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Apple Patents Page Turn Animation

Posted by Soulskill on from the or-as-it's-now-called-the-iTurn dept.

An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times Bits blog: "If you want to know just how broken the patent system is, just look at patent D670,713, filed by Apple and approved this week by the United States Patent Office. This design patent, titled, 'Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface,' gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application. ... Apple argued that its patented page turn was unique in that it had a special type of animation other page-turn applications had been unable to create." The article doesn't really make it clear, but this is for the UI design of showing a page being turned, not the actual function of moving from one page to another. That said, the patent itself cites similar animations in Flash from 2004.

4 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. BeOS had this in the late 1990's by Bill+Hayden · · Score: 5, Informative

    BeOS had a 3d demo program with this exact functionality in the late 1990's!

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  2. It's a design patent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's a design patent, not a utility patent. That means it's all about the artistic properties. For example, the BeOS page turning looks very different, so it doesn't apply. Coke has a design patent on the shape of the Coke bottle. It doesn't seem so unreasonable that Apple's artwork is different and distinctive.

    1. Re:It's a design patent by Anubis+IV · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's an odd day when an AC has something more insightful to say than everyone else, but that's the case here.

      Since this is a design patent, it only covers the ornamental aspects (in fact, the methodology and the like were specifically excluded in the patent, since the patent cannot cover any function). As such, others are welcome to make page turning animations (in fact, IBM had a VERY similar patent back in '95 that was cited as a reference by Apple) as much as they want, so long as it doesn't look like Apple's implementation. As the AC pointed out, the BeOS design looks nothing like Apple's, so it wouldn't act as prior art that could invalidate the patent. Even the IBM patent, while similar, is not close enough.

  3. Nothing wrong with this patent by afgam28 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Come on guys, the ignorance being displayed here is embarassing. Apple has not patented the general concept of turning a page. They've just claimed the rights to their specific page turn animation, that's all.

    A lot of people here clearly don't understand what a "design patent" is, and how it differs from a utility patent and copyright. Here's an example of what they all mean:

    Copyright: would apply to the code that implements the animation.
    Design patent: would apply to the animation itself.
    Utility patents: would apply to the general idea of turning of a page in an ebook.

    This is the claim from the design patent:

    The ornamental design for a display screen or portion thereof with animated-graphical user interface, as shown and described.

    Note that it only covers the animation as shown and described. If you use a different animation, you're not infringing.

    So calm down everyone. The patent system may be broken, but this is not an example of it.