Comments on: Apple awarded key iPhone multitouch patent

A new patent that covers much of the iPhone's multitouch user interface has been awarded to Apple; is it planning to go after competitors?

[iphonedied]

I am very much looking forward to the many lawsuits that Apple landed upon themselves. Looks like there is a nice, large consortium ready to go after Apple now they have played the "we're too stupid to invent anyting, we're going the Lawsuit route instead."

The big question is "how much cash will Apple have AFTER the non-stop parade of lawsuits?"

[iphonedied]

Oh by the way, Netbooks and Linux rock! The Apple turns sour and worm laden.

[Noblemeister]

Does anybody else realize that by patenting the swipe to change screens, the swipe to scroll, and any other touch actions similar to that pretty much every touch phone out there is affected! From the Touch Pro and Diamond, to the Samsung Instinct, Behold and Omnia, the LG Dare, the G1, the Storm, etc, all of them use some sort of touch to scroll. This patent extends well beyond Palm and the Pre's multi touch! Heck, even the G1 now has multi touch! What is going to happen to all of them?

[Earl Benzar]

I have a question. Why are the Microsoft fanboys so defensive every time there is an article out about something Apple is doing? I'm not an Apple fan, but can understand why their fanboys are defensive (to a degree), but why are the adherents of an official monopoly (Microsoft) so defensive? I'm curious as to the reasoning.

[deslock]

The people complaining here aren't MS fanboys (though some are, I'm sure) they are just people that want to kill the IP bullcrap out there. Most of us are linux and OSS fans.

BTW, on the flip side of your comment to call you out, why is it that any article about MS is deluged with Apple fanboys regardless of the tone of the content of the article? Apple fanatics are FAR more vocal than any other group out there so I think you're standing on thin ice.

And saying you aren't an Apple fan doesn't work.

[kevindarling]

Obviously no one bothered to read the patent claims.

Unlike the hot but incorrect headlines, they're not about patenting multi-touch, which predates the iPhone by decades.

They're basically about using the angle of motion to determine what the user wants to do. That's all.

[Droopy--2008]

Kudos to you, kevindarling! I think you are correct in that the patent applies to how multi touch is utilized on the device, not multi touch per se.

[deslock]

@kevindarling
Sounds like you have it about right.

The bad news is that this is far less viable to enforce and they will have a much harder time of it.

Remember how it was ubiquitous for handheld devices to have their own special gestures for various letters in the alphabet to help the device increase accuracy in interpreting handwriting? They had strange lower case symbols and other oddities like single stroke x's and such.

The only difference would be that those expected a stylus (though finger worked I suppose).

This is going to be one heck of a difficult thing to defend in court I'm thinking.

[ewelch]

All this handwringing about evil Apple.

Palm and anyone else will no doubt be able to do what they do as long as they pay a licensing fee.

Capitalism. Right?

Apple gets sued every other week for this kind of stuff. No doubt they will be capable of doing what they need to without mistakes.

If you want to use their IP, pay up, or create something else better! Oh wait, nobody seems to be able to come up with anything better. Just played with a Blackberry Storm yesterday a Mac-hating friend just bought. What a piece of junk.

[Droopy--2008]

Yes, and to the guy that asked if anyone patented a touch screen, I would say that they probably did and earned a lot of licensing fees.

[lbvceleb]

The bully always get's knocked off. Looks for a creative solve by Palm and others. I say Palm rolls with their multi-touch anyway.

[Droopy--2008]

Why is the act of protecting your IP anything like being a bully?

[Gromit801]

Uh, who's the bully?

Apple was a pretty late arrival to the smart phone party that Palm and Crackberry had locked up for years. Looks to me like Apple is the one knocking off the bullies.

[hhkeller]

I don't think you can patent wiping things with a finger.
I also don't think pinching thing for a reaction is patentable.
Perhaps just a hardware configuration is possibly unique.

[Droopy--2008]

Why did Steve Jobs get such a reaction to his simple wipe of his finger to unlock the iPhone at its introduction? Because it had not been utilized on a phone before, at least not to my knowledge. What other company that you know of had an interface like the iPhone before the iPhone was introduced?

[hhkeller]

Using a finger for interaction is as old as the finger.
Only the underlying hardware config may be patentable.

[deslock]

@Droppy
You mean like all those scramble tile puzzles that we had on touch devices for years now? You swipe your finger around to move the tiles and "unscramble" the photo?

No, finger swiping isn't going to cut it.

Unless they have an ironclad lock on anything multi-touch, the gestures by themselves aren't going to stand up alone in court. Otherwise, all someone needs to do is create a slightly different gesture, right? Like performing a single touch clockwise spin to zoom in (counterclockwise to zoom out). Not in the patent right?

Too late! I published it so I'm going to patent it now. Haha.

[why do i need a name?]

Sure it's "patentable" The real question is will it hold up in a court after serious examination.


Let's face it, the examiners are overworked and out of their league when it comes to some of the things being invented. They rely on the patent applicant to give them things to look at as to why their patent is better than the prior art and rely on their general knowledge. But in the end, there is a lot of stuff that receives a patent that is questionable. (ever see the patent on how to entertain a cat? or the patent on swinging on a swing sideways? There are other absurd ones)

When the rubber meets the road is when you try to assert that patent on someone. When that happens, you have to really make sure that the patent will hold up. As a defense, you have several avenues to go down:

1: I don't do that. Find some nuance in the patent that is in the independent claims that you don't do, thus you don't do what is taught in the patent.

2: the patent is not valid. Either the claims are constructed improperly, the wording is ambiguous and should not have been allowed or there is prior art that you can demonstrate was public prior to the application date (not the grant date everyone. Application to grant is now running about 3 or so years)

In general, when you assert a patent on someone, their first response is "I don't do that, and even if I did the patent is not valid" The dance goes on for a while until you get to the point where they admit that "I do that and the patent is valid" and then comes the "oh, and how about my stack of patents that you violate" The last one of these that I was involved in was settled out of court after about 4 and a half years of that kind of back and forth. It's not for those with ADHD that's for sure!

Yes, by the way, I am a patent holder and have gone through examination and re-examination. And yes, I have asserted patents on some very large companies, none of which ever made it all the way through the court system to a judgement of damages.

[daedbird]

One simple solution....Apple should buy Palm, revive the Folio, and usurp its ATT contract by flavoring new Palm products with its patents...and make Palm the guinea pig for some new technologies.

Oh, and Parc was licensed...If you want a bigger issue to shove at Apple, how about all the motherboard work Woz did while working for HP, now that is the bigger slight

[Droopy--2008]

Work that he offered them and they turned down.

[slickuser]

This is good for the consumers. Now others will be forced to innovate or give up...

[Droopy--2008]

Amen, make that double Amen!

[madrus12]

Without licensing and cross-licensing, personal computers would not exist. Apple's behavior is shameful.

[Perry_Clease]

You are wrong on both points.

[AppleSuxLeo]

And all the armchair patent attorneys on Cnet have deemed Palm Pre a failure. NOT !

[AppleSuxLeo]

The Palm Pre has hundreds of things the iPhone will be trying to emulate in further revisions.

[AppleSuxLeo]

BTW...the surgeons will be multitouching Blowhard`s liver soon ;)

[SneezingPanda]

I see another big piece of cake coming to lawyers.

[jtlevin]

I don't see how this could possibly stand up in court considering that Microsoft has been working on Windows 7, sphere and a host of other things (for which they have actually created devices over the last several years) which do the same thing. it'll be interesting to see where this goes...

[why do i need a name?]

all depends on the priority date, who filed first and when the first public (i.e. non NDA) disclosure happened. Microsoft could well have been working on the exact same multi-touch technology, started earlier than apple butnot filed for a patent and kept it secret. Apple then wins in the court.

[NPGMBR]

Interesting - Since MS is late to the game they can sit back and watch the outcome and modify WinMo as it becomes necessary. But the more interesting thing is if Apple can win a suite against other device makers on this patent; the chances are EXTREMELY HIGH that it will spur competition that will leapfrog what is in the iPhone. If MS can take advantage of that, the can make big bucks by then liscencing their tech to other device makers.....assuming they can make something really cool before any of the others does.

[maverick_nick]

It won't hold up in court. After a recent ruling that limits patents to hardware and not software.

[smilin:)]

What a crock.

"The patent is extremely long, and covers many of the methods used by the iPhone to display data, such as pinch-to-zoom Web browsing and swipe-to-scroll"

Microsoft demonstrated these with the Surface before this patent was filed. The patent is from April of 2008 and the the Surface was publicly shown back in 2007 (and under development long before that).

Apple is setting itself up for a courtroom smackdown if they try to enforce this thing.

[why do i need a name?]

I seriously doubt that the priority date for this patent is April 2008. In general, patents are taking 3 or so years from application to finish. I haven't looked at it, but if the date on the patent is April '08 I'll bet that it's a continuation of an earlier priority date.

[why do i need a name?]

BTW, I did go look at the patent, the priority date goes back to mid 2006. This patent is a continuation of a series of patents starting with a filing date of June '06. looks like they beat the surface stuff out by about a year.

[jypeterson]

There's quite a bit of vitrial spewing around this forum. Debates on historical IP and such.

Here is what matters: Palm is a failing company. It used to be top dog in the hand held computing world, but lost its footing. The Blackberry became the business standard in hand helds because it offered more functionality than just a Palm Pilot.

Palm is currently a going concern. It had to have an infusion of cash in order to survive for now. If the Pre cannot come to market soon, Palm's days will be numbered. Their technology is outdated, just like the Palm Pilot.

What makes this more interesting is the fact that Apple trademarked the term "Multi-touch". Now that the patent has been issued, I am sure that there will be a fight that will ensue. If this was such a slam-dunk technology to utilize in a user interface, multi-touch would have been implemented by every other portable device maker out there, giving the iPhone a run for its money. Here is the rub -- no other device on the market uses similar multi-touch gestures in its interface. Other companies are not stupid to go there. They came up with different technologies to deal with the issues arising around patent protection. They know that Apple defends their turf, and they don't want to get into a trench war with a company that has billions in cash and no debt.

Palm really has no choice at this point than to move forward. The Pre is their last chance, but Apple will go after them...