Let's consider multitouch. This invention has already had numerous articles written about it [1]. Thus it is patentable, but Apple is decades too late. That it can be used with any input device that supplies multiple touch inputs is obvious. You cannot write a paper about that.

Can you write an HCI paper about the disappearing scroll bars? I would be a bit surprised, although possibly. I imagine if you did, it wouldn't be a very prominent paper or in a very good journal.

In any case, I think that an invention being publishable is a minimum. There are also many publications that do not represent techniques so innovative as to deserve a short term monopoly.

Also, your distinction of ideas vs invention is not shared by books that describe good patent drafting. On the contrary, the book Invention Analysis and Claiming [2] opens with:

"Part I - Identifying the Invention - takes as its central premise that an invention is not a thing, but a concept."

[1] http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html [2] http://books.google.ca/books/about/Invention_Analysis_and_Cl...

It is. Patents can't be issued for something available to the public; this is called "public disclosure" and has bitten lots of researchers who publish before applying for their patent.

Star Trek has the warp drive. So, if someone invents the technology to give us a warp drive, you think that it isn't novel because we've seen it on TV going back to the 1960s!

Unfortunately, I don't have a good go-to source explaining what computer science is, but I assure you that computer science does not involve writing science fiction novels.

Therefore, they effectively have a patent on the feature pinch-to-zoom on smartphones.

It is also obvious. Had I been working on the iPhone and decided I wanted to implement the pinch-to-zoom feature from minority report, I would have done it exactly as described in Apple's patent--there is no other logical way to do it--using a touchscreen.

I can't use a different underlying algorithm, or even a different kind of touchscreen. If I implement pinch-to-zoom on a touchscreen I am violating their patent.

The later is what has plenty of prior art and the former is exceedingly trivial and really should not be patentable.

Quoting from this link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-appl...

> "He had experience. He owned patents himself...so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art." "In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."

I doubt that in the appeal Apple will be so lucky.

See, not all patents are of the exact same kind, and there's a lot of things to patent about any thing. That's the problem... nowadays things that shouldn't be patented, like designs and user interfaces (even algorithms), are.

Look at the prior art in the patent itself, e.g.:

US5844547 May 9, 1995 Dec 1, 1998 Fujitsu Limited Apparatus for manipulating an object displayed on a display device by using a touch screen

US6567102 Nov 25, 2001 May 20, 2003 Compal Electronics Inc. Touch screen using pressure to control the zoom ratio

US20050168488 Jan 31, 2005 Combination tool that zooms in, zooms out, pans, rotates, draws, or manipulates during a drag

All Apple did was jumble these same longstanding into some arguably-new form, and, viola, they had a patent for something everybody was doing.

I doubt you really contend that, in late 2007, Apple invented scrolling and zooming with your fingers, or that you contend that Apple's implementation was substantially different (and both novel and useful) from those prior forms. If you don't contend either of those, then why, exactly, should Apple have a patent over their implementation, which was at best modestly different from prior implementations?

I am contending that you can't patent a user interface you see in a sci-fi movie, which is what Apple did here. What they patented is no different from patenting the way the command module looks on the Enterprise. Do you think that Apple should be able to patent, say, the use of oval icons?

Disclaimer: I'm completely against patenting UI elements. I'm of the opinion that once they come into existence they're language and patenting language is anti-social behavior.

You disputed said references by claiming that other products copied Apple.

I pointed out that just because it was Apple who made these features popular, leading to other products copying them, doesn't mean that the features could not have been independently invented prior to Apple. I refer you to the original comment for the prior-art examples.

Since the patent itself cites prior art, obviously the patent isn't patenting the same thing as the prior art.

>All Apple did was jumble these same longstanding .... was at best modestly different from prior implementations

You have provided no evidence or reason to believe this. In fact, I've seen this claim hundreds of times, and never seen anyone even attempt to provide a defense for this assertion.

Yet the evidence at hand shows the opposite- the patent was reviewed for a significant period of time by the patent office. Further, this isn't Apple's rodeo. After the Microsoft loss, Apple has a great deal of incentive to make sure that their patents are solid.

So despite evidence to the contrary, you just repeatedly assert this position because it helps your ideological position. But we need more than mere assertion.

In fact, your assertion isn't really consistent with history. To make this obvious lets change the context. Imagine it is motorola being sued by Bell:

Graham demonstrated and patented the telephone, therefore phones are longstanding and the cellphone is just "modestly different from prior phones".

The iPhone doesn't have cameras three feet behind the screen taking photos of your fingers. But you would have us believe that a patent on using that method of touch interface means that apple didn't invent nothing for the iPhone.

You're relying on the ubiquity of copies of Apples devices to make an emotional appeal claiming these things were obvious.... yet this is post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Before 2007, Android was working on a blackberry ripoff, not a touch UI.

And your argument fundamentally misrepresents what patents are.

I've seen you mention this a couple of times now. I know you mean it to be ridiculous, but it's actually a true statement: once you have a telephone, and a radio, then the concept of a cellphone in itself is an obvious step. There are scads of patentable details in the implementation, but nothing to say that the concept of a cellphone itself should be protected. Perhaps you should find an alternative example?

> The iPhone doesn't have cameras three feet behind the screen taking photos of your fingers. But you would have us believe that a patent on using that method of touch interface

None of the prior art listed above claims anything to do with cameras.

So the question is this: Do you think that for the next 20 years Apple should be the only company with large rectangular multi-touch phones with minimal buttons, grid based icons, and pinch-to-zoom?

It should be easy for you, if you are correct, to simply state what is new and novel and patentworthy that Apple did, that is not covered by the prior art mentioned.

That's how it's supposed to work, which is a large part of why people are up in arms about the broken patent system. A patent on an idea and a patent on any possible implementation of that idea are effectively the same thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4440807

> It is for a specific claimed method of enabling that task, involving the display of an area outside of and distinct from the document or list, which then disappears when the scrolling input ends.

That supposed specificity is nothing but a way of describing an aspect of the general idea in terms of generic implementation details. Any implementation will have some part that can be construed as similar ("they're just generating the 'area' on demand", etc)

The primary improvement for most PCs has always been the work of Microsoft or Intel, not Dell, HP, et al. Yet Apple has worked to actually improve the design and technology of the PC itself.

The truth is, genuine innovation is exceedingly rare. Nobody was working to revolutionize the cellphone industry except Apple. Apple was the only one who cared, and that's why they caught everyone flat footed.

Anyway, patents don't require that nobody else be working on the same thing you are, quite the opposite: patents are designed to get everyone working on this new invention, by publishing it.

Two people who happen to come up with the same method at the same time is so rare I cannot think of a single example... and if they did, there would still likely be differences that result in both getting patents (even if one of them gets the patent on part of the solution because he files first.)

If samsung had been doing the fundamental research that would allow them to release an iPhone type device in 2008, Apple being to the patent office first would not have been a problem for them--- because the phone they produce in 2008 would have been so different because they would have had 5-7 years of working in isolation with the priorities of a korean company and sensibility of korean culture.

They would have produced very different solutions to these same problems if they had been working on them.

Instead Samsung was not working on a touch UI, not even trying to do novel work, and simply decided to copy apple thinking the litigation risk was worth it.

They seem extremely poorly designed for this goal.

Edit: Just as an example. Our company had one of the lawyers come in and talk about patents in our office for a couple hours one day. They wanted to encourage us to file them for any work we might be doing. One of the first things he told us was to not ever search through existing patents for any reason whatsoever.

The vast majority of times, there is nothing in the patent that can't be learned from just interacting with the patented object.

But, let me make a few others:

1. It's not apple that put a PC on every desk, but microsoft. It's not apple that put a smartphone in every pocket, but google.

2. If genuine innovation is exceedingly rare, why is there almost one patent granted per US citizen per year?

3. Nobody working in software looks at patents. The whole idea that software patents are published to spread ideas is absolutely laughable to a programmer.

4. Two people arriving at the same idea independently and then arguing over who stole whose idea is a constant throughout history. Many inventions are misattributed. See newton v leibniz, edison v tesla, bell v gray, and many incidents along the same vein.

5. Samsung has always spent more than apple on R&D. That's why the iphone is filled with samsung hardware. Much of what the iphone is wouldn't have been possible without businesses like samsung ensuring the hardware existed in the first place.

But yeah, samsung did rip off the icons and bezel, and for that you're right to blame them. I don't consider that issue related though to apple's heavy-handed claim on multitouch utility patents. Apple isn't just going after samsung, they're going after everyone. They started with samsung to get a precedent.

Isn't selling iPhones enough of an incentive?