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Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-15 04:00pm
by Irbis
Yes,
pure rectangle, with slightly rounded corners. No buttons or anything like that, their newest patent is literally 4 lines. Oh, and according to their lawyer, apparently there is absolutely no prior art whatsoever.
I wonder, how long will it take until fanboys will spin it into another genius design idea?
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-15 04:07pm
by Zaune
Does anyone even bother to read patent applications before marking them "approved" anymore?
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-15 04:50pm
by PeZook
Zaune wrote:Does anyone even bother to read patent applications before marking them "approved" anymore?
I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred to count the zeros on their freshly charged bank account instead.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-15 05:08pm
by Havok
It's just a design patent people. Calm down.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 08:51am
by Phantasee
Groundbreaking. The ghost of Steve Jobs designed that, clearly.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 03:55pm
by Zixinus
Does anyone remember when Apple was about exploring what can be done with new technologies, both hardware and software, creating new things that can be done?
I think I saw them doing that sometime in a documentary.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 05:19pm
by Stark
What are you talking about?
Amusingly this shows the 'cant win' situation for Apple regarding the Android Armada; people complain when they protect their IP so they err on the side of caution and register more shit to avoid the situation in future. The result? OMG TEH APPLOLS!
Maybe you guys should fix your patent system.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 05:33pm
by Flagg
Stark wrote:What are you talking about?
Amusingly this shows the 'cant win' situation for Apple regarding the Android Armada; people complain when they protect their IP so they err on the side of caution and register more shit to avoid the situation in future. The result? OMG TEH APPLOLS!
Maybe you guys should fix your patent system.
Seriousely. People should be pissed at the US Patent system for allowing you to patent a rectangle with rounded corners not at Apple for taking advantage of weak ass laws.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 05:35pm
by Terralthra
They've also been granted a patent on turning virtual pages.
Mashable, via CNN wrote:Apple patents the virtual page turn
(CNN) -- Apple is now the proud owner of the page turn.
In a patent approved this week by the United States Patent Office Apple was awarded a design patent for "Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface."
The patent illustration shows three images: One with the corner of a page being turned slightly, the next with it halfway, and a third showing the page almost entirely turned over.
A feature used in Apple's iBooks, and books in general, the patent represents one of 38 different patents granted to Apple this week.
The New York Times points out that this isn't the first "seemingly obvious" patent that Apple has been awarded. Previously the company was granted a patent for the musical note icon it uses to represent iTunes and the glass staircase it uses it stores.
Over the past several years Apple has made quite a few headlines for its involvement in patent suits against other device makers.
Earlier this year Apple won a patent lawsuit against Samsung, walking away with $1 billion in restitution, and has recently made moves to go after Samsung products that were released after that court ruling, including the Galaxy Note 10.1.
Earlier this week it settled a different patent case with handset maker HTC with a 10-year licensing agreement of patents held by both companies reportedly requiring HTC to pay Apple $6 to $8 per Android handset it sells.
Should Apple have been awarded a patent for the page turn? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Also, the Patent Office has laws regarding rejection of obvious or prior-art patents (both of these should fall under said provisions). Why they aren't being enforced, I couldn't tell you.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 05:52pm
by Stark
There are plenty of non-Apple examples of the same shit. The patent system is fucked.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-16 06:01pm
by Terralthra
I agree. That obvious prior art exists means these patent applications should've been rejected out of hand. Fuck, I had a tablet in 2004 with a rectangular form factor and rounded corners.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-17 03:16am
by Edi
Never mind the page turning shit that already existed in some games in the 1990s and more so in the early 2000s, so those are both absolutely without merit. Then again, in its current state, so is the entire US patent system.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-17 05:26am
by Irbis
Stark wrote:Amusingly this shows the 'cant win' situation for Apple regarding the Android Armada; people complain when they protect their IP so they err on the side of caution and register more shit to avoid the situation in future. The result? OMG TEH APPLOLS!
"Err on the side of caution"? You mean, try shit no one sane would think worthy spending minute thinking on, that's how retarded patenting slide-to-unlock, page-turn, and rectangles is?
No one would have anything against Apple if they patented really original stuff, like their rather
nice and original iPhone
concept they had at one time, but patenting things with millions of obvious prior arts is beyond idiocy. Btw, while I agree patent system should be changed, laying fault at everyone but Apple is arguing it's the victim's fault when something left unsupervised goes missing, not the guy who had decided to run with it.
Also, huh, it took almost two days for first defence to show up. Fanboys are starting to slip, eh?
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-17 07:08am
by DaveJB
Irbis wrote:Btw, while I agree patent system should be changed, laying fault at everyone but Apple is arguing it's the victim's fault when something left unsupervised goes missing, not the guy who had decided to run with it.
Where has anyone made that argument? If anything, the people in this thread are rebutting the notion that Apple are the only people doing this, or the even more idiotic notion that, yeah, this shit goes on in the tech industry all the time, but Apple are somehow worse than everyone else for this and therefore the only company who actually deserve to be punished for it (which is sort of like saying that it's okay to be an insane genocidal dictator so long as your name isn't Robert Mugabe).
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-17 07:21pm
by Stark
Are you retarded, Irbis? They're in litigation and they're registering everything they can. It's not THEIR fault the laws are so fucking stupid and poorly administered. You can't even really blame bribes because if the rules were clear and sensible it wouldn't be possible to slip such absurd shit past.
Remember when Amazon patented fucking one-click checkouts? WHAT A LAUGH.
Re: Apple patents rectangle
Posted: 2012-11-18 01:03am
by Straha
Stark wrote:There are plenty of non-Apple examples of the same shit. The patent system is fucked.
Fun fact:
The US Patent system used to be one of the best in the world. Then George H. W. Bush decided the system cost too much, so he slashed the budget and made it dependent on application fees. This has meant that the Patent system has scaled down any and all fact-checking, and has had acceptance rates skyrocket because it needs to accept as many patents as it can to stay afloat. This thread is a testament to the results.
