Comment by jmitcheson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmitcheson | Hacker News Reader

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1. The desktop isn't the same. Bouncing is helpful to combat overscrolling, which isn't a problem on the desktop. That's why you haven't seen it. (On a desktop you have to actually click the scrollbar, or use your finger on the mousewheel - both of which make it pretty obvious that you've reached the limit of the container).

2. Real world things bounce. Copying the way something works in the real world and emulating that in software and sticking an Apple logo on it is not inventing something. That's just... building things.

3. I don't mean to misrepresent the first part of your argument, but "it's a good idea" doesn't cut it for patenting consumer software / hardware. There are real criteria (mentioned by others) that this doesn't meet.

Changing topic slightly, how is a jury supposed to decide "non obvious to a person skilled in the art", anyway? Does the jury consist only of hardware engineers? Because that would be the only way it would be fair. I can no more wonder what would be obvious or not to a doctor, teacher, lawyer, fireman etc. as they could wonder what would be obvious to an engineer.

I downvoted you, and so I feel compelled to explain.

To your first point: On the desktop there are three ways to scroll: the scrollbar, the mousewheel, the trackpad. Of those three, only the scrollbar makes it obvious when you've reached the end of a document. Also, it's not all that different – Apple has brought the same bounce-back behavior to the desktop when scrolling with a trackpad.

To your second point: Some real world things bounce. Balls bounce, and rubber bands do in a sense too. Documents don't. They aren't emulating real-world behavior at all.

Whether the patents are good/valid is up to a whole other set of (apparently very arbitrary) rules. But the points you make to refute taligent's are very weak.

  > Changing topic slightly, how is a jury supposed to
  > decide "non obvious to a person skilled in the art",
  > anyway?

Juries are supposed to decide based on the evidence presented at trial by the opposing sides. The job of a jury during a patent case isn't fundamentally different from that during a murder or theft, except that the laws are more complex.

Note that the article says the Korean case was decided by a panel of three judges, not by a jury.

> 2. Real world things bounce. Copying the way something works in the real world and emulating that in software and sticking an Apple logo on it is not inventing something. That's just... building things.

Actually, there's the small detail of knowing what part of the myriad details of reality to imitate. If you the secret or principle that tells us that, please post it here.

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