This morning news came up all over the internet about Apple suing HTC over 20 or so patents that according to Apple, were patents that HTC stole. After reading a few stories that stated it was unsure what patents were being brought up by Apple, I did a bit of research and found out which patent was which. Not all twenty were included in the statement I read, but for the ones that are there I found info on. It’s a long read, but if you’re interested in what Apple feels that they should sue HTC over, give it a read.
1) Patent Number “7,362,331″. “Time-based, non-constant translation of user interface objects between states”
- Meaning: The present invention relates to a method for moving objects within the graphical user interface (GUI) of an operating system in a manner that provides a transitional effect between window states, which is pleasing to the user. This transitional effect includes changing the shape of a window while scaling and moving the window between two different sizes and positions. In one embodiment of the present invention, the transitional effect may be employed as a window is minimized into an icon, or restored from an icon. In another embodiment of the present invention, the transitional effect is employed as a window is minimized within its title bar, or restored therefrom. The rate of movement of objects is controlled in a non-linear manner, to further enhance the pleasing effect.”
2) Patent Number “7,479,949″. “Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”
- Meaning: 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.
3)Patent Number “7,657,849″. “Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image”
- Meaning: A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture.
4) Patent Number “7,469,381″. “List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display”
- Meaning: In accordance with some embodiments, a computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a device with a touch screen display is disclosed. In the method, a movement of an object on or near the touch screen display is detected. In response to detecting the movement, an electronic document displayed on the touch screen display is translated in a first direction. If an edge of the electronic document is reached while translating the electronic document in the first direction while the object is still detected on or near the touch screen display, an area beyond the edge of the document is displayed. After the object is no longer detected on or near the touch screen display, the document is translated in a second direction until the area beyond the edge of the document is no longer displayed.
5) Patent Number “5,920,726″. “System and method for managing power conditions within a digital camera device”
- Meaning: A system and method for recovering from a power failure in a digital camera comprises a power manager for detecting and handling power failures, an interrupt handler for responsively incrementing a counter device, service routines which register to receive notification of the power failure, and a processor for evaluating the counter and providing notification of the power failure to the service routines which may then assist the digital camera to recover from the power failure.
6) Patent Number “7,633,076″. “Automated response to and sensing of user activity in portable devices”
- Meaning: The various methods and devices described herein relate to devices which, in at least certain embodiments, may include one or more sensors for providing data relating to user activity and at least one processor for causing the device to respond based on the user activity which was determined, at least in part, through the sensors. The response by the device may include a change of state of the device, and the response may be automatically performed after the user activity is determined.
7) Patent Number: “5,848,105″. “GMSK signal processors for improved communications capacity and quality”
- Meaning: A method and apparatus for separating and removing distortion from interfering co-channel signals and suppressing adjacent-channel interfering signals of the Gaussian Minimum-Shift Keyed (GMSK) or other MSK type with filtering structures that exploit the cyclostationarity of the received GMSK or other MSK signals in order to accommodate a greater number (or the same number, but with greater quality) of transmitted signals received by one or more antennas than can be accommodated by existing filters. The parameters in these filtering structures are adapted by either of two adaptation apparatus that exploit both the known training sequence that is transmitted in most wireless communications systems, and the constant modulus property exhibited by each of the transmitted GMSK or other MSK signals.
Patent Number: “7,383,453″. “Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor”
- Meaning: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates reducing static power consumption of a processor. During operation, the system receives a signal indicating that instruction execution within the processor is to be temporarily halted. In response to this signal, the system halts an instruction-processing portion of the processor, and reduces the voltage supplied to the instruction-processing portion of the processor. Full voltage is maintained to a remaining portion of the processor, so that the remaining portion of the processor can continue to operate while the instruction-processing portion of the processor is in reduced power mode
9) Patent Number: “5,455,599″. “Object-oriented graphic system”
- Meaning: An object-oriented graphic system is disclosed including a processor with an attached display, storage and object-oriented operating system. The graphic system builds a component object in the storage of the processor for managing graphic processing. The processor includes an object for connecting one or more graphic devices to various objects responsible for tasks such as graphic accelerators, frame buffers, page description languages and vector engines. The system is fully extensible and includes polymorphic processing built into each of the support objects.
10) Patent Number: “6,424,354″. “Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods”
- Meaning: An event notification system for propagating object-change information. The notification system supports change notification without queues in an object-based application or operating system and can be scaled to propagate large numbers of events among a large plurality of objects. The event notification system interconnects a plurality of event source and event receiver objects. Any object, such as a command object, may operate as either an event receiver object, an event source object or both. A notification object is created by a source object to transport, from a source to a receiver, descriptive information about a change, which includes a particular receiver object method and a pointer to the source object that sent the notification. A receiver object must register with a connection object its “interest” in receiving notification of changes; specifying both the event type and the particular source object of interest. After establishing such connections, the receiver object receives only the events of the specified type for the source objects “of interest” and no others. This delegation of event selection avoids central event queuing altogether and so limits receiver object event processing that the invention can be scaled to large systems operating large numbers of objects.
Some of these as you can see (take a look at number 3) are pretty ridiculous. It’s hard to say if Apple will win the law suit, I suppose only time can tell what will happen.
What are some of your opinions on this lawsuit by Apple? Give us your opinion, we always love to hear from the readers.
[Via Apples Law Suit Against HTC, Patent Search]
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I hope HTC counter sues with patents of it’s own, and gets the iPhone stopped from being sold in the US. well I don’t really care, as long as htc can still make killer phones.
Highly doubt HTC can counter sue since I doubt that they have many patents of their own. HTC got their start as an OEM, so they’ve traditionally produced patented product instead of filing for patents.
I don’t know if these patents will stand up in a court of law, but you can’t allow other people to rip off your work. Consumers don’t care, but people who take the time to come up with an idea, test it and implement it do. It takes a lot of work to execute an idea. You won’t understand until you’ve really tried it yourself.
I agree that a unique idea needs to be protected. But object oriented user interfaces? Animation between window/icon states, these are ideas used for a long period of time. Apple didn’t come up with these ideas they just patented an idea the industry uses as a whole.
It would be like putting a patent on object oriented programming 10 years ago.
You have it wrong its not that consumers don’t care. It’s companies that don’t care. Apple also steals patents from different companies too. Apple paid $100m to Creative in patent lawsuit because they were found to have taken elements from creative for there ipod user interface. Its just how companies do business these days and it will never stop and if it did we would never see new innovation everyone always has to one up someone else its just in our nature. Apple was the first to come out with a app store now everyone has it, blackberry, Nokia and windows mobile.Apple had its head start with the iPhone for a few years but now that everyone is catching up to them they are panicking. They need to come out with something big to change the game again if they want to keep gaining market share and the iPad just isn’t cutting it.
Only a few of those seem to be specific enough for court. Most of the patents appear to be vague and those patents can get thrown out. I like both companies, owning an iPhone, mt3g and iMac. Either way this will put the spotlight on the Android OS and help it grow in users and developers, which will be great for all.
[...] morning news came up all over the internet about Apple suing HTC over 20 or so patents that according to Apple, were patents that HTC stole. After reading [...]
Absolutely ridiculous.
Most of those patents are so generic they wouldn’t stand up on an episode of Judge Judy, let alone in a proper High Court.
It looks to me as if Apple is just trying to tarnish HTC’s name, which I assume is due to the immense competition HTC is putting out there now. I mean come on Apple, almost 3 years and all you’ve done is push out 3 almost identical handsets with the most basic of improvements. I’m not an Apple hater, I love the products, just dont like the company and its ethics/conduct. Bullies in a playground.
Personally I think this is only going to hurt Apple especially when the patents get laughed out of court.
A lot of these patents just look like common sense things that programmers think up to make things better for the user. Things that would occur to most programmers as OS’s develop further, and they or the users wish the OS would do.
If many of Apple’s patents hold up, it could make it so before you develop anything, you will have to look at Apple’s patents to see if the idea is already patented or you might get sued. Even if you got your idea from a program or OS which was developed before the iphone, Apple will be able to claim it as their patent and sue you.
Apple being granted patents to a lot of this stuff stops innovation, and makes things worse for all of us.
Apple’s patents can be overturned by finding and citing prior art (where the concept has already been in common use). So although the USPTO has granted the patents to Apple they can all be shown off with appropriate evidence. Those here can help HTC by finding and supplying examples of prior art. USPTO actually had a useful program running for a while where they had the community help in critiquing patent submissions and providing prior art where applicable. So this would be the same concept, except for the defense of HTC.
Even if Apple wins a couple, this was a bad move for them. PR on this for Apple appears to be pretty negative. Maybe overshadowing the buzz about the iPad, bad buzz. One must protect their original ideas but some of the patents are so vague and could be argued existed prior to the patent application. Bad move Apple. If they win, they still lose PR.
It’s ironic that Apple would be trying to protect the “Object-oriented graphic system” again since they originally “borrowed” it from Xerox.
Check out the documentary “Triumph of the Nerds. Here’s a link to the transcript of part 3 where Jobs visits the Xerox PARC lab and learns about GUI:
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html
This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen apple due and the fact that they are sueing HTC for some of these thing just shows their greed and fear of androind. If they are going to sue android for this then they also need to sue RIM FOR THE Blackberry storm, Palm for the Palm Pre and motorola for the Droid and Cliq. Steve Jobs needs to stop being a punk and let go of this money leeching greed if apple can only do these things that would be giving theme and unfair advantage over their competers. I believe that this B.S. law suit will not hold up in court and apple if anything will start “borrowing” certian aspects of android to try to boost their own sales and call it their own.
I’m glad to see you guys commenting on the article. It seems a lot of you feel the same way I do, along with most of the U.S. on this topic. From the articles I read, almost everyone had felt that this was wrong on Apple’s part.
My personal favorite is #8!!! Absolutely love how Apple thinks they’re the greatest people in the technology world ever!!! To bad this is what pretty much every laptop does on battery mode, so I guess Apple is going to sue every computer manufacturer who allows their computers to go on “battery saving” mode???
Steve Jobs and his little fan boys should go back and think of some cleaver name for their knock off of the Kindle or at least a better name than “iPad”!!! LMAO
Basically apple is sayin they htc cant make a touch screen phone,I hope this does’nt fly,I know apple has been successful with ipod and iphone but honestly ithink there on there way down and android is on its way up.this is a clear shot at google because there jealous of the success of the android platform,what douchbags,I hope once the ifad gets kicked apple goes outta buisness,never liked them,windows is better,never even owned an ipod.
Palm had one of the first touch screen object orientated devices and Windows devices had the technology before the iPhone too. Window transitioning has been part of desktop OSs forever. If you read these for what they are worth, you can really see how much the iPhone was not an “invention” but an improvement over technologies already out there. To put a patent on these items and trying to sue because you have competition now is completely ludicrous. I hope Google steps in and beats Apple down a couple notches. Apple is clearly trying to bully out the competition and has the cash reserves to make any smaller company hurt.
Too bad HTC isn’t just some small company.
Apple should rather sue Windows since it’s clear they stole most of what Apple has developed.
Apple – stay out of HTC – so many things are vague about patents here – you’re becoming a fruitcake with your rants.
Windows poses too much of a threat to Apple to sue them. Microsoft has just as much money behind them as Apple does, so the dispute would never be settled.
Take a look at that link in the comment I posted above. Apple did sue MS over windows and kept them in court for 5 or 6 years. In the end MS won and the rest is history. But it looks like history is repeating itself.
not really this happens all the time tech companies suing each other over patent infringement. The only thing here is Apple is suing over 20 patents not 1 or 2.
Ah then I stand corrected, for some reason I was under the impression those two companies left each other alone.
I get a feeling that the whole thing is a ploy to distract the buying public from HTCs upcoming releases sufficiently to allow Apple to get their own new products out mid-year .. whilst also hilighting their so-called inventiveness and even, perhaps, indicating the areas where they have improvements in their new equipment.
Free publicity is hardly ever bad publicity.