Apple's Pinch+Zoom Patent Invalidated By Preliminary USPTO Ruling

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple's Pinch+Zoom Patent Invalidated By Preliminary USPTO Ruling

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 20, 2012 @10:12AM from the always-more-complicated dept.

skade88 writes "Apple has lost its patent on Pinch+Zoom. This is the patent that won Apple their billion dollar verdict against Samsung. GrokLaw has an article, too." The ruling is only preliminary, though, not final.

10 of 149 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Sick of this by kc67 · 2012-12-20 10:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

I am sick of hearing about patent lawsuits. It is sad that the industry can't work together to create unique products and actually innovate instead of stagnating one another.
1. Re:Sick of this by arbiter1 · 2012-12-20 10:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yea a lot of people were showing their disgust with this case after the results from the jury was read. Even from apple fans as well that are not happy with how apple is going about things, they decided to try to stop competition by litigation instead of being innovative. When case was decided by the jury, sales of samsung GS3 spiked after the trial.
2. Re:Sick of this by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 11:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I can hate both. Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should. And I don't care about the excuse that companies are soulless entities whose only purpose is to devour economic resources (i.e. make money) while retaining all of the rights of a human being.
3. Re:Sick of this by TheRaven64 · 2012-12-20 21:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The system has always been equally broken before, but it's a select few companies (Apple, Microsoft, Oracle) which have found it more profitable to compete in the market place. You don't see Samsung or HTC or Google trying to crush competition with lawsuits in the way that the above-named companies do.
  No, most big companies maintained patent pools to make it easy to kill off newcomers. Big tech companies don't worry much about other big tech companies that they're used to competing with. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola, for example, didn't worry much about each other. They were all producing similar classes of products, and each generation their market share would slide up and down a bit, but it stayed relatively constant. They worry about newcomers that disrupt the market. The same thing happened in the workstation market. SGI was doing very well selling 3D workstations. Their big competitors were companies like IBM and Sun, but they knew how to differentiate themselves in the market from these guys and ensure that they had enough income to keep going. Then came nVidia, and suddenly 3D workstations were built from commodity parts: their market no longer existed.
  This is why you don't see too many big patent lawsuits. The big players all have cross-licensing agreements within established markets and just use their combined might to squeeze out smaller players. If you want to join in, then they'll license you their patents, for either a share of the company or a share of the profits. If you do well, then they'll get a load of money, and if it looks like you'll do really well then they'll just buy you. The thing that gives management at these companies nightmares is the idea that they won't notice a company with a disruptive technology until it's grown so big that it can't be intimidated by these tactics.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:The Single Patent? I Thought It Was Six? by crunchy666 · 2012-12-20 10:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

The problem is that the jury didn't allocate amounts to any particular patent, so that case will probably end up back in front of another jury that is able to follow directions.
Re:The Single Patent? I Thought It Was Six? by Theaetetus · 2012-12-20 10:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is the patent that won Apple their billion dollar verdict against Samsung.
That's weird, I remember the jury verdict citing six patents. Pinch to zoom was one of them but surely it was only a fraction of the full billion?
Remember when Slashdot was just news and not someone trying to insert a questionable-at-best opinion into a story?
... no. :/
Re:Groklaw is biased, read FOSS Patents instead by shellbeach · 2012-12-20 11:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

I find Groklaw to be filled with amateur web sleuths who have nothing better to do with their time than to shake their angry fists at successful corporations.
Ah, yes, like the way Groklaw shook its fists at that successful corporation SCO.

A better source of information on patent law is FOSS Patents.
Indeed.
Re:Refund? by SternisheFan · 2012-12-20 13:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

No they are not under "review" They have been invalidated pending appeals by Apple. Also SternisheFan, the appeal you quoted is about the injuction request, not the patent.
Yeah, I noticed I goofed right after I posted, I'll try de-modding me. Was waiting for someone to catch my gaff. You win the +5 internets, :-)
Re:Refund? by anagama · 2012-12-20 14:56 · Score: 1, Insightful

"Of course, Apple has lost much of the tech segment as customers due to their trolling, but that is a tiny bit of their income."
I wouldn't be so sure of that. I can think of 9 mac laptops that people I know have purchased based on my suggestion. And this is with approximately 30 seconds of thought. The number is surely higher than that.
As for why I've liked them -- I can easily run much of the X11 based software I use directly on them, or can do X forwarding over SSH in a totally straightforward manner from the CLI. Plus I can watch Netflix with zero headaches. The people I suggested them to weren't techies -- techies make their own decisions -- but the people who asked me valued my opinion more than whatever advertising they had been exposed to.
That's the past though -- Apple's trolling has really embittered me toward them. My wife wanted a tablet so I got her a Nexus 10 (and she loves it despite being an iPhone junkie). When my business partner recently wanted to get a laptop for her dad so he could follow some fantasy sport thing via a web browser, I pointed her to a cheap laptop on Newegg that would meet his needs. The crummy-res widescreen is fine for him because he's really old and can't see well anyway.
Anyway, the point is, if you have geeks on your side, you don't just sell a computer to that geek -- you sell computers to him/her plus friends and acquaintances for basically zero in advertising costs. One geek is easily worth ten sales, but the ads are easily forgotten, ignored, missed, not believed, or misunderstood. Plus they cost a bundle. A geek on your side is free, profitable, and extremely effective.

--
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Re:Refund? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 05:06 · Score: 0, Insightful

Look at the link on the sig. It's a teabagger. You can't help them with anything logical.