Slashdot Mirror
Steve Jobs Video Kills Apple Patent In Germany
An anonymous reader writes "Today the Federal Patent Court of Germany shot down an Apple photo gallery bounce-back patent over which Cupertino was/is suing Samsung and Motorola. A panel of five judges found the patent invalid because the relevant patent application was filed only in June 2007 but Steve Jobs already demoed the feature in January 2007 (video). While this wouldn't matter in the U.S., it's a reason for a patent to be invalidated in Europe. For different reasons someone thought the iPhone presentation was a mistake. It now turns out that when Steve Jobs said "Boy have we patented it!" his company forgot that public disclosure, even by an inventor, must not take place before a European patent application is filed. But Apple can still sue companies over the Android photo gallery: in addition to this patent it owns a utility model, a special German intellectual property right that has a shorter term (10 years) and a six-month grace period, which is just enough to make sure that history-making Steve Jobs video won't count as prior art."
Europe wonders why it has zero innovation and everyone floods to the valley. Enjoy those H1Bs!
the fuck has this to do with anything? it's fucking simple: if you want to patent it don't fucking show it around the town. the american model however is stupid, where you can troll people to using your patent by showing them the invention and then sue them!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But Apple can still sue companies over the Android photo gallery:
Please do! Maybe then, they'll replace the aforementioned crash-and-bug-laden POS with something, I dunno, functional.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Indeed. In the USA you can hand your stuff to a "standards body", then stab anyone who uses it in the back if your patent gets approved later (see also: Submarine Patents and Rambus's dishonesty a decade ago that drove up DRAM prices for a long while).
People can complain about the European patent system but they do a lot of things better than the USA:
- Stopping submarine patents and patent trolls.
- Actually doing due diligence on first-discovery vs. the nonsensical "first to file"
- Actually doing due diligence to keep the Obvious and Trivial patents out
- Actually doing due diligence to be sure someone isn't trying to patent something already patented
In fact, overall the US patent office doesn't do "due diligence" on almost anything anymore. I can't blame them since they are far underfunded to handle the glut of patent-slamming from major US corporations, but it does kind of make the US patent system a laughingstock elsewhere in the modern world.
Seriously, what sort of incompetence do you have to have on display to have someone actually manage to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
Seriously, what sort of incompetence do you have to have on display to have someone actually manage to patent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
Or the combover hairstyle. (Ostensibly to conceal baldness, but it usually just makes it more obvious...)
Or swinging sideways on a swingset.
There ain't shit that the US Patent Office does that passes any kind of smell test. The word incompetence doesn't begin to describe the situation.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
German apples kill Steve Jobs.
Or something like that.
Is it incompetence, or a system which is measured as successful by how many patents it processes and accepts?
I don't get the impression the USPTO has any incentive to do their job thoroughly and competently -- but that this is what they've been told to do by the government.
Just keep cranking out patents and let the courts decide seems to be how they operate.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you want to keep it as some uber-special method that no-one else can use without paying you, that makes sense. If you go around to the world, showing a new technique, then later on say "oh yeah, remember that thing I told you about, if you use it you have to pay me" you get laughed at.
See how that now makes sense when it's phrased properly.
Yea, but what's more screwy in this case is that the 'bounce back' effect was actually accepted as a valid patent. C'mon, is that what qualifies for innovation worthy of protection nowadays? What a joke.
Perhaps it's how the US claims it's still innovating, when the opposite is actually happening because of it.
The law applies to *public* demonstrations. Not closed demonstrations covered by a solid wall of NDA's. And if you demonstrated it years ago in the US, there's no way a EU firm could hold the patent. You could still file it in the USA if noone did before you, but never in the EU. On the other hand, the guy in the audience that was a bit faster than you? Neither could he.
Don't discount the advantages because you dislike one particular disadvantage.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
For the same reason you shouldn't pay a programmer by lines of code.
In fact, overall the US patent office doesn't do "due diligence" on almost anything anymore.
What do you mean "anymore"? They didn't before either, which is why unscrupulous people like Edison could trawl for European and Russian inventions, and then patent them in the US.
(And then have the public believe these patent trolls were inventors, but that's a different side of the story.)
Then you miss my point, I'm saying "approve them and let the courts figure it out" is what they do now, not that they should start doing it.
Oddly enough, you'll note that I did exactly that. It was the post I replied to who said they were incompetent.
This may come as a shock to you, but my government and your government are likely two different entities.
If I contact my government about how many stupid patents the US Patent Office approves, I'd get nowhere.
But the existence of a patent for sideways swinging and some of the other stupid things I've seen tell me that either these guys are truly grossly incompetent, or have been told to approve everything to collect the fees.
You don't need to be an American to look at some of the stupid patents which have been granted and wonder what the hell they were thinking.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Oh, and this myth of rampart anti-US sentiments in Germany isn't really true, either.
Though the US seems to be working very hard to make sure that anti-US sentiment round the globe in general remains high. :(
You're missing what I'm saying. The bounce behavior is completely natural, ordinary, obvious, and should not be patentable.
If Apple wants to patent a specific algorithm which generates a bouncing behavior, then they should be able to as long as it's a novel method and nobody's done it that way before. What they should not be able to do is get a patent which prohibits anyone else from implementing any bouncing, which is exactly what's happened. At that point, the fact that this behavior is a natural consequence of some simple mathematical laws and has been known about for centuries becomes prior art.