US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent | Hacker News Reader

US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

pcworld.com

281 pointsLightning104 comments

Pinch to zoom absolutely should have been rejected.

Watch the 2002 movie Minority Report for what I consider prior art on the 2007 patent filing at http://www.google.com/patents/US7844915.

I don’t understand that reasoning. If that’s valid prior art, then patents for functioning time machines won’t hold up either.

I think you’d have a point if it pertained to a design patent. If some movie used a tablet that looked exactly like an iPad, 10 years before Apple produced it, then surely Apple’s design patent for it would be worth zilch. However, the pinch-to-zoom patent describes an implementation in minute detail.

IANAL though, perhaps someone with proper credentials will be so kind to enlighten us.

Minority report's UI was functional - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6YTQJVzwlI

> If that’s valid prior art, then patents for functioning time machines won’t hold up either.

Good.

Point taken, but won’t that mean that if someone figures out how to make a time machine, they will simply not apply for a patent and try to keep the design to themselves? (They could for instance sell time travel as a service, but not sell the machines or license the tech to other companies)

In theory, patents grant the inventor exclusivity for a limited time so that they can recoup their investment, in exchange for sharing the secret with the world.

I have no problem with a time machine inventor choosing to keep the design to themselves. I also have no problem with him/her releasing the design for free, or even licensing the technology contractually. I have a problem with the government, funded partially by money I earned but have no control over, protecting any sort of intellectual property.

Wouldn't that just give even more power to big corporations? Or do you think things would work themselves out without government interference?

I think the patent system, and indeed all intellectual property laws, give more power to big corporations.

Patents are supposed to be on mechanisms, not effects. If you figure out a way to travel through time, your patent only applies to that particular way. Pinch to zoom is something with almost no behind-the-scenes mechanism to it, and what mechanism might be valid for a patent existed in the movie.

I could post my own explanation of why I said what I said, but it would merely be this one, more poorly worded. :-)

As an exercise, should you get a chance, could you read claim 1 and explain how it differs from a mechanism?

But for subject matter to be patentable, the patent must be sufficient to reduce to practice. In the movie it was just special effects, which is not sufficient to meet the reduce to practice threshold.

If you had a functioning time machine you could travel back in time and file the patent before any prior art was created.

Yeah, but so would any infringer, thus making the infringement prior art for the invention.

Not necessarily.

I have, in fact, seen a potential design for a time machine which violates no known laws of physics and could take you back in time only as far as the point where the machine itself was built. This would prevent the "patent filing leapfrog" that you are talking about.

Before anyone wonders why this machine has not been built, it requires a rapidly rotating rod, several light years long, about the diameter of the Sun. To travel in time you need to orbit the rod at extremely high speed, and your direction relative to the spin of the rod determines which direction you travel through time.

In theory it should work. But reducing theory to practice is somewhat beyond our current means. :-)

This is probably the most interesting comment I've read on this entire article.

I am not an expert but I believe this is BS, would you care to cite any references or paper that talks about this so called potential design ?

It was a paper I was shown by a professor over 20 years ago. Said professor is now long-retired and I do not have the paper.

As he described it to me then, the paper presented an exact solution with an infinite bar, and then heuristic arguments that a very long but finite bar would demonstrate the same effects. The underlying mechanism is, of course, the result of a form of frame dragging.

The professor who showed it to me said that he was convinced that the math in the infinite model was correct, and was still deciding if he was convinced by the heuristic argument.

Googling quickly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett describes a similar scheme, which might even be the same one. Whether or not it is the same, the 1992 paper from Hawking that was discussed would show that the heuristic argument is wrong. However since I was shown this paper while I was in undergrad, Hawking's paper would not have come out yet, and the professor who showed it to me can not be faulted for not having found the necessary flaw.

Tipler, "Rotating cylinders and the possibility of global causality violation" Physical Review D, vol. 9, Issue 8, pp. 2203-2206

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974PhRvD...9.2203T

> I don’t understand that reasoning. If that’s valid prior art, then patents for functioning time machines won’t hold up either.

Patents on functioning time machines are likely to be problematic, anyway, since the natural response to such a patent [1] is to copy the machine, go back in time to before the patent was filed, and file a patent on it. It doesn't take many repetitions of this loop before the original patent on the device is expiring just about the time the device was actually invented.

[1] Ignoring all the other problems with causality and paradox inherent in time travel.

Wouldn't you simply go back and file the patent before the movies? If you've invested a time machine, then regardless of the patent status you'll instantly become extremely wealthy and capable of pretty much anything. worrying about the USPO would be very low on your list of things to worry about.

Samsung tried to cite a scene in 1968's "2001: A Space Odyssey" in their patent defense against Apple: http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=14387499&ref=https%3A%2F%2F...

And here I am again to provide a friendly reminder that before discussing any patent, you must read the claims! If you did so, in this case, you would see that this is not a "pinch-to-zoom patent", but rather a "pinch-to-zoom-if-the-event-object-created-from-touch-input-has-two-or-more-points-else-scroll-the-view-instead" patent.

Yes, it literally covers something as specific as creating "event objects" out of touch inputs and interpreting them as either zooming or scrolling gestures.

Minority Report is not sufficient prior art because:

1) It does not include a touch-sensitive display,

2) its user input is not "points applied to the touch-sensitive display" that it does not have,

3) it is wholly non-enabled (at least in the movie) which is why it does not teach, as far as we can tell, create "event objects" in response to user input,

4) and though it may depict scrolling gestures and pinching gestures in various scenes, it does not teach how to determine whether an input is a scroll or a pinch (which this patent proposes doing by differentiating the number of points in the touch input).

But why even worry about fictional, non-enabled prior art when people have found specific prior art to (temporarily) invalidate these claims?

Pinch to zoom has become such a standard in interface interaction that I didn't question it until switching to google's map app on the iPhone. Their double click and drag behaviour is superior in that you don't need two hands.

You know something is wrong with your UI when users sometimes resort to putting their nose on the screen of their phone.

I'm not ashamed to admit that my usual tablet browsing right before bed has my left hand holding the tablet, my right hand and thumb scrolling, and sometimes my nose pushing on links.

I regret nothing.

Here I was, thinking I was the only one who did that.

Actually, I can pinch-to-zoom using my thumb and pointer-finger on the screen with my remaining three fingers holding the phone. It's awkward, but works in a pinch (haha).

I much prefer a gesture that makes intuitive sense. Pinch-to-zoom is very easy to learn and just seemed right the first time I saw it. I haven't tried the double-tap+scroll gesture you mention, but it sounds like something that would be a tad trickier and less obvious.

I use to use the thumb/forefinger technique until I got my current phone. An S3 is just too big for my hand to manage it without becoming a drop risk.

Then again I've never used a case with my phones and haven't had a problem with that, so maybe I'm just overly cautious.

Not to defend pinch to zoom, but If you need two hands you may want to change how your holding your phone. Index and thumb on the screen, other three fingers to hold the back.

Exactly. Who exactly uses two hands to do pinch-to-zoom on a phone? I've never seen that.

I do occasionally (meaning one hand holding, one hand doing the pinching and zooming. Not one finger from each hand doing the pinch-to-zoom). It's easier to do, and more accurate in my experience. I do pinch-to-zoom with one hand sometimes, but I find that I can't always get it right.

Ah, that's my misunderstanding. I was envisioning a finger from each hand doing the zooming. One holding + one pinching - duh, yes I do that all the time. Whoops!

I just tried this one handed suggestion - first time ever in my 6 years using an iPhone - and I can see why I never thought of it. Extremely awkward and imprecise. I don't get why anyone would do that. Do you have giant hands?

For zooming, I've always used the double-tap method. This generally works fine for zooming in and out on Safari, and it works for zooming in on Maps. I can do a two-finger double tap on Maps to zoom out, but it's still pretty awkward so I'll keep switching to two-handed mode for those (rare) instances.

> I can do a two-finger double tap on Maps to zoom out

And now I know about that! It's still awkward, but slightly less awkward than one-handed pinching.

Oops - it's actually a single tap with two fingers...

Erm, Steve Jobs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2MOwQ089eQ&t=52m55s

I've hardly ever seen people zooming with one hand (one hand on the screen, sure, but the other hand holding the phone). Maybe it works for you but, having just tried it, I find it very clumsy.

I've just looked through a load of random videos of people using their phones on youtube and I didn't see a single one where people are holding it with 3 fingers behind and two in front.

Tired that, my palm will touch the lower edge of the screen activating menu buttons. The only befit to the pinch and zoom method is the ability to rotate the map.

Problem with Google Maps' iPhone implementation (double-tap, then slide) is that it's unintuitive.

Source: I didn't know it existed before now. (It's awesome btw, thanks!)

That's hardly what I would consider a problem, since the app also supports pinch-to-zoom. The double-tap and slide method is purely additive.

I agree that it's hidden away but it's really easy to use once you know it's there.

I doubt pinch to zoom falls in that category then. The vast majority of innovative (or unique) touch based interactions/gestures have to be learnt and cannot be intuited. As you know, intuition just means your brain recognizes a pattern.

You seem to be saying you need two hands to pinch and zoom on an iPhone. You're doing it wrong! You should also know that something is wrong with your argument when you have to resort to fabricated anecdotes.

Pinch-to-zoom with one hand is extremely awkward, unreliable, and inaccurate. It's also a great way to drop your phone when you're standing on a crowded bus.

The root of the confusion here is that iphones are a lot smaller than most android phones. I'm holding a blackberry bold right now, and pinch with two fingers while holding the phone with three works just fine and is plenty secure.

I just tried it on a Galaxy Nexus (4.65 inch display) and it's still extremely awkward, unless there's some way of doing this I'm not thinking of.

If you're right handed: bottom right corner in the fold of your palm, supporting the back with your ring and middle fingers, and support the bottom edge with your pinky. Works fine as long as you're not gesticulating aggressively with the same hand.

iphones before the 5 had 3.5 in displays even the 5 has just a 4 in display, so they are even smaller (and thinner and lighter) than a Galaxy Nexus

FYI, all iPhones before the 5 are thicker than a galaxy nexus and their weight was between 2 grams lighter and 5 grams heavier.

Probably works for only a % of the population. I'm a guy with small hands, smaller than some women. I can't hold the phone steady, and much of the screen I couldn't possibly pinch without my palm hitting the screen.

It's like Lebron James telling you your doing it wrong when you shoot a jump shot or layup instead of dunking.

Interesting that it was rejected because of 7,724,242, by Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren. Both of them are "Senior Inventors" of Intellectual Ventures, the patent uber-troll company. I wonder if one of IV's shell companies is prosecuting '242?

Great, Apple doesn't get it because the company really holding this patent is one of the few worse patent trolls out there. When will it stop?

When people are not allowed to patent the end result.

Given Danny Hillis's history (per Wikipedia) isn't it possible that there is some legitimate R&D going on that is reasonable to protect?

I'm not really familiar with Intellectual Ventures but he has done some fascinating things in the past, Thinking Machines being a prime example.

It will really be heartbreaking if Danny Hillis becomes a patent troll.

From This American Life, he sounds like one to me, and IV is a skilled Patent Troll at obscuring who they are and what they really do.

Part One (When Patents Attack): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w...

Part Two (When Patents Attack): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/w...

Well, you might want to get familiar with IV. http://tinyurl.com/pxa6m9w. They are likely the most dangerous troll there is. This fox had masked itself as sheep for pretty long time by combination of favorable reports from top tier journalists, their giant PR machine, projects such as mosquito killing lasers for 3rd world, promises of no first attack, backing of Bill Gates and so on. They had been only recently been uncovered as having literally 1000s of shell companies suing small and large companies for patent infringement. Outside of their tiny fraction of showpiece projects like mosquito killing lasers their most of the "innovations" are done by bunch of people sitting in a conference rooms and trying to "solve" problems by thinking of ideas that they almost never verify/productize or whatever but just wait for someone else to try so they can get piece of their reward for thinking it first.

I'm a long time fan of Danny's work and am disappointed in his affiliation with IV. I'd love to hear his side of the story. (I still have this fantasy that IV is an elaborate prank to demonstrate how awful the US patent system is, but at this point that'd be an awfully long con.)

Despite being a dangerous, destructive company, Intellectual Ventures has a lot of smart people associated with it. Myhrvold himself is no slouch and many of the folks who go to the infamous dinner parties with paralegals taking notes are interesting people.

Here's IV's marketing on some of their "inventors": http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-netwo... http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/inventor-netwo...

They are either convinced that they are doing good, or in it for the money.

I got to play with a working pinch-to-zoom map table at Hillis's company around 2004 or 5, before the iPhone came out. (It was not Intellectual Ventures; I forget the name of the company.)

Applied Minds?

That was it, thanks.

But I presume the companies that have been paying royalties for half a decade won't get their money back.

I've long advocated for refund clauses in royalty settlement agreements, in the eventuality that the patent is invalidated.

Well, most large companies are probably not directly paying royalties, but instead bartering by cross-licensing their own just-as-presumptuously-valid patents :-)

We all saw "pinch to zoom" publicly demonstrated in that multi-touch Ted talk before the iPhone was unveiled.

I'm not sure why the "overscroll bounce" was rejected, as it was Apple's unique invention and not obvious.

"Overscroll" was rejected on multiple counts of obviousness and lacking in novelty, due to prior art [0].

[0] http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/10/patent-office-tentatively...

And then allowed by subsequent USPTO action. Final doesn't mean final in this case.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/06/huge-win-for-apple-at-pat...

Sorry, but what specifically is the "prior art" being referenced?

Specifically...

The direction of scrolling through the list of items may be reversed in response to the scrolling intersecting a virtual boundary corresponding to a terminus of the list. The scrolling reversal may correspond to a damped motion. For example, during scrolling, a displayed portion of the list of items may appear to bounce off of a boundary of the window in the touch-sensitive display when a beginning or an end of the list of items is reached. The apparent bounce may correspond to a simulation of a viscous or elastic ball having momentum in a first direction striking an immovable and/or inelastic object, such as a wall. The subsequent motion of the ball may be damped, for example, by including a friction or dissipative term in the simulation. A parameter corresponding to the friction term in the simulation may be adjustable, allowing the ball to reach equilibrium in contact with the wall, i.e., the virtual boundary, or displaced from the wall.

-- "Ording" (2005) U.S. Patent No. 7,786,975 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

I'm confused. Bas Ording is the designer at Apple who invented it. Scott Forestall is also listed. I'd guess that all of the investors listed were Apple employees.

Ah yes, the conventional wisdom that doing something before a public demo somehow constitutes a huge prior art gotcha.

The HCI researcher Bill Buxton has a quite comprehensive run-down titled "Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved ": http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

my first reaction to this was "bah, software patents. I love living in the EU."

But, this got me thinking - it a patent about something like a touch interface (intrinsically linked to hardware, but where software is required) software or not?

This also works for double clicks, key repeat delay, and stuff like joysticks.

Once you've invented the mouse, can you then patent every way of clicking and shaking? similarly, following the touchscreen, can we then patent every conceivable way to tap/swipe/pinch it?

I want to say "no, all these patents are obvious and dumb," but the "software is mathematics" mantra really doesn't hold for these kind of fluffy, hands-on concepts.

hmm.

Being able to use more than one finger is what's based on hardware (for which Apple wouldn't have the patent anyway - the panel maker would). The contraction and expanding action is based on software.

Don't Apple own the multitouch technology though? Presumably through their purchase of Fingerworks.

The point is that the most heinous software patents are actually patents on abstracts concepts and uses. Things like patenting "One click purchase" and "Detect phone numbers on an email".

This is such an example.

Even living in the EU you suffer from the patent patent systems around the world since it will influence the way companies develop/charge for products - especially if it's in a major market such as the US.

The cost of dealing with patents is just incorporated into the cost of the final product so we all suffer.

Software patents are not entirely avoided in the EU, just to be clear. Quoting a little from an essay I had to write, although “programs for computers” are excluded by Article 52 of the European Patent Convention (1963), inventions that include an inventive step and solve a technical problem by the utilisation of a computer program have been upheld on appeal, for example in the case of Microsoft Corporation (data transfer with expanded clipboard features. T 0469/03 - 3.5.01, http://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t030...)

They might tell us that computer programs can't be patented, but their courts say otherwise - including states involved in the upcoming European Patent (for those unaware, currently EU states choose which European Patent Office patents to accept, the European Patent will synchronise all states except Spain and Italy). Actually the situation in Europe is quite similar to America - software isn't part of their patent legislation literature either; but such patents have been upheld repeatedly.

thank you for the clarification - I didn't know the detail of the situation!

> my first reaction to this was "bah, software patents. I love living in the EU."

Your second reaction should have been "Oh wait, we have software patents as well in the EU."

I want to patent The Wave. You know, when you see someone you know, and you raise your arm with your palm facing out, moving your hand in a horizontal motion. Yea, that wave. No one has patented it yet, so I'm going to claim it.

This type of snark comes up whenever the patent system is discussed. However, isn't the fact that this would (presumably) not be approved an argument in their favour?

Damning with faint praise.

In a world where the USPTO approves such things as "Method of swinging on a swing" [1], I wouldn't take any bets on what they won't approve.

[1] http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227

Finally, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does their job correctly and rejects a ridiculous patent. Hopefully only one of many ambiguous patents denied in the coming months and years. Gestures should not be patentable whatsoever and Apple are deluded for thinking so. I guess when you have billions of cash at your disposal your imagination knows no bounds as to what you think you are entitled to.

Apple are really patent sick.

Compared to what? They're no more patent sick than other companies, they just get reported on by the news more often.

Have a look at patents for car companies, you'd probably be shocked at how common this stuff is. Patent attorneys don't exist for just the tech world, they make money for a reason.

Compared to how normal tech company should behave. Luckily there are companies which are opposed to software patents. I'm sure there are other patent sick companies, but Apple is just an infamous one. May be it's more reported than others, but such reputation is deserved.

Patent attorneys don't participate in this on their own. It's from these companies' approval. In normal companies attorneys ensure that company uses patents only as defensive tools, in sick ones they use them for offense.

How should a "normal tech company" behave exactly?

I'm not disagreeing but your point is not very convincing as it seems to be a pathos argument based on your wording so far with the "patent sick" verbage.

I'll note, companies using patents are behaving rather rationally from the perspective of use it or lose it. Right now its advantageous to the patent filer to file patents, it doesn't absolve these companies of ethical issues arising from that but I don't label these companies as being "sick" due to it. Its up to us and likely the companies to ask for change if there is an issue. Let the patent suits continue to fly, once companies get hurt in the pocketbook enough things will change.

That said i still don't know what you're arguing for companies to do. As well as why tech companies should behave differently regarding patents than other industries that are less well publicized. How should companies that create an innovation behave with what they've patented? Ignore it and lose the patent? Then why bother with patents in the first place? I don't follow the logic about "defensive" patents as it seems to not address how patents are intended to function.

How should a "normal tech company" behave exactly?

Rather simple. It should have a base principle to be opposed to software patents. It should not patent trivial things, it should be opposed to functional claiming and etc. If patents are used, they should be used for defensive pools against aggressors, not to engage in aggression themselves. That's what I call normal.

Twitter recently adopted such methodology. Others before them are doing the same thing for a long time already (Red Hat for example).

Patents were never intended to function the way they function now. Firstly software patents shouldn't even exist. Secondly patents are supposed to help innovation and not to ban competition. The former is rarely the case, while the later is extremely common.

The mechanism by which patents work, though, is by (temporarily) banning competition.

This is basically why I'm confused with the "defensive" patent phrase. It seems to completely ignore the whole purpose of patents in the first place. Either we get rid of software patents wholesale, or we accept the consequences of software patents are this.

Lets say a company develops a 5% increase in efficiency for an engine. They patent it, a competitor reverse engineers it and releases a product. Fundamentally this is the same protected thing that happens with software right now. How a "defensive patent wielding tech company" should behave here makes zero sense. Not asserting patent in this case, even if the 5% increase here say was to just not burn as lean or whatever (lets assume this is obvious but not often in use for this thought experiment), they were the first to market and seemingly have a patent right to a temporary monopoly.

I really think patents are overblown in the tech community, note I don't mean they aren't a problem for things like a small company. Their impact is very real and substantial. However my personal feelings for them aside on their ethical and societal impact, I don't see how companies should react any differently with our current patent structure.

You are confused because you assume that software patents are normal patents. They aren't. Software should not be patentable. In practice software patents cause more harm than any possible benefits they supposedly bring to innovation. Therefore companies should avoid using them for aggression.

Compare it to weapons. Weapons are used for warfare, aren't they? But do you think using nuclear weapons is a sane thing to do? No. But they are still weapons, right? Same thing with software patents. They are patents, but they are not sane to use. Today patents are used as weapons, therefore aggression / defense analogy is very appropriate. And aggressors are the bad guys.

I don't think all software patents can be lumped together.

Patenting an algorithm seems bad. Because it's not really a mechanism, it's discovered more than created.

But human-computer interactions seem more like mechanisms. It's software that requires a human touch, and it makes it more like dealing with a physical object. Software patents in this area seem more appropriate.

None of them should exist including those for human interaction with the computer. Do your really think such things like "pinch to zoom" and "edge bounce" deserve to be patentable? The problem is in defining what software patent is to begin with, which gives room for patent aggressors to bypass restrictions (like it happens in Europe).

> The mechanism by which patents work, though, is by (temporarily) banning competition.

Yes, for valid cases, since patent is a limited monopoly. Thing is, software is an invalid case to begin with for a number of reasons, including patent thickets issue.

No, the mechanism by which patents work is by temporarily banning others from using something an applicant has invented in creating. It by no means stops others competing, and it encourages innovation by making them come up with alternatives, which are potentially better, rather than settling for just the first solution discovered. Basically, I wholeheartedly disagree with your sentiment.

"Compared to how normal tech company should behave."

Shrug, Apple negotiates above board and pays Amazon tens of millions for one click (possibly bullshit). Apple negotiates above board and pays billions for walking all over Nokia's patents. Samsung walks all over Apple's design (according to Google lawyers) and Apple's (possibly bullshit) patents and Googlerola negotiates for a farcial 5%+ of revenue for one (possibly bullshit) standards patent and yet it's Apple who is the huge villain for going after them. Got it, Apple is supposed to write checks to other companies, never cash any and Google and friends get a lifetime free pass for infringement because they talk about being "open".

"We don't use patents offensively" tends to be propaganda from companies with bad patent portfolios.

>Apple negotiates above board and pays Amazon tens of millions for one click (possibly bullshit)

So? Amazon is also patent sick. As well as Nokia and other patent aggressors. Is that news? It's not an excuse for any of them.

"Good portfolio" does not include ridiculously idiotic patents like one click, round corners or anything like that. It doesn't even include any software patents at all.

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