of evidence was reading the minutes for myself of a meeting that was held at a very high level between Google executives and Samsung executives.

It was for a tablet and Google was concerned that for the sake of their operating system that the look and feel and the methodology that they [Samsung] were using to create their tablet was getting too close to what Apple was doing.

And in the memo themselves - remember this was minutes - they stated that Google demanded that they back away from that design.

And later there was a follow-up memo among themselves, these executives, and in black and white it says: we elect to not pass this information down to the divisions that were actually involved in the design.

So, from the sake of the engineers they went merrily along continuing their design not given any orders to back away.

They knew nothing of that meeting. To me that kind of raised a light bulb in my head that when I got in the jury room I wanted to read the minutes of that meeting myself.

When we went into deliberation in the jury room we not only had all the physical evidence of everything that was presented, but we also had sealed source code in its entirety from both sides, we actually had the memos that were talked about in the trial... and there was a piece of evidence after a piece of evidence that just clearly stacked up. "

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19425052

Re:Google Warned Samsung They Were Infringing

[Anonymous Coward]

i would take anything that man says with a grain of salt. The idiot has no idea how prior art works, and wanted to see apple succeed so he could sue tivo. Even if what he says is correct about this i doubt he was as concerned about apples crimes, and he would exaggerate one tablet being the same to all Samsung products infringe. He had made his mind up before he even got in the court room, then he made the rest of the jury's minds up using fallacies.

Re:Google Warned Samsung They Were Infringing

[hazydave]

I understand the Google concern.

Take a look at the section of the stuff released that shows icons. Now, you can argue if Apple has any exclusive right to rounded-square icons... I'm pretty sure early versions of SymbianOS either enforced this, or used it as the standard design-guide stuff. Most "rows of icons" handheld devices have traditionally used the more typical icons you find everywhere, which have an image, transparent background, and no borders. At least as an option.

Looking at just that bit, it's pretty clear that some of the icons on the Samsung devices are damn near identical to those of the iPhone. And sure, there are only so many ways to depict a phone or a calculator. But when you also consider (something they didn't present, at least far as I've seen) that stock Android looks very different, while Samsung's version looks more like iPhone than a Nexus device, you have to conclude that Samsung intentionally copied some elements of Apple's look here. They have a design patent on that. Whether there was demonstrable prior art on that, I don't know, but I do understand why Google was concerned. Not to mention perhaps a secondary concern over fragmentation of the Android UI.

The "rubber-band" or "scroll bounce-back" was also a very well know Apple patent, something you don't find in Android, and something that, IMHO, doesn't belong on Android or any computer system. It's more of that Apple skeuomorphic drek, which I find really annoying (and obviously, all corporations should work to keep me happy with their UI, or at least those I use, like Android). So again, this is something pretty obviously patented (again, no idea of specific prior art here) that Samsung injected into Android... more obvious attempts to copy Apple, it seems.

And then there's the overall gestalt of the device. You can technically implement a dozen copies of things that, alone, wouldn't make any difference. But taken together, even if it doesn't violate a single patent or copyright, the court might define your thing as being in violation of the others' trade dress, under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. Basically, if you make your product look too much like mine, in ways that distinctively define my product, you can be in violation, even without violating a single patent or trademark. They ruled against the Galaxy Tab looking too much like the iPad, but they did rule that a number of phones looked too iPhone-like, either based on Apple's "white" and "black" design patents, or the more general trade dress, not sure about that.

Re:Google Warned Samsung They Were Infringing

[hazydave]

He's not going to sue TiVo, even though he did more or less patent a TiVo-like device some years after TiVo shipped. I had a series of STBs sold in Germany in the late 1990s that also deliver demonstrable prior art against this guy's patent (Metabox AG). However, according to wherever I snagged hit patent (Google Patent Search?), he's abandoned it -- didn't pay his maintenance fees, more than likely.

Please understand

[fnj]

Please understand. Nobody cares WHICH patents were used to squash competition like a bug. On the one side, Apple and their partisans only care that competition was squashed. They don't care how.

And on the other hand, actual thinking people only care that not just the patent system as it is presently tortured, but the very IDEA of patents is an evil, stinking, obscene insult to humanity. It is corporate welfare. It is a denial of nature and evolution. It strangles competition. It does not further the advance of useful arts in ANY WAY. It stifles the advance. While accelerating transfer of wealth to the wealthy, It hurts the economy. It props up the cancer of bloodsucking lawyers - not the lawyers who participate usefully in addressing criminal acts and REAL civil transgressions. It gives the finger to small business already reeling under the assault of the System. It even uselessly damages very large corporations like Samsung who employ many people. And Samsung will quickly move to pass the cost along to the consumer if this decision stands.

Only idiots believe that patents encourage innovation. Patents strangle innovation. In the absence of patents, innovation would flourish because it confers advantage. The real advantage comes not in planting your boot on the other guy's neck to get a competitive edge at the expense of everybody else. The real advantage comes from making a superior product at a superior price, for its OWN sake.

N.B. - most people, if they interviewed me skilfully, would conclude that I am to the right of Ghengis Khan. In actuality I deny the whole right/left fraud. If I have one message, it is: don't filter every single issue through the prism of some presumed regimented Rule Of Everything imposed from outside your own conscience.

Re:Please understand

[Rob_Bryerton]

So you're telling me that, if this was a "little guy" vs. Microsoft (or Apple), and the little guy won this judgement, that you'd be singing the same tune?

I don't believe that for 1 second.

Re:Please understand

[Derekloffin]

I think the point is, it isn't the "little guy" because the "little guy" doesn't have a massive team of lawyers and effectively endless resources to pursue the case. Once upon a time patents as they were conceived may have been a good idea. However, like a very old SQL server being now riddled with security holes, companies have found all the loop holes, all the exploits for the patent system and now abuse them to the extreme. At the very least it need complete re-thinking.

Re:Please understand

[Sabriel]

A "little guy" winning this kind of war against Microsoft/Apple/Samsung (take your pick)? I see what you're trying to do, but for your question to have a valid answer, it would first need a valid premise.

It's kind of like asking, "if the moon was made of cheese..." or "if communism worked at a national scale..." - a nice thought exercise but of no practical applicability.

Re:Please understand

[Howitzer86]

The concept of patents aren't even the real problem here, the system by which we grant the patents is what brought us to this point. It's really easy to make a claim on fundamental concepts with software because our system is seriously flawed. It's gotten so bad now that the problem is affecting hardware and design concepts. People think that patents are meant to protect and lock down ideas, which isn't what they're supposed to do. Lawyers capitalize on this ignorance and patent clerks enable it. THAT is the problem.

Re:Please understand

[chris.alex.thomas]

well, in his world, there wouldn't BE a little guy.

Re:Please understand

[jedidiah]

In this case your "little guy" would be the jury foreman.

Plenty of us have already said that he is full of shit and that his patent is an embarrassment to the profession.

Of course if you aren't just a mindless brand partisan you will be "singing the same tune". Some of us here are not treating the Soylent Corporation like your local sports team.

Re: Please understand

[gidds]

Only idiots believe that patents encourage innovation

But encouraging innovation isn't the (direct) intention of patents: it's to get the technical details published and available to the public (in return for which the inventor gets a time-limited monopoly on its use).

In industries where seeing an invention in use offers little clue to its construction (e.g. drugs), that may be a reasonable bargain. It would take huge resources to rediscover and re-test a drug, and so publication saves money in the end. That might also apply in fields like microelectronics.

However, where the invention is blindingly obvious once seen*, publication adds little or nothing, and so it seems a very bad bargain. You don't need to bribe people to innovate; as you say, they'll do that anyway! You only need to bribe them to share the details — and only in where those details are worth more than the monopoly.

It's rather a pity** that the various national Patent Offices don't use this criterion to judge patentability...

(* I'm not addressing whether an invention is obvious before it's seen; that's a very different question.)

(** Ironic understatement.)

Re:Please understand

[tlhIngan]

Only idiots believe that patents encourage innovation. Patents strangle innovation. In the absence of patents, innovation would flourish because it confers advantage

Actually, Android is proof this is not true, as Google actually has worked around most of the patents, leading to the innovation and differences you see between iOS and Android (for better or worse - there are things iOS does better, and things Android does better). And face it - why do many high end Androids end up being slates? Where's the innovation in that? Why doesn't the Note/S III or such come with a hardware keyboard? Given the low-end ones have 'em, why not the high end? Or why not combine the Xperia Play with a real hardware keyboard to create a high end gaming phone with real controls?

The stupid thing is, in the absence of patents to work around, innovation slows down and stops because all tha that happens is people end up copying. Copying the right strategy in the general case. (You can see this in the various App Stores where for every original app, there's a dozen copies).

Of course, there will be SOME innovation that happens - there's always a scratch that needs itching, and a latecomer to the copying game needs to bring something else to the mix to get people ot buy HIS copy rather than the dozens of other versions that were on the market beforehand.

Businesses are, unfortunately, pretty damn lazy. (See all the recent movies that rehash plots, "re-imaginings", sequels, or Hollywood's favorite, re-doing movies made a decade or so earlier. Ditto video games also - how few new and original games there are versus rehashes, sequels and other stuff).

And also, no reasonable company will invest in any R&D other than how to tear apart a competitor's product and copy it to make it cheaper.

Therein lies the rub. Either way you're screwed. (And put a little perspective on it - many great advances in technology in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries have had torrents of patent lawsuits flying around. What we're seeing in software is no different than the internal combustion engine, the telephone, television, radio, cars, etc.

And yes, the little guy needs protection as well - anyone remember intermittent windshield wipers? The lawsuits over that were only settled in the early 80s, long after the patents expired in the 70s (and long after cars were built with it using the "stolen" technology - they started appearing in the mid-late 50s or so).

So this is justice.

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is not about patent violations, the real question is can I use my huge patent portofolio to squash comptetion?. Now we will see a fury of patent demands about the x on the top right side of the screen or the double-click--> minimize window functionality available in all Operating Systems or the scroll bar in browsers. What about the minimize all windows and put them on the background, when will that happen. Its not a genuine idea, it just happens that Apple patented it first.

That's not how it works.

[mosb1000]

You don't understand how patent claims work. You can't just take one sentence out of a claim and say that the overall patent covers whatever's in that sentence.

Re:That's not how it works.

[msauve]

So, according to you, one can exclude individual sentences in claims, and therefore invalidate any/all patents at will.

Re:That's not how it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

One can not implement parts of a patent and avoid infringing that way without any changes to the status of that patent.

Re:That's not how it works.

[mosb1000]

If you don't execute every method described in a claim, you have not violated that claim. That's how it works.

But this doesn't just apply to patent claims. Whenever you take a single sentence out of context you may be misrepresenting the overall meaning of the sentence. It's scary to think that so many moderators apparently don't understand that, or didn't bother to check before moderating your misleading/misinformed post.

"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[mark-t]

I recall fairly vividly playing around with a mandelbrot set exploration program which used a single left click to zoom in on the area centered on the click. This would have been in the 1990's.

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[dzfoo]

Read the patent. No, really, it's enlightening and a propos to any discussion on the subject.

It does not claim the "tap-to-zoom" gesture as novel. It claims a specific mechanism that describes how to determine which parts to zoom, when to zoom in or out, and on which part to focus and center; all using various methods and heuristics to determine user intent.

Have you noticed that in say, Mobile Safari, when you double-tap to zoom it doesn't just "zoom in"; it tries to determine which is the relevant content block that the user is selecting and magnifies that, often at the exclusion of the surrounding content. The mechanisms to determine what to do and how to do that is what is claimed in the patent.

The prior art on "tap-to-zoom" is precisely a non-contextual and non-discriminating magnification at the point of contact; which is different.

Yes, reading, it's a dangerous thing.

          -dZ.

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not claim the "tap-to-zoom" gesture as novel. It claims a specific mechanism that describes how to determine which parts to zoom, when to zoom in or out, and on which part to focus and center; all using various methods and heuristics to determine user intent.

In other words a not particularly novel subset of the existing understanding.

Being more specific says little to nothing about novelty no matter how much patent fanatics wished it did.

In addition, your understanding about what is the same and what is different is arbitrary and therefore meaningless. Everything is different.

Yes, reading, it's a dangerous thing.

Since the PO and lawyers have a clear policy of trying to baffle people with enormous amounts of fictional BS, rather than basing their reasoning on actual logic, that's actually true unfortunately. There's only so many hours in the day and wasting them on the unproductive nonsense that the PO and hangers on put out is a losing game.

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[Overzeetop]

What is it about selecting the tapped frame when multiple are displayed, and zooming out when only a single frame is double tapped, is non-obvious?

If you are double tapping to zoom, and asked a typical, advanced/senior UI programmer what should occur in the context of browser - how does this not end up on a yellow pad in a brainstorming session??

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[dzfoo]

You tell me! If it were so obvious, how come every previous implementation did not include that? So far, prior art included the wholesale and indiscriminate magnification of the point of contact.

It is obvious, of course, once you see it for the first time.

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[Anonymous Coward]

well you anti-patent fanatics certainly don't go around claiming absolutely everything is obvious, do you?

if you're all so fucking brilliant, why are you not out inventing all of these obvious things to the betterment of mankind instead of waiting for those evil corporations to put in the time and effort?

Re:"tap to zoom" existed in mandelbrot explorers

[tooyoung]

The patent is for the mechanism, not just the abstract concept. The patent explains how to implement this. You can come up with your own technique for how to solve the problem, as long as it is different from the patent.

wrong wrong wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing that the FA writer himself got it wrong and added in a terse correction, without going back and changing the rest of the article that in part depended on what he got wrong.

Steve Jobs lived too long

[renegadesx]

You know sometimes think the cancer killing Steve Jobs in 2011 was a travesty. Shoulda happened in 2005

Re:Steve Jobs lived too long

[chris.alex.thomas]

I think right after creating the iphone would have been the most optimal point, by that time it would have already created it's shockwave, but none of the after effects would have been created by android following it....

Tech journalism is indeed shallow

[Hentes]

I fear it betrays something ugly about the way tech reporting works–and doesn’t work–these days. Depth, expertise, and reflection are all lacking. So is serious research.

And the serious research in TFA is the author asking a guy on Twitter...

Re:Tech journalism is indeed shallow

[chris.alex.thomas]

and the picture of that guy SURELY LOOKS like a respectable lawyer too...

Re:Strawman Argument - what the jury did say

[mickwd]

Very interesting interview with the jury foreman on the BBC.

Especially his statements like:

"The jurors wanted to send a message to the industry at large..."

"And in example after example, when we put it to the test, the older prior art was just that. Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."

"And so consequently, when we looked at the source code - I was able to read source code - I showed the jurors that the two methods in software were not the same, nor could they be interchangeable because the hardware that was involved between the old processor and the new processor - you couldn't load the new software methodology in the old system and expect that it was going to work. And the converse of that was true."

I hope Samsung's lawyers are watching.

Re:Strawman Argument - what the jury did say

[chris.alex.thomas]

perhaps samsung should give him a free SGIII for his trouble, he seemed to have "knocked that out of the park" so to speak.

Self Contradictory

[zuperduperman]

He spends half the article complaining about supposed misreporting of "rounded corners" as an issue and then admits that in fact the jury did decide in favor of Apple's design patent on the rounded corners (qualified by equally dumb things like a "flat surface", and a "grid of icons", but that hardly makes the reporting of it sensationalist).

Apple even copied ipad name from ipaq

[Anonymous Coward]

apple wasn't even able to get an original name for their ipad

The foreman changes his statement in every article

[jools33]

Why did the jury foreman consider Google's opinion to be the arbiter of this case? What if Google were just being over-cautious? That was likely the Samsung boards opinion, and why they chose not to pass this onto the engineers. From the BBC article it seems that the Jury's decision was that if Google and Apple says its so - then it must be so.

Every time I read statements from the jury foreman - they seem to be evolving - with the news stories finding holes in his previous statements.

What amazes me is his statement on why they did not consider prior art:

"the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."
So because they could not run the software from a device produced in the 2010s on a device produced in the 1990s - it was not considered as prior art... astonishing.

Re:The foreman changes his statement in every arti

[BenJury]

"the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error." So because they could not run the software from a device produced in the 2010s on a device produced in the 1990s - it was not considered as prior art... astonishing.

I've just been reading that article and the whole thing just reads like a train wreck. Although I understand that these sorts of interviews cant then be used in the appeal in the US?

This also sticks out in that interview:

Do you think if you hadn't been on the jury then we might have ended up with a very different verdict?
I think so. But let's not say me specifically.

Let's say if there had not been an individual who had the technical background, and there had not been an individual who had gone through the process, the verdict might have been different - or it might have been the same.

I believe that the jury system in this country stands. The individuals would have ultimately come to a verdict. It might have been a lot longer.

But what definitely would have been required is passing more questions to the judge and having them come back. In our case we didn't have to.

So what?

[muffen]

In the end, the patentsystem sucks, and Apple has just grabbed the runner-up spot on my list of companies I don't buy products from (and even with all the lawsuits flying around, they still have a looooong way to go if they want to take over the number-one spot from Sony).

Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something absolutely hilarious about watching a gaggle of nerds argue that a multibillion dollar corporation should be allowed to copy another multibillion dollar corporation because misguided emotional loyalties.

I will never, ever understand getting so attached to a particular technology. I will certainly never understand selling myself to Samsung and Google to satisfy those emotions. And I will never think it's less than insane to believe that everyone should be forced to share everything to set up some unattainable utopia of.. I don't know what.

You nerds are fucking weird. Luckily there are few of you and no one likes you.

Re:Amusing

[Revotron]

Unattainable utopia of neckbeards and greasy ponytails?

Submarine precedent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns all software patent claims into copyrights.

I could live with that. In fact we all used to.

Life was better then. Now get off my lawn!

Author of TFA is just plain wrong

[sl4shd0rk]

"I think the jury did an admirable job making sense of the case they were given. They certainly did better than much of the tech media, which have made a complete mess of the verdict."

The jury *completely* screwed up. They started by ignoring the prior-art argument[1] samsung made, and then the foreman proceeded to sway everyone[2] with an "I got my own patent so listen to me" bullshit. The jury was an ill-fated catastrophe from the beginning of deliberations.

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120826/23534320161/applesamsung-jurors-admit-they-finished-quickly-ignoring-prior-art-other-key-factors.shtml

[2] http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4394863/Jury-foreman-recounts-Apple-vs--Samsung-case

Re:Strawman Argument - what the jury did say

[anethema]

Doesn't matter. Statements made by the jury after a trial mean nothing. They could say "neener neener we just didn't like samsung" and the verdict would stand.

Re:Strawman Argument - what the jury did say

[Anonymous Coward]

Small detail, perhaps, but the trial isn't over. I'm pretty sure Samsung can raise these issues and then hammer on it in appeal if they lose.

Seems likely they'd have to reduce the damages at a minimum given the punitive nature he has admitted to incorporating.

9 million developers 3 billion patents a year

[ZombieBraintrust]

The patent system is not there to reward time and effort. It is there to reward innovation. Many things are obvious but don't get done because of a lack of time and effort. We anit-patent fanatics have a high bar for inovation. There are over 9 million software developers in the world. Every day these developers put in time and effort. If everything they did was patented there would be over 3 billion patents published each year. (1 invention per day * 365 * 9 million = 3.285 billion)

Re:The foreman changes his statement in every arti

[Anonymous Coward]

So the Android software won't run on the older iPhone device so that would not be infringing then.

Re:Strawman Argument - what the jury did say

[jmerlin]

It does mean something. The foreman was acting as an expert witness for the other jurors, but was not admitted by the judge or any lawyer. So his opinions as a non-expert were instrumental in influencing the case. IANAL but this sounds like very good grounds for a re-trial or an appeal at least.

I'm talking specifically when he is talking about what defines prior art (you're supposed to ask the judge that, or the lawyers, not assume you know the answer), and when he claims he could read source code so he was able to explain why the "methods in software" were different (he needs to show non-obviousness) and specifically that they weren't "interchangeable" because of the processor. A software engineering expert witness could explain how differences in code may be inconsequential to the function (a while looping from len to 0 versus a for looping from 0 to len when order of traversal doesn't matter, for instance, but the code looks quite different), and how the code is likely in C or another portable language and the processor is (in general) of no consequence because the compiler generates machine-specific code. This last one is a big issue for me: unless the foreman is an extremely well trained and experienced programmer, he's unlikely to be able to find issues in code that would actually conflict with a given architecture, such as word size assumptions, endianness assumptions, etc. These aren't obvious in code. And further, I don't think this actually merits consideration as not the prior state of the art. If this was the state of the art at the time, an expert would easily be able to reproduce code to run on another processor. This leads to obviousness, which would indicate that it is prior art.

Sure this particular issue wasn't instrumental in the whole case, but we can't know the extent to which he poisoned this jury.