Hacker News Reader

Is multitasking during video shooting covered by a separate patent? How about multitasking while heating food, for devices that do heat food?

View on HN

What does this have to do with multitasking on a touchscreen device during a phone call?

The idea of patenting it has roughly the same amount of hilarity.

He's mocking the triviality of the patent. Patents are supposed to protect an innovative new process or technology. Putting a button on a screen to activate a previously existing technology is just spending money to try and cripple competitors who accidentally infringe.

Trivial, I agree.

But I don't know what is sadder: Apple patenting this, or the fact that very few (if any) phones did it before the iPhone...

Many many phones did this sort of thing before Apple. What they have patented is to display a button for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com