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Apple Receives Patents For Bezel-Free Display, Touch ID Button Embedded In Screen (9to5mac.com)
Apple has just been granted patents for two of the biggest features expected from the iPhone 8: an edge-to-edge display, and a Touch ID button embedded into the screen. 9to5Mac reports: The edge-to-edge display patent has the rather mundane heading "Reducing the border area of a device." It describes how a mostly-flat display can have a curved border area allowing it to wrap around the sides of the device: [...] "This relates to methods and systems for reducing the border areas of an electronic device so as to maximize the display/interactive touch areas of the device. In particular, a flexible substrate can be used to fabricate the display panel and/or the touch sensor panel (referred to collectively herein as a 'circuit panel') of a mobile electronic device so that the edges of the display panel and/or the touch sensor panel can be bent. Bending the edges can reduce the width (or length) of the panel, which in turn can allow the overall device to be narrower without reducing the display/touch-active area of the device." The embedded Touch ID patent is one of many submitted by Apple, describing different approaches it could take. This one re-uses language from a separate patent granted back in February, describing the benefits of allowing a user to authenticate without having to remove their finger from the screen: "Where a fingerprint sensor is integrated into an electronic device or host device, for example, as noted above, it may be desirable to more quickly perform authentication, particularly while performing another task or an application on the electronic device. In other words, in some instances it may be undesirable to have a user perform an authentication in a separate authentication step, for example switching between tasks to perform the authentication." Apple has been granted a total of 56 patents today. For more information, visit Patently Apple.
Not just the bezel free screen either, Samsung wanted to include a fingerprint-reader-in-the-screen feature on the GS8 but had to cancel it because they couldn't get it working properly.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If a patent creates a monopoly, why wouldn't they just use a pricing model that sets the price for the good at a level that supports paying the extended patent fees?
A simpler method of controlling hoarded intellectual property:
Three years after being granted, if a patent is not used in a product it is held to be "idle" and demonstrating an idle patent becomes an affirmative defense in a patent violation lawsuit.
This way, it's self-enforcing. Patents become use it or lose it, and patent trolls who hold patents but don't make a product or don't license it to someone who does use the patented idea are out of business. Corporations that hoard patents merely competitive to their own patented inventions won't be able to use them to stifle competition.
Well there are two questions there:
1) Did Apple apply for the patent before their rivals started doing it?
The bezel going to the edge is not the patent, it is the implementation. I think too many people think that the image area going to the edge of the phone is what was patented. It is not.
2) Is the implementation they're patenting somehow different and novel, compared to what their rivals are doing?
Yup. I performed some Slashdot heresy, and looked up the patent. This is a phone front with some flexible curving side with sensors embedded in it. It is definitely different and novel.
As with most things in here, people who hate Apple will hate them getting a patent - or even existing for that matter. If Samsung had filed the same patent, they would be singing praises from the rafters.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you're going to ding Apple over patenting this sort of thing (and you should!), do it for the fact that they're patenting something that's obvious. If you're going to make an argument about the timing of things, at least check your dates before spouting off with wrong information, because so far as I can tell, the facts don't back you up.
The bezel patent was filed in July 2014. To the best of my recollection (and I'll admit I may be mistaken, so I'd welcome correction if anyone has better information), Samsung's "Edge" devices were the first to feature this sort of display, but the first of those was the Galaxy Note Edge, which wasn't unveiled until September 2014, two months after the patent had been filed. The S6 Edge and subsequent devices weren't even announced until the following year, meaning that the patent was filed well before any of those products had gone public. If there were any other rivals doing this sort of thing 4 years ago as you claimed, I can't find any evidence of it.
Again, feel free to take Apple to task for patenting things that should never have been allowed to get through the system, but check the relevant dates before you make factually incorrect claims about the timing of events.