Pinch-To-Zoom Apple Patent Rejected By USPTO

freddienumber13 writes "In another patent surprise, a patent application by Apple for pinch-to-zoom has been rejected by the USPTO on the grounds that its claims were either anticipated by previous patents or simply unpatentable. This will be welcome news for Samsung, who back in April asked for a stay of the trial. However, Apple has a short period of time in which they can appeal this finding."

Comments

Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[barlevg]

It seems like the USPTO is doing a *slightly* better job of not granting these absurd and frivolous patents. Love to see if they keep up this kind of thing.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[thaylin]

not granting? This is a reexam.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[icebike]

It seems like the USPTO is doing a *slightly* better job of not granting these absurd and frivolous patents. Love to see if they keep up this kind of thing.

Whoa, there cowpoke. Let's not acknowledged them for ordinary powers of observation over one "dee-NIED!"

Now if they start making a habit of it, there may be cause to light one cupcake on fire in celebration.

Spot on.
The re-examinations are starting to show some common sense.
After the community at large finds the prior art for them, the patent office seem to fess up to their mistakes more easily than most government agencies.

I'm not saying its the patent offices job to search for prior art, (but if Joe Random can find prior art why can't they?), but voiding all of these patents only AFTER they have been issued
and appealed, and used in court, and enforced by various import bans, and inflicted untold damage on the market place just seems backwards.

Since we are now on a first to file basis, the idea of imposing a 1 year public comment period commencing just after the Patent office published an intent-to-award notice would seem a reasonable extension to the patent process. It would put the community or others in the field on notice of which patents need attention.

As it is now, thousands of patents are filed and even the community efforts can't find all the prior art on every filing and the effort isn't warranted when significant percentage of patent applications will be rejected anyway.

We probably need a Dewey Decimal System for patent claims, so that the search process would be faster.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[DickBreath]

> Go back to 2007 when there really wasn't anything like pinch and zoom....wouldn't you patent it.?

But there was anything like it. That's why the patent was rejected. Prior art. I seem to recall from Groklaw recently, there was a book written in the 1990's about all sorts of UI gestures for touch interfaces -- even though touch interfaces were not popular.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[Zordak]

I'm not saying its the patent offices job to search for prior art,

Yes it is. That is exactly their job.

Since we are now on a first to file basis, the idea of imposing a 1 year public comment period commencing just after the Patent office published an intent-to-award notice would seem a reasonable extension to the patent process. It would put the community or others in the field on notice of which patents need attention.

That is a non-sequiter. What does first-to-file have to do with anything? That only comes into play if Samsung for example filed a patent application, and then Apple filed one later and wanted to prove that they had invented first. What's more, this is a bad idea regardless. Your patent term is calculated from your earliest priority date, which means that we arbitrarily deprive patentees of one year of term, or we tack a year on to every patent term, which doesn't seem like it would jive with the Slashdot anti-IP philosophy. And as a practical matter, when do you decide that prior art is significant enough to warrant reopening prosecution after it has been closed because somebody sent it some prior art? Who decides, for that matter? Are you going to make the patent examiner dig through a pile of crap every time, after prosecution has closed?

There is already an opposition period after a patent publishes, while it is still in prosecution. That's the time for you to muster your prior art and submit it to the examiner so he can look at it when it makes sense. After it's allowed is the worst time to do this.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[icebike]

I'm not saying its the patent offices job to search for prior art,

Yes it is. That is exactly their job.

 

Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art#Duty_of_disclosure
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2001.html

Finding all prior art is the responsibility of the patent seeker. Failure to do so establishes a prima facie case of unpatentability.
37 CFR 1.56.

If you are indeed a lawyer, please stick to writing wills.

Re:Pinch Me, I Must Be Zooming

[Zordak]

I am a registered patent attorney. I live and breathe patents every day. I know what the duty of disclosure is. You do not. You sound like a twelve-year-old telling Richard Stallman that he doesn't know what the Free Software Foundation is all about because he heard the term "free software" and thought it was about warez. It's nice that you have the Google skills to find a link to the MPEP, but perhaps you should also try reading your own links. And while you're at it, read chapter 700 of the MPEP. Or at least read this page (the one that instructs the examiner to perform a search). Then try reading some patent file wrappers, and look at the examiner's search strategy that he puts in the record before every office action. And while we're at it, your misdirected ad hominem attack and your misuse of prima facie make you look all the more foolish (and yes, I'm aware that you pulled that phrase from s. 2001, but you don't understand what it means).

In short, you are clueless about how patents work, as are most people on Slashdot, who think that patent prosecution is merely a ministerial act of rubber stamping an application. Patent prosecution is arduous and expensive. While there are occasional cases where examiners allow questionable claims, I have also had many, many opportunities to personally deal with examiners rejected claims on sorely strained arguments. Under W's appointee Jon Dudas (who was not even statutorily qualified for the post), the "Reject Everything" culture got so bad that the patent bar was practically in open revolt. You really have no idea what you're talking about.

reason it was rejected raises some new questions

[Trepidity]

The main reason it was rejected appears to be that its claims were anticipated by patent 7,724,242. But now that patent still covers a pretty wide range of the same things, and is still valid (at least so far).

And if we look at who filed that patent, it's two people whose names appear at the list of Senior Inventors of everyone's favorite litigious organization that doesn't technically hold patents itself...

Finally, some good news

[ianare]

Apple seems to be losing much of the gains they made during the initial trial. Not even at appeal yet and already getting patents invalidaded.

Hopefully this is part of a trend, where these ridiculous patents get thrown out, or even better, never granted in the first place.

Re:Finally, some good news

[sabt-pestnu]

It's too bad the jury in the original trial didn't do that patent invalidating itself.

They had the opportunity, but insufficient information. Perhaps the Samsung lawyers did not consider invalidating the patent as a tactic. Perhaps the prior art had not been identified in time. Or perhaps the jury, being selected for gullibility and passivity, was just not competent to that point.

Re:Well I'll be damned.

[ackthpt]

YAY!

that's all the text that is needed.

Disney has a trademark on Celebration, so watchit!

Re:Do they get a refund?

[ergo98]

Quite the opposite, if you file and are granted a patent for something that is later ruled invalid, there should be substantial penalties for the filer, because the purpose of a patent application is a government granted monopoly, leveraging the legal power and force of government to suppress other business. If you tell the government that you've done something novel that isn't, and prevent competition through that mechanism, there are substantial social costs (none of the benefits of invention, but all of the costs of a monopoly).

Silly Putty

[sjames]

Any child with Silly Putty would have anticipated the pinch to zoom patent.

Two finger solution? From Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

For years, Apple adamantly rejected a mouse that needs more than one finger.
Now, they require you to use two fingers to zoom?
Apple, please make up your freakn' mind.

All those millions of dollars...

[Alejux]

...in research and development, gone to waste! Now any company can use such marvel of technological achievement, without paying a dime. The world is not fair!

Re:Do they get a refund?

[thaylin]

How is it wrong? The government is not all knowing, or all seeing. It makes mistakes, and has to correct those mistakes for the public interest. If you penalize the government like you are stating than they will just let these patents stand, contrary to public interest, which will just cause a rise in crappy patents.

SUN had prior art

[cyber_rigger]

SUN had prior art.

I remember back in the 90s SUN having a demo with 2 point zooming.

Re:SUN had prior art

[gl4ss]

SUN had prior art.

I remember back in the 90s SUN having a demo with 2 point zooming.

I'd wager that pretty much everyone with 2 point touch surface trials had prior art... it's a pretty obvious application. sure, patent the tech for reading those two points but fuck no don't allow patents for the sw interaction with it..

Re:SUN had prior art

[markjhood2003]

Also back during that time there were many immersive VR demos with glove input devices that used thumb-finger pinching to scale objects. It's a very intuitive gesture that should never have been considered for a patent.

Re:Do they get a refund?

[gnasher719]

Quite the opposite, if you file and are granted a patent for something that is later ruled invalid, there should be substantial penalties for the filer, because the purpose of a patent application is a government granted monopoly, leveraging the legal power and force of government to suppress other business. If you tell the government that you've done something novel that isn't, and prevent competition through that mechanism, there are substantial social costs (none of the benefits of invention, but all of the costs of a monopoly).

In other words, no small inventor would ever again dare filing a patent, due to the risk of bankruptcy if the patent is later found invalid. Only the largest companies will be able to find patents.

Re:Do they get a refund?

[immaterial]

Quite the opposite, if you file and are granted a patent for something that is later ruled invalid, there should be substantial penalties for the filer, because the purpose of a patent application is a government granted monopoly, leveraging the legal power and force of government to suppress other business.

But Apple didn't file for this patent - Fingerworks did. Apple bought them out in 2005 so they could use pinch-to-zoom along with other Fingerworks patents.