Patent for pull down to refresh mechanic. | Hacker News Reader

Patent for pull down to refresh mechanic.

freepatentsonline.com

34 pointsnirmal14 comments

Given his outward support of other developers' using the Pull Down to Refresh mechanism, this is a defensive patent more than anything else.

http://twitter.com/atebits/status/21665180962

http://twitter.com/atebits/status/21629390400

Defensive patents can be turned offensive quite instantly. Look at what Oracle is doing.

You mean how Oracle took Sun's defensive patents and unleashed all hell?

Sure thing, but I would take currently defensive patent over a patent of some litigious bastard anytime.

I suppose this is why Tweetie for OS X has been languishing for a year. Loren had better things to do with his time.

Like getting bought?

Filed 4/8/2010. I'm fairly confident that I used the pull-down refresh mechanic in other apps well before that, so these guys had better have some seriously good evidence that they were first to invent.

Then again, it's rather easy to be granted a patent. It's much harder to make it hold up in court. Still frustrating when app developers have to be afraid of implementing simple and obvious functionality like this for fear of being sued!

It's not the filing date that matters. It's the date of the invention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art#First-to-invent_versu...

The name on the patent is Loren Britcher, who wrote Tweetie. Did you implement the feature before Tweetie came out?

It's both.

Thanks. I stand corrected.

Your point still stands but the mechanism was first in Tweetie 2.

As I understand it, there is a year after an invention is published in some form or another for an inventor to file the patent. That way the patent filing won't inhibit, or be inhibited by, the actual publication of the invention.

As a result, the filing date isn't the exact delimiter of what's prior art, but of course it must logically allow art more than a year prior to the filing date.

You'd have to look at the first time the public or media saw Tweetie use this technique. Anyone have any evidence?

Patent _application_

Does the patent now belong to Twitter?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com