USPTO invalidates all claims of 'Steve Jobs' multi-touch patent - Page 4

I think it's more plausible that you're on a vendetta. I suggest just blocking him and let other people have their conversation with him.

A lot of these crap b.s. patents will be overturned. The USPTO has always given Apple a slide. Any company that consistently gets patents granted in 3 to 5 months, instead of 5 or more years, is doing something to grease palms. Notice how Google's Notification Center patent (you know the one that Apple willfully and blantantly copied) has been stuck in USPTO limbo for how many years now? Going on year 4?

And didn't Apple just get a patent for the shape of the iphone. Rectangular with rounded corners? The US patent system is a farce and because it sides with Apple, Apple can troll on home soil. This crap hasn't worked outside US borders though, thank the gods. Besides, all Apple has done in the last 2 iterations of iOS is copy Android. Of course, they even failed in that respect.

And so starts the long march of Apple back into the niche market and penny stocks.

How is it that on AppleInsider comments, when a company sues Apple for a patent that was granted to them, and then that patent is later invalidated, that company is/was an Apple hating troll, but if Apple gets a patent that is later invalidated, then it's a conspiracy lead by Apple's "world class enemies"?

 

I'm not on a vendetta. And I'm not stopping people from having their conversation with him. But, when someone continually posts false, misleading and misrepresented information, I think there ought to be a conversation about that too. Don't you? Isn't the whole point of these discussions to bring out the truth?

I don't know the specifics of what conversations you are referring to, assuming it really happened. The running definition of patent trolls are companies whose primary products are patent lawsuits, and they very often file from the Eastern District of Texas.

This is absurd...

 

To one person's point a capacitive touch screen miniaturized computer with phone capabilities was Star Trek fantasy until Apple rolled the iPhone out and at that time there absolutely no question about the validity of the patent.  It just seems as if now, three to fours years later, there's a sea of iPhone knock-offs some moron in the patent office wants to invalidate the patents based on the fact that ripping Apple off, as many companies have done, equals competition.

 

Samsung and the rest of the mobile industry need to go back their clamshell and Blackberryrip-off phone designs. 

 

On the contrary, absolutely there were questions about the validity of many of their patents at the time they were granted.

 

And again, this patent isn't what you seem to think.  It's for something that any touch designer would do.

 

 

What has happened is that examiners and judges are now more familiar with the history of touch, due to the challenges that have come up.  To someone who did not know that history, then yes some things would seem novel to them, and obvious to an experienced person in that field.

 

 

Why would they, when they were heading in the same direction already?

 

Touchscreen phones date back to 1993.  From that moment, the entire industry was moving (albeit slower) in the same direction as Apple.  Touch phones became more mainstream around 2002.

 

The 2002 Neonode touch WinCE phone used swipe-to-unlock. 

 

The 2003 MyOrigio touch phone even had a rotation sensor:

 

 

The 2005 WinCE Pidion touchscreen phone shape foretold the rounded rectangle slab of the much later iPhone 4:

 

 

In mid 2006, Samsung sold an all-touch phone:

 

 

Part of the evidence that Apple's lawyers managed to ban (using a technicality) during the recent California trial was Samsung's internal R&D.  Imagine if the jury had gotten to see this:

 

 

In fact, touch concept phones such as the BenQ Blackbox and Nokia Aeon designs were all the rage in 2006:

 

 

Synaptics (yes, the ones who make touchpads) spent 2006 showing off their working Onyx capacitive surface touch phone, trying to get manufacturers to use their technology:

And, of course, there was the world's first public announcement, in Nov 2006, of a multi-touch phone design with pinch zoom maps, the Open Linux  phone, shown here in a Gizmodo article next to the later iPhone:

 

There is much, much more.  The point is, the industry was headed in that direction, and that's why Jobs rushed to show off the iPhone six months before it was even ready for sale.  You see, the largest annual world show of new phones was coming in early 2007, and everyone expected a slew of all-touch phones.  Jobs obviously wanted his to be shown off first.  As it turns out, he need not have worried.  All that was shown was the LG Prada, which was indeed another capacitive screen phone, but with a far less sophisticated UI.

 

Mind you, Apple deserves full credit for being the first to bring the best ideas to market.  They pushed everyone to bring their R&D out of the labs.  But it was going to happen sooner or later.

Edited by KDarling - 12/12/12 at 7:40am

 

No. Period. Enough with the FUD. You see, FCC approval would have outed the device before launch. Apple launches on their own terms.

 

See, this isn't magical fantasy land where we are beings that perceive the fourth dimension as a physical entity, viewing it all at once. "Sooner or later" is completely meaningless. What matters is what actually happened in our collective perception of this 5D branch.

 

And what happened is this: Apple did it first. Apple implemented it first. And Apple patented said implementation first. End of story.

 

• Apple didn't apply for FCC approval for another four months.  There was no rush. 

 

• Just as with following iPhones, Apple could (and did) ask for photographic and user documents to be withheld until it went on sale.  (The sheer fact that they were doing a phone was no secret.)

 

• Showing it off ahead of time simply gave six months' heads up to other phone makers, the last thing you want to do.

 

• Jobs knew that other touch phones were likely to be shown off at the the annual Barcelona 3GSM World Congress in mid February 2007.

 

 

Everyone... EVERYONE... knows how much Jobs and Apple loves secrecy.  Everyone also knows how much he loves to show off something new and have it ready for sale right after.   To keep the iPhone secret, all they had to do was wait until just before it was ready for sale in late June 2007.  

 

Instead, they showed it off a half year ahead.  There is only one good logical business explanation for what he did, and that was to try to get a jump on publicity, so he could say they were first.

 

Hilarious. And so where were all the equal touchscreen phones released at that big conference of yours?

Were any of the competing concepts with capacitive multitouch screens actually released?

There were zero of them available before Apple released them. LG Prada was one of those things the Anti-Apple brigade talked about when Apple announced the iPhone, but Prada was not multitouch. Everyone else that I knew about had resistive screens and required a stylus. It took Google a year before they released their development multitouch phone, the first production Android with multitouch was nearly two years after Apple's announcement, Dec of the following year IIRC. I doubt your claim of a four months "jump" by Apple made a difference. At the time, MacWorld SF or WWDC was when Apple announced the big stuff. This was before they broke away from that pattern and made big announcements by privately arranged events in a more flexible timetable. I wonder how Apple supposedly knew about the alleged Samsung phone if it was a Samsung internal project.

that's where collaboration comes in. No one who seriously wants to get a patent will be able to do it on their own. Edison had a number of people to thank for his lightbulb. John Britten had a number of people involved with his patent for carbon fibre manufacture.

Your rational is poor at best because those with great ideas will seek people able to help them bring them to fruition.