The touch screen of an Apple iPad in action.
(Credit: Apple )
Posted on 06/22/2011 2:17:08 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a key patent for touch screen functionality on portable devices, such as the iPhone and iPad.
Apple's patent, which the company applied for in 2007, boils down to one simple focus: when a person uses their fingers to interact with the touch screen, the software reacts to that gesture. Images that Apple included with its patent application show that functionality being implemented across several different applications, including a Web browser and a home screen.
Here's the more technical description:
"A computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display," the patent abstract reads. "An N-finger translation gesture is detected on or near the touch screen display. In response, the page content, including the displayed portion of the frame content and the other content of the page, is translated to display a new portion of page content on the touch screen display."
The patent win comes at a time when Apple is ensnared in several patent-related battles with other companies.
Nokia sued Apple in October 2009 for allegedly infringing patents related to smartphones being able to run on GSM, Wi-Fi, and 3G networks. The claims also mentioned patents Nokia owned related to mobile device security and encryption.
Apple responded with a countersuit in December 2009, alleging that Nokia violated 13 of its own patents. However, Nokia announced last week that Apple had called it quits and the companies had agreed to a patent-licensing deal. A subsequent analyst report on the matter suggested Apple's licensing costs to Nokia could reach $608 million. But Nokia is just one of Apple's problems.
In April, Samsung announced that it had filed a patent-infringement case against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California San Jose division, alleging that the iPhone maker violated 10 of its patents, including one that allows smartphone owners to use the Web while on a phone call. Apple alleged in its own lawsuit against Samsung in April that the company was violating patents on its user interface and mobile-device design.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company upped the ante last week in an amended complaint, saying that Samsung has been heavily "copying" its own products.
"[Samsung's] products...blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple's products to capitalize on Apple's success," Apple wrote in its complaint. "The copying has been widely observed in the industry and has been mentioned in multiple articles reviewing Samsung products." Exactly how Apple's touch-screen patent will play into its current litigation remains to be seen. But as noted, it's a far-reaching patent, and many portable-device makers have products that allow for multitouch gestures that control software on the display.
Apple has not immediately responded to request for comment on whether or not it will use the latest patent against competitors.
The Nokia v. Apple dispute discussed in the article was actually a WIN for Apple in that Nokia was demanding that Apple pay triple the amount others members of the cell phone patent pool licensing consortium were being required to pay for Nokia's patents in the pool AND that Apple license the iPhone patents to Nokia in exchange for merely getting fair pricing for what Apple should have gotten by contract as a member of the pool. Apple refused to pay Nokia ANY royalties at all until the dispute was settled, instead putting the royalties into an escrow account. Last week, a settlement was reached in which Nokia gets the royalties they WOULD have received at the normal pool rates and NOTHING more! Nokia claimed a win... But they did not get what they wanted. They just got what they were entitled to by contract, what Apple had put in the escrow account and was willing to pay from day one as a member of the patent consortium! In fact, Apple was the winner...
The Samsung lawsuit is a countersuit in response to Apple suing Samsung for violating Apple's intellectual property by copying the look, feel, and user interfaces of iPhones and iPads. Samsung just lost a major ruling from the judge in the case when she ruled that Samsung has no justification to see Apple's future iPhone 5 and iPad 3 products before release or announcements but that Apple is justified and allowed because of Samsung's past behavior to see Samsung's upcoming phones and tablets to determine if they should be injuncted from sale!
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Apple is using cherrypicked photos that make the Samsung Galaxy S look like something it’s not.
As far as the patent goes, Android does this as well, but I’m not sure Google would have to pay out because it’s open source and Google isn’t releasing it for profit.
Steve is afraid of reliving the early 1990’s, where Microsoft allowed Windows to be installed on any computer running it.
Those factors are irrelevant to a patent infringement action. The holder of a patent has the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the claimed invention.
The Wright brothers tried to patent flying.
:-)
And shouldn't this go all the way back to elevator buttons that activated by the heat of your fingers?
-PJ
The way I read this, all touch screen device do what is covered under this patent: Software responds to your touch.
sure sounds like they are trying to patent prior art, doesn’t it?
N and M fingers?
Touch screen tech is 40 years old...
Long before apple even existed...
The way I understand the difference is on the Apple the gesture or movement of the finger on the screen can cause different things to happen not just the location
What ramifications does this have on Samsung users???
Long before apple even existed...
Indeed.
This is slimy lawyer territory.
heh, mine are labeled "A", "B", and "C", etc.
But seriously, the disclosure uses "N" to represent some number of finger(tips), say 2, or 3, or 4. "M" is a number different from whatever "N" is. The part of the disclosure that is reproduced above has one action, which reads like scrolling the entire screen, on a gesture with "N" fingertips (say 2), but the same gesture with a different number of fingertips causes only part of the display to scroll.
-PJ
Yes.
I was making systems with touch screen interfaces from Elographics in 1989. The POS terminal business has used them for over 20 years. The only thing unique here is the n-finger gesture vs single point gesture.
I tried to patent the question mark.
-PJ
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