Apple patent stuff again

[Gus]

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080316183&OS=20080316183&RS=20080316183

I don't understand the patent office.  A system I repair has a SAW touchscreen that can sense how hard you touch the screen and that can be used to changed what happens.  This system is from before 1993 and has a DOS 6 byte serial interface.  The newer stuff has 8 byte.  There is a utility that allows one to "see" the bytes and you can see the numbers change with pressure and it is not just X and Y.

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


http://gizmodo.com/339860/sony-nv+u83t-gps-with-gesture-commands-and-motion-sensor-positioning

If I understand correctly if something is out in world you only have a year to get a patent

 

[JohnRoberts]

I am not familiar with the art in that specific field, but their patent is specifically covering extracting some derivative information from a touch screen... not a specific touch, but a swipe movement, where they don't care where the touch occurred just the general direction of the swipe.

This all seems pretty obvious, and if you have evidence somebody did exactly that before, they are busted. Note: they are not patenting touch screens, just that narrow application of detecting swipes.

In the US you have one year from "publication" of some technology, to apply for a patent. Publication includes selling, showing at a trade show, advertising, etc.

The patent system is mostly the first step to securing protection. Mainly a documentation that you believe you are the inventor of this technology and deserve protecting in exchange for publication. That protection is never really secure until tested in court, but that adds several zeros to the price tag. There is much horse trading of patents, like chips in a poker game between technology titans.. here, you can use some of mine, if I can use some of yours and we don't sue each other, so other's will be less likely to challenge our patents.

A relatively new phenomenon is patent banks, that accumulate patents to use to extort treasure from other companies. Also some players in industry partner to form technology cartels, surely this isn't the intent of the patent system, which is to share the knowledge, but any patent is of limited duration, so they need to keep pumping new patents into the hopper.

Apple is better at marketing and execution (packaging, ergonomics, etc) than invention. They eventually settled with Creative over the key technology in their IPOD but they do what they do very well.

JR

 

[Gus]

  I posted the wika link because of the bottom paragraphs.

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