Apple granted broad UI patent

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by wodin

Patent clerks are like judges, some of them are for sale and others invent the theory of relativity.

And one of them are just a few miles away from the main headquarters of the main proponents of these lawsuits, I sometimes wonder what phone she has, and what tablet/laptop/desktop she has in her office/home. Surely she's not biased.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Is "Retina" trademarked? All biology professors should pay Apple for using the word when teaching about the structure of the eye.

Optometrists get strong-armed into coming up with new terms for parts of the ©eye.

[JD Gumby]

<<snip>> Never mind.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Is "Retina" trademarked? All biology professors should pay Apple for using the word when teaching about the structure of the eye.

Can see it now...

iEye

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Can see it now...

iEye

Captain

[Kevin8or]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I've always wanted a "portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying electronic lists and documents".

Me too, especially one that will fit in the Palm of my hand. That would be as yummy as Blackberries.

[Hellmark]

WTF. What ever happened to prior art?

I mean, I've had devices that would do what this patent describes for years, long before even Apple did the Newton. It isn't new.

[Matth79]

I give you... The Amstrad penpad.
Date: Goodness knows how long ago
Interface - TOUCH (ok, it used a stylus, but a fingernail would do).
Displayed and interacted with: Notes, calendar & address book entries

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

WTF. What ever happened to prior art?

I mean, I've had devices that would do what this patent describes for years, long before even Apple did the Newton. It isn't new.

Despite the description in this thread, Apple have not patented the general concept of a device for displaying lists, that isn't how patents works.
A patent document is an insanely detailed description of a number of claims (in this case 30). Those claims are what is actually patented, not the general description. Anyone is free to invent their own device for displaying lists, as long as it does non infringe on one of the claims in this patent. In order to infringe, it must meet every specification of the claim. As long as there is at least one portion of the specification of the claim that it does not meet, it does not infringe.
Each claim stands alone, and a product could infringe one of more of the claims. Each claim individually could be found to be invalid, without invalidating the rest of the patent. That is where prior art, common general knowledge and obviousness would come in to it.
So if, for any individual claim, there is either a prior generally available device embodying the claim, or a prior patent or academic article or suchlike describing the claim, or it could be demonstrated that the claim is an obvious step over one or more embodiments or papers, the claim could be found to be invalid.

The actual document is here, if you have the time to read it.

Typically you will have one starter claim, and a number of others that piggy-back on it to add more specifications. (This maximises the coverage of the patent while increasing the chances of some of the claims survive challenge)
For example, claims 1-9 are: (bullet points added)

1. A method, comprising: at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display:
- displaying a portion of an electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document;
- displaying a vertical bar on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document, the vertical bar displayed proximate to a vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein:
- the vertical bar has a vertical position on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document that corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed portion of the electronic document;
- and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar;
- detecting a movement of an object in a direction on the displayed portion of the electronic document;
- in response to detecting the movement:
-- scrolling the electronic document displayed on the touch screen display in the direction of movement of the object so that a new portion of the electronic document is displayed,
-- moving the vertical bar to a new vertical position such that the new vertical position corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed new portion of the electronic document,
-- and maintaining the vertical bar proximate to the vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document;
- and in response to a predetermined condition being met, ceasing to display the vertical bar while continuing to display the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical extent that is less than a vertical extent of the electronic document.

2. The method of claim 1, including: when the portion of the electronic document is initially displayed: displaying the vertical bar for a predetermined time period even if no object is detected on or near the electronic document, and ceasing to display the vertical bar immediately following the predetermined time period.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined condition comprises ceasing to detect the object on or near the touch screen display.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined condition comprises ceasing to detect the object on or near the touch screen display for a predetermined time period.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined condition comprises ceasing to detect the object on or near the displayed portion of the electronic document.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the object is a finger.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the vertical bar is translucent or transparent.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the movement of the object is on the touch screen display.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the vertical bar has a major axis and a portion of the electronic document along the major axis of the vertical bar is not covered by the vertical bar.

If there is prior art for the exact specification of one of those claims, then any attempt by Apple to sue for violation of it would be met by a successful counterclaim for invalidation of the claim. If the claim is different in at least one non-obvious way from what has gone before, then it is would not be.
(The patent was filed in 2007, so prior art would be considered at that point.)

[Hellmark]

I'm aware that the summary is not what is gone on, but rather the clauses, which all of which aren't strictly new either. Even your quoted portion is just about a scrollbar on a touch screen device, where the scrollbar disappears after a period of inactivity with the touch display. Nothing ground breaking, even in 2007.

[QuantumIguana]

Companies ask for the moon and the stars with patents, and patent clerks are pretty overwhelmed.

[Dulin's Books]

i was reading about this earlier and looking through the claims and my first reaction was "are they trying to patent disappearing scroll bars?" but then in the claim they actually say "the vertical bar is not a scroll bar".

so what did they claim to patent here? i'm sorry to admit ive got lost in the legalese

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

i was reading about this earlier and looking through the claims and my first reaction was "are they trying to patent disappearing scroll bars?" but then in the claim they actually say "the vertical bar is not a scroll bar".

I would imagine the difference being that you can interact with a scroll bar to change document position.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I would imagine the difference being that you can interact with a scroll bar to change document position.

While I agree that what they're patenting is "well duh!", it is different from a scroll bar.

When you drag down on a traditional scroll bar the page scrolls up from bottom to top, and you drag yourself down through the document towards the end.

When you drag down on a touch screen the page scrolls from top to bottom towards the start of the document.

What they're patenting is a position marker on the right side in the place of a scroll bar that indicates where you are in a document. As you drag the touchscreen down this marker would move up; as you drag the touchscreen up, this marker would move down.

Was Apple the first company to use a marker in that way? I don't know.

However, it's such an obvious extension of allowing you to scroll on a touchscreen by dragging the body of the screen with a finger. Once you've decided you want to do that then the obvious next problem is that the scroll bar works the opposite way. So to make things simpler (and because it's no longer necessary to have to scrabble about at the side of the screen) you would naturally disable the scroll bar's functionality and leave it just as a position indicator (which you do need).

It would be fair to argue that the clause about making the bar disappear after a certain time might be an innovation, but do we really want to allow stylistic screen effects like that to be patented? Film editors the world over, take note.

Graham

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Graham

It would be fair to argue that the clause about making the bar disappear after a certain time might be an innovation, but do we really want to allow stylistic screen effects like that to be patented? Film editors the world over, take note.

Apple have a huge number of such design style patents because, to be fair, they spend a huge amount of time and money on little design touches.
The way you can drag a page so it scrolls too far, exposing the grey background, and then bounces back? Apple have a patent on that.