Apple granted broad UI patent

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Graham

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.

Like it's done in google maps, like it's done in software that plots graphs...

[Graham]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

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.

I've no problem with praising Apple for their styling and the brilliance of their aesthetics, but patenting elements of it?

It takes an artist to put disparate elements together and come up with a pleasing whole, but the palette shouldn't be patentable.

As your example illustrates, by allowing patents in this area you can't know where to draw a reasonable line. The bounce-back is clever, built of multiple elements, and an innovative way of providing feedback when you've gone too far, but hiding a position marker when you no longer need it? At the most that should just engender a polite round of applause. It's too restrictive otherwise. Patent law is intended to foster, rather than stifle innovation.

Graham

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Like it's done in google maps, like it's done in software that plots graphs...

Absolutely, I'm not saying the dragging down was innovative, I was just pointing out why Apple wrote that it 'wasn't a scroll bar' into the patent application.

Graham

[Dulin's Books]

i was actually thinking about this during the past week when having to spend time using an apple laptop. the windows et al way is akin to having a magnifier over a page and moving the magnifier up or down the page while the page remains static. the apple way is that you slide the paper, bringing the upper or lower portion of the page into view under the static magnifier.

[StoryEnthusiast]

Would this mean every company has to come up with a different UI to avoid patent infringement? The consumers are the one to lose out in this war.