Apple Patents Portrait-Landscape Flipping: the patent system is broken
gettys.wordpress.com
gettys.wordpress.com
Reality: That compaq used a stylus, it was not a touch screen. And the patent doesn't say what is being alleged anyway... but then, its easy to construct arguments when you get to make up your oppositions position, right?
By definition, this whole thing is knocking down a strawman.
FWIW, every time I research one of these "alarming" "absurd" patents on an "idea", the turth turns out to be something else.
I'm convinced that the target audience never reads the patents or isn't conversant in the art sufficiently to comprehend them.
And thus these are essentially political posts to foster the idea that Apple doesn't deserve any protection for their inventions in the iPhone, because those making the claim are android fans or apple haters.
Reality is this: Prior to the iPhone, android was ripping off the blackberry. If Apple hadn't done this work, you'd still be arguing over which phone had the best physical keyboard and bespoke facebook interface.
I investigate plenty in my research areas; fortunately, suing academics for patent infringement tends to be a poor use of funds, so I can ignore them with relative impunity in my own work. But the average amount of innovation in patents I read is pretty low.
In computer-music, for example, I'm willing to agree that there are some truly innovative patented methods; for example, the CCRMA patent on inventing FM synthesis surely counts. But for every one of those, there are 100 or maybe 1000 patents on minor variations of algorithms they didn't invent, sometimes stooping so low as to be nothing more than a choice of parameters in a well-known algorithm not invented by the patent-holder.
It makes the area a bit of a minefield if you want to do anything commercial, because everyone and their intern owns patents on hundreds of trivial permutations of everything. That's considerably different from there being one patent per truly significant innovation in computer-music synthesis. There are probably 100 of those in the history of computer music, maybe 200 if we want to be generous; and yet there somehow exist thousands of computer-music patents.
Apple does, if they care about marketshare. Apple is making tons of money. Why do they need to sue people?
Does google patents their Google plus stuff? No. They challenge facebook head on with their own innovation. Frankly, it would take a lot for facebook to copy their innovation.
So what if your competitor copy you? If you're the biggest badass software company, why do you care?
Maybe if you are not good enough, you don't deserve to win.
Then again, I just happen to run a public domain magazine that doesn't amount to much. What do I know about success and failure?
Although I do think Google is the most badass software company around.
It patents using regex on a mobile device to parse text and automatically turn parts of the text into actionable links, such as email, hyperlink, etc. Software patents help no one.
2. The "prior art" in this article isn't valid, but that doesn't make this patent good. Patents like this are bad for the industry.
Imagine if the WIMP interface had been patented out the wazoo like this back when Microsoft and Apple were duking it out for the PC market the first time (or even better, when Apple copied it from Xerox). Would that have resulted in a better outcome for consumers? For the industry? For anyone other than patent lawyers? Absolutely, positively not.
Nobody invents in a vacuum; everyone builds on each other in a process of iterative improvement (even Apple; for the most recent example check out the blatant copy of Android's notification tray in iOS 5). If we all had to pay royalties to the entire stack of inventors who came before us, innovation would grind to a halt.
Furthermore, Apple's license wasn't a patent license. It also didn't cover all of the things they copied. Xerox later sued Apple for copying (and, thankfully, lost, as did Apple when they sued Microsoft, because they tried to use copyright law instead of patent law).
No, Apple did not patent potrait-landscape flipping. It took me about two minutes to verify this by reading the actual description on the actual patent.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
You don't even have to understand exactly what is claimed to see that orientation-flipping itself isn't being claimed. Just look at the background section:
Some portable devices use one or more accelerometers to automatically adjust the orientation of the information on the screen. In these devices, information is displayed on the display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers.
Again, this is background information leading up to the actual summary of the claims. This is what Apple patented a specific enhancement to. They did not patent mousetraps. They patented what they think is a better mousetrap.
Some portable devices use one or more accelerometers to automatically adjust the orientation of the information on the screen. In these devices, information is displayed on the display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers. For these devices, the user may occasionally want to override the orientation displayed based on the accelerometer data. At present, such devices contain little, no, or confusing heuristics for ending the user override of the orientation displayed based on the accelerometer data.
Accordingly, there is a need for portable multifunction devices with more transparent and intuitive portrait-landscape rotation heuristics. Such interfaces increase the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction with portable multifunction devices.
Sounds like Apple is fully admitting they were not the first to do this but their way of doing it is unique and better. It's more like they are patenting the user interface changing depending on orientation than the act of switching orientation itself?