New Apple patents have Steve Jobs credited as an inventor | Hacker News Reader

New Apple patents have Steve Jobs credited as an inventor

greyb.com

> The last patent Jobs applied for was the dramatic glass cube for the entrance to the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York

A patent for a glass cube!

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/28/89/c3/fd8ac1d...

a design patent that is.

When you learn to patent ideas every idea looks like a patentable idea...

You should patent that process.

I would say something similar: it is very tempting to patent stuff when you can just trigger a whole patenting process with a single email or message.

Exactly. I don't say it is not possible for somebody to have 400 original patents, but I think it is incompatible with also having a full time job as a CEO of a large company if you had to do them yourself.

Also it is worth noting that ideas are a dime a dozen. Years ago I red Getting Things Done by David Allen and I set up my GTD system in Ultra Recall. Since then, I had the idea for the best personal information management system ever. Too bad, I carried the idea with me for too long and never executed on it. Recently I discovered that somebody had very similar idea and the application is called Notion.

See, it does not matter if you have an idea, it only has any worth if you can also execute on it.

in what way is Notion “the best personal information management system ever”?

I certainly don't think notion is the best, but the poster possibly thinks notion aligns with their earlier vision and what they consider "the best".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design_right

May sound ridiculous but still needs to be done to protect their identity from less reputable ripoffs that may otherwise just intentionally and exactly clone the design.

> needs to be done

No it doesn't.

To my understanding, trademark law should already "protect their identity" by preventing use of their logo, and copyright law would already prohibit an "intentional and exact clone". A patent differs in that it counts as infringement even if you can prove you came up with it totally independently, having never seen Apple's particular glass cube.

With the large caveat that I'm not an expert on IP law, I do feel like a lot of allowed patents have a net negative value to society.

The glass cube that was in Steve Job's mind must be protected!

Absolutely ridiculous.

Patently absurd, even

> Savant Systems, a Massachusetts-based home automation company, worked with Apple to create a mechanism for remotely controlling the motion of a vehicle using a wireless mobile device. They filed the patent application in 2014, which was granted in 2016. They submitted an updated patent in 2016, which was granted in 2019. Steve Jobs’s name was among the inventors in both these patents.

How the fuck is this patent worthy? The patent describes nothing more than using a smartphone to remotely control a ship's various control methods backed by a data link that's monitored for link quality.

In the blues brothers 2000 (1998) elwood drove the bluesmobile with a remote. I think that's prior art.

In "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997) James Bond drives his BMW remotely via a cell phone. Now there are multiple instances of prior art.

EDIT: corrected which movie

'watch this watch this' - back to the future.

The US patent system is a joke. Patents are basically granted for anything, and are expected to be resolved in courts.

Which favors the ones with deep pockets and IP departments.

Is the EU patent system any better?

Yes, we have much higher thresholds on software patents [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...

Maybe. It is however much more restrictive for what kind of software you can get a patent

The patent offices are likely just used to seeing a steady stream of crap from Apple that is so wacky they just accept it as part of their charm whether from a dead man or not. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has partners (or their own) planted in the same building to coincidentally wine and dine the patent office execs regularly like lobbyists. There is obviously a well paid set of folks that just file random crap patents from Apple constantly in a hope something, anything hits, and since it's Apple they simply cannot and will not be ignored.

I really can't say I blame them either, look at the lines of patent trolls lined up in West Texas every year to sue them. State of the nation...

I do have to wonder if someone went back to criticize the fact a dead man is the most inventive corpse since 2Pac and Biggie if the patents could be invalidated as superfluous. Yeah right, it's Apple.

The patent system has to be reformed completely in any case. If you're an innovative company, no matter the size, you have to file as many claims as possible so that you have counter patents to throw at your opponent, which makes the problem with patents worse for everyone because of the low-quality noise. If you're a small company, you have to be really diligent in your patent search because the risk of getting sued by legitimate patent holders or patent trolls is very high, made worse by the fact that the US system allows trivial software patents. If you're any kind of inventor, you have to either file a patent and risk that China will just outright steal your invention, or you do not file a patent in the hope it will take the competition long enough to reverse engineer and bring to market.

> file a patent and risk that China will just outright steal your invention

As in they notice that the patent was filed and copy it before you launch? Isn’t the system noisy enough that this would be really hard for them to do well?

> Isn’t the system noisy enough that this would be really hard for them to do well?

China has more than enough people to throw at a problem that's very easy to parallelize, and a culture that doesn't give a fuck about Western ideas of intellectual property ("gongkai" [1]).

And yet, our politicians seem to be happy to deliver our IP, our jobs, everything to a nation that's at least hostile towards us, on a silver platter.

(Note that I actually prefer the way of gongkai, but unfortunately it'd destroy our economic models so I see no way of reform in that direction ever happening -.-)

[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

Wasn't this idea used by Pierce Brosnan in one of the James Bond films? He was using a cell phone sized device to drive the Q-customized BMW, I think.

yes! Q can go and sue them!

Yup! BMW 750iL In Tomorrow Never Dies(1997)

[1]:https://youtu.be/gBcOBWq8J6w?t=36

On another note, I find that LCD screen and color pallet they used in the phone cooler looking than the dull flat design muck I am used to seeing everywhere. They basically took those old Green monochrome LCDs and acted as if those screens were naturally going to evolve into some sort of el type display as the next generation. They didn't see the rise of CPU power enabling full color full motion displays like we have now.

I love how he plays Q in that scene!

Marvel's Time Variance Authority is still my favorite retro futuristic tech. I wonder if anyone is using that kind of display in real life outside of games? Doesn't seem like many apps use it, even though there's lots of cyberdecks that would look cool with it.

The more iconic usage of remote control is in the same movie, later on in the car chase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN63LoWs1XU

The phone in Tomorrow Never Dies does have full color HD streaming video from the car as it's remote controlled, look at your own link (and the one pointed out by a sibling comment). The monochrome green UI is just what you see on start-up.

Secondly, the Bond movies are set in the modern day (or close enough). So unlike say 2001 A Space Oddesey the gadgets Q comes up with aren't an attempt to foresee technology development in the distant future.

So the fact that it uses a UI in common use in the mid-90s is to be expected.

Generally speaking (there's some exceptions) no technology in the Bond universe is too outlandish to pass as potential modern day advancements in some top-secret MI-6 laboratory.

Yes you raise a good point. I need to stop commenting when I am running on fumes after a long 16 hr day. If I had just played 5 more second of video I'd have been reminded of the video camera feature of the phone. Still, I am nostalgic for old school displays like that.

https://youtu.be/WXgx7Uzislo?t=33

It’s an interesting article, but I feel two ways about it, as it’s quite clearly an ad for the company.

However, I respect that they don’t hide that.

A lot of articles are really “stealth ads,” masquerading as “news,” so it’s refreshing to see these folks just come out and say it.

It is also genuinely interesting and original subject matter, not just reflected text from another site.

Hello ChrisMarshallNY,

I know the author, thanks for sharing your views. I will share your feedback ahead. I do not think their intention is to advertise Apple because most of their articles are on analysis based on patent data.

I think he meant the article is an ad for GreyB:

> You can learn much about a company’s market value and upcoming business plans by analyzing patterns in its IP strategy. Being a pioneer in the IP R&D space, GreyB has the expertise and resources to help you cut through the noise and get actionable insights on a company or innovator.

Oh, okay. Yes it makes sense.

Will share this ahead as well. Thank you.

Yes, it was an ad for GreyB.

It does look like they have a legitimate BI product. It isn't what I need, but I did appreciate the insight.

Like I said, even though it is an ad, it is one that is actually useful as legitimate information.

Seems like most are design patents. For all the graphs and charts it would be nice to know what percentage are design patents vs utility patents.

You're right. Most are design patents. Only 10.75% are utility patents.

Although this is informative article, I felt a little bad while reading the advertisement being shoved on.

The sad part is the website doesn't work on mobile properly. And each link redirects to their internal website instead of original patent url.

There is a patent ID and it is cool!

I don't have any problems with this website on my phone (Android, Firefox, not usually a combination that's tested), maybe there's some kind of extension or setting that's breaking your experience?

I'm using Android + Firefox in Private Mode and I get the same issue - links redirect to stuff like https://tryslate.greyb.com/engage/USD712067S1, but then all I get is a white page.

I have a similar issue with imgur in Europe, but I don't care enough about either website to delve deeper.

> Uncaught (in promise) FirebaseError: Messaging: This browser doesn't support the API's required to use the Firebase SDK. (messaging/unsupported-browser).

One of the console messages.

I see, I can see the same thing happening here. I wonder what part of private navigation could be breaking the website? I have Firefox's tracking protection set to strict for normal browsing already, so I wasn't expecting a difference between private browsing and normal browsing.

My guess is that it's this issue again: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1639542 but if that's the case I can't really blame the website here, other than that it doesn't show a fallback error message when Javascript crashes.

Based on a sibling comment, I'm guessing this website is using Firebase Auth, which uses the IndexedDB API, which Mozilla has disabled for private browsing.

Hello nullptr,

Thanks for sharing feedback about website and content. I will share it ahead with the authors. I think it wasn't their intention to advertise Apple here but if it is feeling like an advertisement, then they sure can improve they way they have portrayed this analysis.

About their internal tool. I would be open to share your feedback about this as well if you share it with me.

Would be open to hear feedback from other readers too. Please reply to my comment and I can share it ahead. Thanks.

iOuija?

> New Apple patents have Steve Jobs credited as an inventor

He's the only innovator left at Apple. /s

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