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Comment by phillmv | Hacker News Reader

The point isn't that Apple didn't innovate.

The point is whether Apple's ideas are worth granting a monopoly over.

I recall playing with a Microsoft Surface the year before the iPhone got released, and lots of the mechanics were very similar. Pinch-and-zoom is the 'one-click-shopping', or the 'press tab to move to next selectable UI element' (also patented) of the touch interface; if you're being paid to develop it, you'd think about that concept in about five minutes.

Furthermore, do you really want to live in a world where Apple gets a monopoly on touch gestures? Describe a different zoom-in mechanic using only two fingers.

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So you're basically saying that Apple innovated but it shouldn't be granted a protective patent. Isn't this what the patent system was created to do? I see a lot of complaints about when patents are wrongfully used, but this is the first time I see someone complaining when they are correctly used.

The story here seems to be that Apple did the right thing buying a company that developed an innovate technology. In other words, the small company the created the technology was compensated by its development. Now, you think that a company like Samsung can just say "no, this is obvious" and start using that same innovation without any compensation or agreement? This is what seems crazy to me.

> Isn't this what the patent system was created to do? I see a lot of complaints about when patents are wrongfully used, but this is the first time I see someone complaining when they are correctly used.

I'm saying the system is broken - not an uncommon argument here on HN - because I don't think these are ideas worth protecting.

Did you spend $10 million dollars investigating the right kind of chemical coating to get glass to respond to finger tips? Maybe you can get a monopoly on that.

Did you have an engineer dick around in a lab for a week? Why are we protecting this? We're basically rewarding incumbents.

Being a software engineer I obviously can't comment on other fields. But it strikes me that a huge proportion of these patents were awarded on incredibly specious grounds. I know innovation is obvious in hindsight but… I think these kinds of wide-swath patents destroy competition which harms all of us.

Patents as they stand today destroy more social value than they produce.

You are creating a purely rhetorical distinction here. There is nothing that can be so complex that it cannot be replicated by someone else -- that is the whole definition of engineering.

What you're saying that is that if it is innovation in materials research then it is valuable (probably because you and me don't know anything about it). But software engineering is not, probably because you could (in theory) do something similar. Let me tell you: if you were the one doing the design of a motion sensing system, I can bet it wouldn't be "easy". And you would want some kind of protection for your efforts. It is too simple to disregard somebody else's effort when making a hypothetical point.

> if you were the one doing the design of a motion sensing system, I can bet it wouldn't be "easy"

WELL… I never took any visual recognition courses in university. But there is a large amount of literature on the subject. I think there may have been more innovation producing cheap infrared 3d sensors that work reliably than converting that vector field into a bit of math you can pattern match - but what do I know?

We're disagreeing on the "obviousness" of these patents.

>The aspect of a patentable invention most difficult to judge is obviousness. An invention is patentable only if it is not obvious to a person who is typically educated or trained in the field of the invention.

http://www.uspatlaw.com/contant.php?id=3

I'm trained in the art and I think pinch to zoom is obvious. It would be the first thing you try right after scrolling.

At the end of the day, I think the USPTO has been far too lax in what they consider obvious or not obvious. And yeah, frankly, I think a stunningly large percentage of all software patents are 'too obvious'.

None of the examples of patent trolling we've seen are really 'misuses' of the system.

Let me tell you: if you were the one doing the design of a motion sensing system, I can bet it wouldn't be "easy".

This sentence makes no sense. The patent in question is not on a single technical implementation of pinch-to-zoom; it is on pinch-to-zoom in general. It does not merely protect the (easy) engineering needed to detect two fingers pinching, it protects the idea of "two fingers pinching = zoom". This is an obvious idea, and should not be protected by patents.

>So you're basically saying that Apple innovated but it shouldn't be granted a protective patent. Isn't this what the patent system was created to do?

It was created to encourage R&D by granting those who come up with complex implementations a window in which they can recoup the expenses. It wasn't created so the first person to implement an idea in general can have a competitive advantage.

If companies had used the patent system to create artificial monopolies in this fashion throughout the development of personal computing, we'd be living in much less functional world.

The very existence of personal computing disproves your point. The patent system is not a new invention, and there are thousands of patents in every step of this development. Each company creates patents and then licenses them to other companies interested in the technology.

>The very existence of personal computing disproves your point.

Hardly. Of course the patent system isn't new, Apple just isn't behaving like personal computing companies have historically behaved. Licensing complex things like algorithmic implementations hasn't been uncommon, but licensing obvious UI ideas has been.

Apple licenses 1-click shopping from Amazon... see how the game is played? It's real simple.

I did further down: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4443294

Personally I think it's better too.

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