In a possible legal showdown over multitouch patents between Apple and Palm, the Cupertino gadget maker has just looted a decent weapon off the dead body that is the US patent system: a patent on just about all multitouch gestures used in the iPhone and iPod Touch, such as swiping, pinching, and so on. Wielding this weapon, Apple suddenly has a pretty good case against Palm.
Earlier this month, Apple’s temporary CEO Tim Cook hinted at possible legal action against Palm, due to possible infringements on Apple patents regarding multitouch. Palm subtly responded not long after, stating it had a formidable patent portfolio itself, and that it would do anything to protect itself from patent lawsuits.
Patent number 7,479,949 lists Steve Jobs as the primary inventor, and the summary goes as follows:
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.
The patent is very long, and covers a whole lot more than just multitouch and gestures. It could be a formidable weapon in any patent lawsuit against Apple’s competitors.
Stories like this really get under my skin.
It’s a wonder technology ever moves forwards when every company is suing every other company for mimicking their evolutionary product.
I agree.
There where a few posters sticking up for software patents last story posted. Basically they where saying that because patents are descriptions of what the patented system is suppose to do, they encourage another company to innovate around that patent. I cannot see how, what to me seems an ambiguous and far reaching description at best, could possibly encourage another firm to innovate around it.
No matter how often you attempt to describe a multi-touch interface, it’s still a multi-touch interface. Now that Apple has been granted the patent, no matter how any other company decides to implement this system they will have to pay Apple for the privileged of marketing it.
Encourage innovation? Yeah, right!
The way it seems to work is the patent office blindly grants any and all patent requests then leaves it to the courts to sort out which ones are junk or previous art. Moving things about on screen using two sensory input points seems like it should fall into the category of “blatantly obvious” rather than “unique” so let’s hope the court appoint an educated and brand independent judge if this goes to trial.
Actually, the patent also covers moving things about using just one finger! That’s innovation I tell you!
Edited 2009-01-27 22:26 UTC
is that ever innovation. Why, I don’t know how I ever would have moved things about with one finger on my CF27’s touch screen years ago if not for Apples patent today.
honestly, if you paid a bunch of money to buy a company that developed a revolutionary product then included its technology into your revolutionary product, i’d find it hard to believe that you would be totally fine with everybody else copying what you did and diluting the wow factor of your product…
i’m all for apple suing the shit out of companies who make half assed versions of their products…
and yes. i have a mac pro, 2 macbooks and an iphone.
if you want a shit product and half ass technology, hop on the linux bandwagon.
i used to be the biggest apple hater till well ..i bought one.
And now u hate everybody else…maybe u shouldn’t change technology but your HATING attitude.
Actually I DID buy one. I tried two actually, and you know what. They both were of poor quality. The AC cords on BOTH of them came loosE from their mother boards. I callled and they wanted to charge me the price of a new one to fix it. Nice support.
Yeah, Apple is so great. Their hardware is awesome. Their DRM is awesome. Their proprietary closed audio codecs are awesome. Apple lovers have their head in the sand or up somewhere else if they can’t see the obviously blatant antitrust practices Apple is pursuing with this/these patent(s).
Say what you want, Microsoft is at least trying to look at the market and do something now. Apple is still using antritrust tactics, they just arent in the government sector as deeply so they dont get noticed. As for Linux, it is not mainstream and doesnt purport to be what “everyone (Steve Jobs) needs”. Apple is dictating who can do what. Microsoft’s time is over and Apple is the new juggernaut of legal hogwash…
AAC isn’t more proprietary than MP3, it’s the follow up. The DRM sucked though, but it’s not like I’d buy music anyway, or an iPod.
Sounds like a religious conversion… maybe you should see a therapist.
It’s good that people can copy Apples ideas because then they can turn them into products which actually works, are open, do what you want, comes the way you want it and cost a reasonable amount.
Uh, how can you patent a *gesture*?
It’s like if someone, instead of patent the mouse, would patent the movement of it up and down.
Good thing Apple is the underdog, good-guy, eh…
Since when is Apple a “good guy”? Apple is a real control freak, deleting any criticizing threads from their forums, closing fan webpages, neglecting faults of their HW… I am an Apple (iMac) user, but I would be really hesitant to call Apple a good guy.
“sarcasm”; look it up and see if you think it might apply to that previous comment.
(If the previous poster was not meaning sarcasm by saying Apple was the underdog; well, that’s a different matter.)
Hey, if it’s possible, I’m gonna apply for a patent on a certain “universal” gesture-I’d be rich in a matter of minutes of driving on the highway
This was an awesome posst! Better than my wiping idea…
Yeah, Opera had mouse gestures what? 10 years ago? 8 maybe?
A touch-screen is just another input device and mimiks the mouse for pointing things out.
If anything Opera should have the patent, they are the ones who thought about the idea of doing gestures with the mouse first (or well, afaik, there may have been others before them to.)
Only thing good with Apple are their user interface guidelines and ideas, everything else suck.
In my opinion, this patent violates 2 patent rules:
1. prio art
2. obviousness
Can such a patent really be used in court? Are there precedents of patents like this actually getting validated by the court?
That’s right… Minority report uses gestures such as “pinch” for zooming and that movie is from 2002
Great. Now Tom Cruise is going to sue Palm.
I suspect that the “StarFire demo” that Sun Microsystems produced in the early ’90’s (and presents a lot of the same interface approaches as Minority Report) will qualify as prior art as well:
http://www.asktog.com/starfire/starfire.mp4
Prior art:
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
Yeah this is ridiculous.
Even older prior art:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
/me hates patent trolls.
Software patents sux. Just have them revoked!
“1983: Video Place / Video Desk (Myron Krueger)
· A vision based system that tracked the hands and enabled multiple fingers, hands, and people to interact using a rich set of gestures.
· Implemented in a number of configurations, including table and wall.
· Didn’t sense touch, per se, so largely relied on dwell time to trigger events intended by the pose.
· Essentially “wrote the book†in terms of unencumbered (i.e., no gloves, mice, styli, etc.) rich gestural interaction. Work that was more than a decade ahead of its time and hugely influential, yet not as acknowledged as it should be.
· Krueger, Myron, W. (1983). Artificial Reality. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
· Krueger, Myron, W. (1991). Artificial Reality II. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
· Krueger, Myron, W., Gionfriddo, Thomas., & Hinrichsen, Katrin (1985). VIDEOPLACE – An Artificial Reality, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’85), 35 – 40.”
LOL! Good luck with this one Apple
And first time I saw multitouch and the gestures used was this:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
Not Apples technology. And sadly for Apple that’s a Microsoft project … The touch may have been sensed in another way but it’s still touching, gestures and support multiple fingers. And innovative!
Edited 2009-01-28 04:01 UTC
Thanks Apple for remembering me again why I never bought anything from you.
When it comes to monopolistic and lock-in tactics on your overpriced gadgets (in particular in EU where Apple think one $ = one euro since years now), you’re no better than your not-so-long-ago evil enemy on the OS battlefield which you never missed an occasion to whim about.
I would like to boycott Apple, but unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to buy an Apple computer or gadget in the first place, so I’m unable to boycott them as they wouldn’t loose any money since I wouldn’t have bought them anyway. If you have enough money to boycott their products, please do it for me.
I fully agree with the comments above. It does not matter if Apple is great at designing softwares and selling them, their attitude is just as bad as what Microsoft used to do. The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is just that Apple is better at designing simple and efficient interfaces. And maybe that Microsoft is trying to play fair now (with the help of a few visits to court for legal complaints, ok…). At least more than Apple. So no matter how good their softwares/hardwares can be, I just cannot buy anything from them.
Sorry, but MS is not trying to play fair now. They’ve got more ridiculous patents up their sleeve than you can shake a landfill full of unsold copies of MS Bob at.
It’s just that they’re on probation, so to speak, and now they get to rely on Apple stealing the headlines.
I don’t support Apple in their patent endeavors, but if I had to choose the more sympathetic source of evil… I’ll choose the one that gives me easier-to-use, less irritating products.
Yup.
You would be mis-managing your company if you weren’t filing for patents at every opportunity?
And who is doing the suing? Have you kept track of every little patent troll suing Apple?
lets wait and see if this patent defence makes it through the courts
I hope they don’t ‘make a deal’ outside of court as I would like to see this issue of if IT patents are enforcable finalised
One would think Apple would not want to provoke Palm. It’s a company with all most 20 years of PDA and phone related patents that it could probably use to make apples life hell in a counter suit since in all likely hood something in the iphone/ipod touch infringes on one of them
Edited 2009-01-27 13:01 UTC
Except the Palm PDA’s and phones came after the Apple Newton, from which they (Palm) gleaned much of their interface design and functionality…
Evidently no one at Apple has ever heard of the concept of “Mutually-assured destruction.” But hey, it will sure be fun to watch!
One would think they’d first know the patent library of Apple on PDAs, more specifically, the Newton and much more before making such a claim.
What was patentable about the Newton? Aside from being so notoriously-shoddy that even the Simpsons made fun of it.
Hi all
from the patent
”
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command.”
So it is “one” or more finger contacts to give a computer a command. Well surely I was doing this with a virtual keyboard on the M505, M515 (still the best palms) and my PSION 5MX before that. Oh and on My Dell PDA on my Palm Tungstens and on and on and on and….
And since it encompases ONE then what about all touchscreen kiosks, lifts etc etc etc…. and tablet PC’s?
I’m off to patent interfacing with “NO” fingers and corner the foot fettish computer market. 🙂
Cheers
Bob
Yeah I’d think the whole “ONE or more” fingers part of that patent would pretty much render it void through prior art, regardless of multitouch.
Which of Apple’s departments is larger……Engineering or Legal.
Neither… Apple PR.
True Story.
Apple and their apologists keep making the argument that “Apple deserves to derive financial benefit from something they invented.” Which is pretty funny – under that standard, Douglas Englebart would have grounds to sue Apple for… well, just about every product they’ve ever released.
What’s the use in having a patent if competitors can easily work around it? Nay, all patents should be like this one, so that innovation is promoted by giving innovators a monopoly worth its name.
I’d like to greet Apple, US (and elsewhere) legislators, pro-IP lobbyists and everyone who makes this wonderful framework possible, with the obvious, prior-art laden, one-finger gesture.
How can we allow Apple to do this? Why can we not hold the USPTO accountable for antitrust practices.? When will Apple get the patent for wiping in a three directions? wadding up the toilet paper? Using a bidet? I know, let’s give them the patent on looking both ways before crossing the street.
Apple really is frustrating me. They lie to stockholders, patent basic human movement, and use DRM. I don’t understand how people can think they are so great.
“How can we allow Apple to do this? Why can we not hold the USPTO accountable for antitrust practices.?”
Well, they made that “everything has already been patented” or if it was invented or whatever claim there sometimes around 1890. Guess they learned from that that everything wasn’t and therefor grant everything instead …
“I don’t understand how people can think they are so great.”
I can only answer for myself but I thought the user-interfaces and applications looked great. But now when I have a mac (which was overpriced and poorly configured) I’ve noticed how much crap it is:
* Most Apple software seem to be built on a good idea but then they stopped developing it. Applications start like something good but they all lack a lot in functionality and usefulness.
* The magsafe connector suck and the cable get lose so you can’t charge your machine.
* The mini-tos-link will break the cable all the f–king time, you can buy an airport express, but only with wireless iTunes because Apple is retarded. Airfoil solves this… What it don’t solve is that only the Extreme has support for a harddrive, BUT NOT MUSIC, so you need to buy both. I refuse!
* Crappy displays (not the cinema ones ..)
* My backlight spreader must have some flaw because there is weird light behind the pixels.
* A-key has started to refuse responding.
* Battery life is down to around 10 % since Safari and Flash always take all RAM and CPU which make the computer really hot and the battery to degenerate fast as hell.
* Safari and flash for OS X suck.
* Mail spam protection suck.
* iPhoto image adjustments suck, and it don’t mix well with Lightroom.
* All machines is crippled on purpose.
* SuperDrive is SuperCrappy and always returns and error if I try to burn a disc (and I have Taiyo-Yuden and MCC004/Verbatim discs so don’t blame them ..)
* My 8600m GT seems faulty giving me graphics errors.
* Their forum and support suck.
* No documentation on supplied software.
* You can’t mail them a question.
So on, so on. I’ll never buy a mac again, I’ll build a more optimal hack than my earlier one (which was just the computer I happened to have) and use the OS anyway.
Is it against Palm or maybe it is against Microsoft? I think Windows 7 is supposed too support touch screens.
Or is it against touch screens in netbooks – they were suppose to come out this year for both Windows and Linux.
Good what in Europe we can ignore this patent nonsense. Soon probably EU Commission will send Apple to court like they did with Microsoft in the past.
Huh? What about previous art?????
T
Edited 2009-01-27 20:12 UTC
I usually find Apple’s patent applications either plain stupid, or mildly concerning but ultimately harmless. But this patent goes way too far.
Basically, it outlaws other manufacturers from implementing all pinch, scroll and swipe gestures. What the hell is left?!
I really, really, really hope this doesn’t stand up to further investigation. I honestly don’t see how it could given the work people like Jeff Hahn have done:
http://www.perceptivepixel.com
Edited 2009-01-27 22:25 UTC
This is crap. This is why patents on software and such need to go away. I own a Touchstream LP and have been using multitouch years before Apple had it (they bought Fingerworks who made the Touchstream) and this should be invalidated. They haven’t developed the tech any further than it was 6 years ago when I bought it. I could do all this pinch, zoom, swipe, etc on that thing, and still can, as it let me program my own gestures. The Mac’s prefs sure don’t let me do that…only Apple’s predefined things, which is really a hinderance.
I wish Fingerworks hadn’t sold out, and furthered the tech and made a cool System Pref to configure it with.
I guess this is why Android don’t use it from the beginning ..
Patents suck, so user-inconvenience and halted development in the area is good? f–k the american patent system.
I found it funny that this article is right above one that tells how to get multi-touch working on your Android phone.
Simple Patents like this suck. So what if someone copied your great idea? If they did a better job, then isn’t that worth merit?
With patents like these, no one would be able to create a better “mouse trap”. And yet I thought patents were intended to help competition/innovation.
have actually read the entire patent application, including Thom Holwerda, to know and actually understand all that it details? Yeah, that’s what I suspected :p
Chances are high that they can’t defend all claims in court, but if in the context of all the other things that can’t be defended on their own, they have claims that tie into them that have no prior art and are sufficiently non-obvious/novel compared to what previously existed, then it could actually be useful for them. If nothing else, it’ll slow down others in court because it’ll require substantial time to parse and mount a defense.
And despite all that, the world (at least all current and potential users in the market) are left puzzling over at least one missing feature: where is cut/copy/paste???!
Apple is making notice to scare away some potential competitors but the chances of them suing and succeeding in stopping Palm Pre are close to zero.
1. Large corporations almost never sue other corporations for patent infringement. They sue the small fish.
2. Palm holds hundreds of patents (a Google patent search shows a list of PAGES PAGES of different patents, http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&q=%22PALM+inc%22&sa=N&sta…), almost all of them in their line of business (PDAs and Phones).
3. If Apple sues, they run the big risk of getting this ridiculous patent invalidated due to tons of prior art that dates from the 80’s and 90’s. See http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
4. Palm will certainly countersue with their own patent infringement. Since they have a huge PDA/phome patent portfolio it is almost certain that the iPhone infringes one or more of their patent, and that is all that is required to get the iPhone off the market. It certainly will be Apple. In the jargon of patent it’s called MAD (mutually assured destruction). Who will loose more in scenario like that?
5. If Apple presses Palm, Palm can look for a white knight bringing Microsoft to the picture by buying Palm, Microsoft will use their muscle and financial resources to beat back Apple and gain a door opening to a very attractive smartphone. Will Apple risk pushing Palm into their archenemy’s hands? HP or even IBM can potentially become white knights and help Palm.
6. Most likely and to save face they will reach and agreement for licensing each other patent portfolio.
7. YAWN, we will see Palm Pre whether Apple likes it or not.
First it was the introduction of DRM music, then it was suing Linux developers for trying to be Ipod compatible, and now trying to sue to own touch interfaces.
Apple is a no good company as bad if not worse than Microsoft. Boycott them!
Edited 2009-02-01 07:00 UTC