Note the application referenced downthread (20060238520) is a continuation of a 2004 filing, itself a continuation of a 2001 filing, itself a divisional of a 1999 filing which claimed priority based on a provisional 1998 filing. [1]

So to challenge that application, you'd need to find art circa at least 1998. And even then you have to consider the USPTO's (now legacy) practice of recognizing date of invention, rather than filing. Which means you may have to find art even older than 1998, to get that bit invalidated.

[1] Patent applications are rarely straightforward affairs. The process of mapping what we colloquially think of as "an invention" (awesome new widget) to patent applications often entails the creation of a family of patent applications. It gets very messy, very quickly.

It's my understanding that the USPTO is trying to limit the ability of companies to do this though.

http://www.ece.udel.edu/~westerma/main.pdf

Edit:

Ref, note [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks

Since this appears to be dated after the priority date, I don't think it would pose any problem, even if it were published in a professional journal.

(Edit: I meant to post this as a reply to the grandparent comment, not the parent post about FingerWorks. Whoops.)

Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions - http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...

How is the use of intuitive gestures not obvious, entirely by definition?

Likewise, apart from a totally different kind of flying machine like a helicopter, there probably isn't any better method of controlling an airplane than the method covered by Wrights patents (since it specifically does not exclude non-wing warping control designs), which is why the basic mode of control is still in use today. So Wrights patents at the time might as well be called a patents on "things that fly". It was very difficult to make a controllable plane without violating the patent.

Likewise, unless you equip a phone with dedicated zoom controls, there probably isn't a better or more intuitive way of zooming than using pinch-to-zoom or double tapping.

Actually, per my understanding, Apple's design patents are exactly that (if you throw in beveled corners). It's true, though, that those aren't the patents at issue in this thread.

The underlying implementation details should be protected, sure, but not the idea itself. Just because you're the first to successfully make a flying machine doesn't mean someone competing with you, implementing it in a different underlying way, shouldn't be able to make a flying machine.

"Method for transportation by flying vehicle" is very different from "Construction method of flux capacitor that provides enough energy to power flying vehicles". The first is obvious and there is prior art even if people could not build it. The concepts of pinch-to-zoom or slide-to-unlock are obvious to even people without Phds in touch surface technologies.

Anything intuitive by definition should not be patentable.

Some great questions and comments there too. I like the one by futurespacetraveler, apparently also of HN, who said this:

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The price we pay to incentivize an inventor to disclose their invention is with decades of protection from competition. For a utility patent, that's 20 years from the date of the patent grant. And we always pay the same price, regardless of the underlying value of the invention to our society. So whether you invent a new method of swinging in a swing or a new drug to fight cancer, we pay the same price to know how it works.

And I think that's one of the key perspectives that often gets overlooked. We are paying for knowledge. The inventor is supposed to have figured something out that even skilled practitioners in the art hadn't thought of. We are paying for the secret sauce, so to speak. I think sofware "inventions", for many of us skilled in the art, seem so obviously non-insightful that we can't believe society has paid for such "knowledge" with a patent. Many of us realize that we don't even need to read most software patents to learn how to do what it explains. We're paying for "I was here first", rather than "I finally solved the problem no one else could". Yet we pay the same price regardless. That's why the Defend Innovation site wants to limit software patent terms to 5 years. Patent protection should be proportional to the value of the invention. But I believe that should be true for any invention.

He was making sense up until that point. The value of patent protection to society is determined by the potential harm done to the progress of science and the useful arts that would result if the IP had been kept as a trade secret. In the case of pinch-and-zoom gestures the net benefit to society gained by allowing Apple to own the idea is demonstrably nonexistent.

Apple sold a hundred million iPhones before they ever set foot in a courtroom. Clearly patent protection was not necessary to allow them to recoup their investment a thousand times over. Meanwhile, the harm done to competition by granting them a 20-year monopoly on the basic UI paradigm is easily estimable in the trillions of dollars, if they succeed in enjoining Samsung and other manufacturers.

I can think of at least 4 different ways to implement zooming without using pinch to zoom. So this idea that it is worth trillions is bizarre.

You seriously don't think that Samsung's line of smartphones would bring in a trillion dollars' revenue over 20 years, if left unmolested by Apple?

[0046] It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed.

That line, and the general and detailed descriptions can be ignored entirely.

So it's entirely possible that wording didn't survive.

In any event, it's hardly fair to judge a system based on the snapshot of a submission from before it had even gone through that system yet.

Btw the wording did indeed survive, the patent as it stands is sufficiently broad to cover all pinch-to-zoom implementations on any kind of touchscreen.

But this isn't a discussion about patents like that. This is a discussion about patents being granted for ideas that are simply innovations and/or copies of pre-existing ideas. That's completely different.

Not every patent is of equal creativity, importance, and value.

If you had prior art that invalidates a patent it doesn't necessarily mean the owner of the patent owes you money.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.