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Apple's Pinch+Zoom Patent Invalidated By Preliminary USPTO Ruling
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.
Frosty one.
So does that mean they owe a refund to Samsung? (I am a legal newbie)
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.
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. A better source of information on patent law is FOSS Patents.
And on the last day of the world. That's too funny.
This 2005 patent from Danny Hillis seems to be one of the main things the reexamination is noting as prior art.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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?
My work here is dung.
Really.
Captcha: corpse
pinch to bada bing, bada boom!
(or not; it's the best joke on the topic I could think of)
The CB App. What's your 20?
So here's a question. Does Samsung get any of its money back? I mean the money it spent and is spending to invalidate this stupid patent? The money it spent on trial over this stupid patent? The money it spent finding the prior art that Apple should have found before filing for this stupid patent? No. Nothing in US patent system is that fair.
I'm not a lawyer, but maybe there's one out there that could answer: couldn't Samsung counter-sue, or the Judge rule in favor of Samsung and order court fees paid? And presumably, wouldn't all expenditures, including any involved with the research and gathering of information in regards to prior art, be covered?
The difference between "preliminarily rejected" and "actually invalidated" is analogous to the difference between "being arrested" and "being convicted". Apple has to defend the patent and lose before anything changes.
I want them to hire more patent office staff, and more judges, so that these cases can be determined quickly and accurately.
Clear all the administrative backlogs, provide jobs, support private industry innovation.
Do they have a patent giving a zoomed view when positioning a cursor? I'm asking because Android not doing it is annoying, and it seems like something that would be quite OBVIOUS to someone versed in the craft, I mean, I had could have a zoomed view when entering text in Deluxe Paint on the Amiga IIRC.
The USPTO has said the "bounce" patent ('381) should never have been granted, and the judge involved has said the tap-to-zoom ('163) looks like it might be invalid. That together with this would mean Samsung only violated the 3 design patents (the, uh, "rounded corners and color" and "rounded edges on icons" design patents, I'll leave the validity of a patent on those up to the reader).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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?
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.
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. :/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM5_dgKDsrc
So that complete head-up-her-ass judge who refuses to throw out the case based on that jury foreman basically shut down their entire appeal...and then tada, the patent is thrown out. She's gonna be mad. She's obviously operating on her own agenda based solely on posterity and media opinion so she's going to have kind of attack when she finds out another judge undermined her. Whatever, the case is going to fall apart no matter what she does. Hopefully she resigns because her conduct as a judge has been completely disgusting thus far.
The biggest problem with the patent system is that most people aren't aware of the problems with it. General public awareness of the problems in the patent system is a good step towards eventual patent reform. It takes a big case like this with lots of news coverage about products many of us use to motivate the general public. Change is never fast or easy but as long as the majority of people think that patent reform is needed, it should eventually happen.
http://interserver.net/
If you were to recall when jury did interviews after the trial they admitted they punished Samsung for the use of the patents, which they were not supposed to do per the jury instructions. So what the damaged should been if all 6 patents were valid is up for debate at this point. 3 that are preliminary invalid made up a major majority of the judgement so.
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.
I do not that word means what you think it means...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIrhVo1WA78
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The claims were rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 based on U.S. Patent No. 7,724,242 to Hillis et al. (“Hillis”), International Pub. No. WO 03/081458 to Lira (“Lira”), U.S. Patent No. 6,757,673 to Makus et al. (“Makus”), Japanese Pub. No. 2000-163031A to Nomura et al. (English translation) (“Nomura”), and Dean Harris Rubine, “The Automatic Recognition of Gestures,” CMU-CS-91-202, December 1991 (“Rubine”).
As near as I can find, it doesn't look like Samsung raised any of these references during the trial to show the patents were invalid. Why not?
Additionally, Groklaw says:
The goofball jury, of course, thought it was a simply wonderful patent infringed every which way by Samsung...
Here's the verdict [PDF] form the jury signed off on after a nonchalant few hours of deliberations, which apparently did not include spending effort on whether or not this was a valid patent.
The most important part of this news isn't that the jury's work was a farce.
Wasn't Groklaw complaining just a few days ago that the jury foreman brought in external evidence, and therefore committed misconduct? And now, Groklaw is saying the jury should have conducted its own prior art search and brought in external evidence that wasn't raised by Samsung? What is it, the rules don't apply if it hurts Apple?
Just wondering if patent examiners are allowed to work on patent applications submitted by companies they or their families or friends have money invested in. Anybody knows?
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.html
5:30 multi-touch sequence
7:20 Steve Job's
Priceless.
Apple is already contacting their lawyers about suing you for the rounded corners on those parentheses. I hope you have a bajillion dollars.
Apple: We have the most intuitive touchscreen interface around! With no training, our customers can discover how to operate these gestures to use their phones.
Apple: We need to file a patent on this interface!
Do you see what's wrong here? Hint: something cannot be both intuitive and patentaeble.
What's the standard for determining patent validity again?
Useful, check (I like being able to zoom on a small screen)
Novel, check (since there weren't too many small touchscreen devices manipulating images at the time)
Nonobvious, not so much (unless they're lying about the ease of using their product)
No, I think stagnate could be a verb in the sense of it being used here to indicate they they are doing something which causes stagnation, a lack of movement or progress.
I you missed a word.
Lawyers go wherever the money is. The sort of fly-by-night conmen who used to rip people off with bogus real estate deals can now rip millions off companies quite legally by buying a bullshit patent and threatening anyone and everyone. Lawyers love this shit, and that's why these two have set off hand-in-hand to rob and pillage the tech industry.
Apple might design nice looking products, but ethically they are pretty bad. If there was a company like this around when Apple were starting up they would have been buried under lawsuits before they could even get off the ground. That's bad for the tech industry.
.... they protect innovation. If there were no patents, then companies would not invest huge amounts of money inventing and innovating. Instead they would sit back and wait for somebody else to spend the cash and then just copy them! Ohh wait, that is what just happened, Apple Innovated, Samsung copied... never mind, move on. Seriously though, you all act like Apple is the only company on earth that has sued another company. Get off the Apple hateraid bandwagon and get back to living your life. PS. Is it just me or is Microsoft the only company innovating in the OS market right now?
A good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence wrt phones (the violations they were fined $1b for - they were cleared of copying the iPad) was disallowed because they missed a filing deadline. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of having the trial IMHO, but Judge Koh decided her schedule was more important.
Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.
The judge prevented Samsung from entering all manner of evidence for the purpose of demonstrating prior art. The whole damn proceeding seemed pretty heavily biased against Samsung. The b*tchy demeanor of the judge towards both parties seemed to me to be more of a cover for the bias than anything.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
That together with this would mean Samsung only violated the 3 design patents (the, uh, "rounded corners and color" and "rounded edges on icons" design patents, I'll leave the validity of a patent on those up to the reader).
And Judge Koh has suggested that those design patents are not valid either:
"However, Apple’s evidence does not establish that any of Apple’s three design patents covers a particular feature that actually drives consumer demand. ...First, though more specific than the general “design” allegations, they are still not specific enough to clearly identify actual patented designs. Instead, they refer to such isolated characteristics as glossiness, reinforced glass, black color, metal edges, and reflective screen. Id. Apple does not have a patent on, for example, glossiness, or on black color." -- Judge Koh
Still haven't seen any signs that the judge is likely to overturn the jury's findings though
When a foreman tells the rest of the jury pool that he has patents and knows how they work and should therefore listen to him, even though it goes against the instructions, that is misconduct. Just saying. Several jurors, including the foreman himself have claimed this.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
This is a "preliminary" decision, not a final one.
Translation:
USPTO to Apple: That's a nice patent you've got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it...
Maybe instead of making up quotes you could quote directly from a source.
Try reading http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120828225612963 before talking about other people's bias.
No, I think stagnate could be a verb...
It is in fact a verb.
An intransitive verb.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Remember when Slashdot was just news and not someone trying to insert a questionable-at-best opinion into a story?
No. Why do you ask?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Wait. When was that?
Spent a little time today digging around and found two prior art patents, which make things a little more fun:
Nokia "Apparatus, Methods and computer program products providing finger-based and hand-based gesture commands for portable electronic device" in 2006
and interesting Apple again in 2004 (granted 2006), " Gestures for touch sensitive input devices" but this patent is not listed as prior art to the granted Apple "pinch to zoom" patent
http://www.ambercite.com/joomla/index.php/amber
Patents don't stifle innovation........ they protect innovation. If there were no patents, then companies would not invest huge amounts of money inventing and innovating.
I'm a scientist, so: PROVE IT
Oh, that's right you have no evidence to support your untested theory, because we have ZERO evidence that patents are beneficial at all. Ah, so the only logical thing to do would be to collect some evidence, eh? THEN we could settle this argument once and for all. I'm sure you'd agree, I mean, You're not one of those fools who shies away from The Scientific Method, are you? Well then, you can only agree that we must first abolish patents to see if they are beneficial at all. Not doing the experiment is pants-on-head retarding progress.
The judge prevented Samsung from entering all manner of evidence for the purpose of demonstrating prior art.
I'd argue that Samsung prevented Samsung from entering that evidence when they missed the filing deadline. To use an old meme, which part of the word deadline did you not understand?
A good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence wrt phones (the violations they were fined $1b for - they were cleared of copying the iPad) was disallowed because they missed a filing deadline. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of having the trial IMHO, but Judge Koh decided her schedule was more important.
1) Not any of the ones mentioned in the reexamination. The "good chunk of Samsung's prior art evidence" were several prototype phones owned by Samsung. The reexamination involves several prior art publications and patents, not prototype phones. So, again, why weren't these publications and patents brought up in trial?
2) The disallowed evidence was because no party in a litigation is allowed to keep evidence secret to spring on the other side on the eve of trial... and particularly where that evidence is the party's own prototypes, business records, etc. They can't really claim they had no knowledge of them and just found them. Instead, it was "we'll keep this secret and surprise everyone with it at the last second so that they can't defend it". That's allowed in movies and television (for example, the letters to Santa in Miracle on 34th St.) but not allowed in reality. It's not Judge Koh deciding her schedule was more important, it's the Supreme Court deciding that trials should be fair and impartial and not allow one side to spring things on the other.
blockquote>
Wasn't Groklaw complaining just a few days ago that the jury foreman brought in external evidence, and therefore committed misconduct? And now, Groklaw is saying the jury should have conducted its own prior art search and brought in external evidence that wasn't raised by Samsung? What is it, the rules don't apply if it hurts Apple?
Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.
That never actually happened, though. You're reading a few statements of Hogan out of context and putting them together to create a scenario that never occurred. It also doesn't explain why the patents and publications in the reexamination weren't before the jury.
When a foreman tells the rest of the jury pool that he has patents and knows how they work and should therefore listen to him, even though it goes against the instructions, that is misconduct. Just saying. Several jurors, including the foreman himself have claimed this.
That's not misconduct, though. Just saying. Groklaw quotes Koh's decision on misconduct, which quotes the relevant law:
A “juror’s personal knowledge constitutes extraneous prejudicial information where the juror has personal knowledge regarding the parties or issues involved in the litigation.” Hard v. Burlington N. R.R. (Hard I), 812 F.2d 482, 486 (9th Cir. 1987). Jurors are expected to bring their own personal experiences with them into the courtroom, and may generally rely on their personal knowledge or past experiences when hearing the evidence, deliberating, and deciding their verdict so long as they do not have knowledge related to the specific case they are deciding. Id.
Hogan's personal knowledge of the patent system is not extraneous prejudicial information, because it is not personal knowledge regarding the parties or issues involved in the litigation - i.e. Samsung, Apple, or the patents at issue. He's entitled to rely on his personal knowledge of other experiences, provided they are not related to this specific case.
Continuing:
However, “[a]fter a verdict is returned a juror will not be heard to impeach the verdict when his testimony concerns his misunderstanding of the court’s instructions,” even where a juror would be able to “testify, objectively, of incidents tending to indicate that other jurors may have misunderstood the court’s instructions on the elements of the offense,” as “the inquiry would still concern the mental processes by which the jurors reached their decision and would therefore be barred by the nonimpeachment rule.” United States v. Stacey, 475 F.2d 1119, 1121 (9th Cir. 1973). Thus, a juror’s understanding of the Court’s instructions is not considered extraneous prejudicial information, and the Court cannot receive testimony on how the jurors understood or followed instructions. To do so would be to undermine the “crucial assumption” necessary for the functioning of our jury system. Parker, 442 U.S. at 73.
Alleged failure to follow the instructions is also not misconduct.
What Groklaw appears to be arguing is that the jurors should have done their own prior art research and found the patents and publications used by the USPTO in the reexamination. That would be clear misconduct, since it would be external research about facts specific to this case.
Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.
That never actually happened, though. You're reading a few statements of Hogan out of context and putting them together to create a scenario that never occurred. It also doesn't explain why the patents and publications in the reexamination weren't before the jury.
What was taken out of context?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9cnQcTC2JY#t=2m50s
"The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there."
(note he actually starts this sentence at 3:13, but I included the 26 seconds before it for context)
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Groklaw is referring to an erroneous instruction given by the jury foreman to the other jurors. He (wrongly) told them that software claiming to be prior art to features on the iPhone were only relevant if the code would run on the iPhone. Since all of the code submitted as prior art runs on other systems and thus doesn't run on the iPhone, he told the jury they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it. So the jury never looked at the software prior art which was submitted at trial. Groklaw is just saying they should have.
That never actually happened, though. You're reading a few statements of Hogan out of context and putting them together to create a scenario that never occurred. It also doesn't explain why the patents and publications in the reexamination weren't before the jury.
What was taken out of context?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9cnQcTC2JY#t=2m50s
"The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there."
(note he actually starts this sentence at 3:13, but I included the 26 seconds before it for context)
Well, for example, he never says "they could dismiss all the prior art claims out of hand without even having to look at it" as the GP said. The GP is actually taking two different statements by Hogan - one about skipping over some prior art to return to it later, and the one you quote about running code on different systems - and combining them out of context. See?
When you eat, is your dish a wheelbarrow, your fork a pitchfork, & spoon a shovel or what http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3345911&cid=42414637 ? Does your bed use chevy truck coil springs and struts to hold your fat ass off the floor too? Hahahaha. No wonder you said this "Oh... to eat pizza again..." by erroneus (253617) on Saturday December 22, @05:20PM (#42371769) from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3335159&cid=42371769 you disgustingly fat hog.
Erroneus/john b wilcox: When you eat is your dish a wheelbarrow, your fork a pitchfork, & spoon a shovel or what http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3345911&cid=42414637 ? Does your bed use chevy truck coil springs and struts to hold your fat ass off the floor too? Hahahaha. No wonder you said this "Oh... to eat pizza again..." by erroneus (253617) on Saturday December 22, @05:20PM (#42371769) from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3335159&cid=42371769 you disgustingly fat hog.