Motorola Loses ITC Case Against Apple for Proximity Sensor Patents

New submitter Rideak writes with this excerpt from CNet about an ITC ruling against Motorola in their case against Apple for violating a few of their proximity sensor patents: "The U.S. International Trade Commission today ended Motorola's case against Apple, which accused the iPhone and Mac maker of patent infringement. In a ruling (PDF), the ITC said that Apple was not violating Motorola's U.S. patent covering proximity sensors, which the commission called 'obvious.' It was the last of six patents Motorola aimed at Apple as part of an October 2010 complaint."

Comments

Tech can be obvious

[linatux]

but round corners can't?

Re:Tech can be obvious

[Anubis IV]

Way to knee-jerk react without actually reading what he said.

He never said that rounded corners were distinctive. He said that they were a part of a distinctive design, which gets at a fundamental principle of design patents that you seem to not understand. Design patents work by specifying a number of claims for a particular design, which are taken as a whole when determining if infringement occurred. There is no design patent just for rounded corners. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong. What you'll find is that rounded corners are always just one claim among many in the design patents in which they're mentioned, and so they are never considered in a vacuum when determining whether a product infringes on the design patent.

To put it a bit differently, Coca-Cola has a design patent covering their iconic bottle shape, yet no one is suggesting that Coca-Cola has a patent on all curved bottles just because their design patent includes curves as one of its claims. To infringe, you'd have to include not just curves in your bottle design, but curves that matched the other claims and diagrams presented in their design patent before you'd be infringing on their patent.

Similarly, Apple's infamous iPhone patent that included rounded corners as one of its claims also included a number of other claims as well (I believe it also included a flat glass front, a thin aluminum bezel, a round button near the bottom, specified that the rounded corners had to be uniform in shape, and had a few more items as well). For infringement to take place, ALL of those claims would be considered together, rather than just the uniform rounded corners claim.

Re:Tech can be obvious

[Grieviant]

By asserting that the 'rounded corners' critique is invalidated simply by pointing to multiple claims in a design patent, you might be the one repeating an ignorant meme here. If NONE of the claimed attributes are unique on their own (rounded corners, beveling, device face comprised mostly of screen, small number of buttons, rectangular grid of icons, etc.) and various combinations of them have been widely used in other electronic devices over the past 50 years, how does one magically end up with a truly unique design? Piling up on dozens of commonplace look-and-feel features does not increase uniqueness. It seems more like an attempt to limit competition by monopolizing a basic design that the industry is already converging on.

Re:Tech can be obvious

[girlintraining]

He never said that rounded corners were distinctive. He said that they were a part of a distinctive design, which gets at a fundamental principle of design patents that you seem to not understand.

I think he understands perfectly: Here's the 5 page filing for the patent. The only thing that separates it in terms of appearance is that it has rounded corners. But I mean, seriously, if what you've done is glued a computer to a touchscreen panel, how many design options are there? Round corners. Square corners. It's still a fucking rectangle, because that's how every touchscreen in mass-production today is shaped. There's only a select few form-factors that make sense when the primary (indeed, only) human interface is a touch-screen display.

So no, he's not knee-jerking: It was widely panned by popular media as being a patent for rounded edges. That was the substantive issue in the German lawsuit with Samsung v. Apple, where their Galaxy looked "too similar" to the Apple device. What you're defending, sir, is not an innovation in techology, but a company with the largest market capitalization on the planet attempting to remove all the other players from the market by patenting the only practical form-factor for this type of device. There is no innovation. It's totally business. As to the reason you're defending it, I suspect religious beliefs, caused in large part by marketing and having no actual basis in reality.

To put it a bit differently, Coca-Cola has a design patent covering their iconic bottle shape, yet no one is suggesting that Coca-Cola has a patent on all curved bottles just because their design patent includes curves as one of its claims.

Umm, you're kidding, right? You've just cited the quintessential example of design patents. I mean, of all the ones you could have chosen, you've chosen the single most cited-example found in graphics design. You couldn't have derped your argument in a more epic fashion if you'd done it while screaming naked in the street.

To infringe, you'd have to include not just curves in your bottle design, but curves that matched the other claims and diagrams presented in their design patent before you'd be infringing on their patent.

See above. The curves in the bottle design was the sole thing patented.

Similarly, Apple's infamous iPhone patent that included rounded corners as one of its claims also included a number of other claims as well ...

Except it didn't, see above.

For infringement to take place, ALL of those claims would be considered together, rather than just the uniform rounded corners claim.

ALL [emphasis yours] actually equals ONE [emphasis mine] in this case. No really. It is totally just that. I'm sorry if you weren't paying attention, but I mean, who can when you're so busy fanboying that you fail at your argument so spectacularly we should build a monument to your derp.

Strategy

[Pirulo]

Without reading the whole article. I believe that with all the muscle that Google (Motorola) could put behind this claim, the case has more to do with strategy. It's a case to better loose and then later refer to. As the first poster said, -"Tech can be obvious but round corners can't?"

Re:Typo In Headline

[WilliamGeorge]

I cannot find find it :/

Re:Typo In Headline

[cheater512]

You'd also think that the site had editors.

Re:Agatinst against ??

[the eric conspiracy]

Clearly that's a typo in the first senteance. It should read Clearly that's a typo in the first sentence.

Re:Typo In Headline

[Demize]

Not if you've been here for 13 years...

Error!

[girlintraining]

Motorola Loses ITC Case Against Against Apple for Proximity Sensor Patents

Error: Cyclic Redundancy Check failed while parsing headline.