New Apple keyboard patent may spell trouble for Android The US Patent and Trademark Office has handed Apple's legal team what may turn out to be a powerful weapon in their ongoing battles against anyone with the temerity to launch products competitive with the iPhone and iPad: a patent on soft keyboards that modify their keys with the tap of an on-screen button. Granted on Tuesday …
Never mind a phone, bloody XBMC has had this for sodding ages. Probably other applications designed for only mouse/controller/IR input too.
Just because this "modifiable on-screen keyboard thingy" is now implemented on a phone rather than a desktop/TV is not a good enough reason to make it patentable.
And on top of that, having a button to switch "layouts" to keep the screen organised is w-a-y too bloody obvious and is used time-and-again in a whole host of areas for managing features/options.
Seriously, the USPTO need a kick in the knackers.
@AC - What's the point? because it stifles innovation, prevents new products coming to market and can stop a whole industry moving forward. That's why. The whole Internet was found on technology that was patent-free. Do you think it would have gone as far as it did if was riddled with patent caner?
Patents have a place, so long as the are good patents about something truly new/non-obvious. The patents the USPTO a granting willy-nilly for tech ideas are just such cobblers. Thankgoodness (for now) the the EU doesn't allow software patents.
...when you use a feature you either patent it to protect yourself, even if it's possible it won't stand, or you wait for someone else to patent it and have to defend yourself. Not filing a patent is prima facie evidence you didn't feel you had any rights in the matter.
"or you wait for someone else to patent it and have to defend yourself"
That's not really how, even the broken, patents system works.
If you invent something like this just publish the fact, get a notorised copy put in the safe or send a copy to your lawyers.
You are then immune from being sued for the same thing (and if you're feeling generous stopping anyone else from being sued). There is clear recorded prior art and you've just cost someone money having to go through the process of filing a worthless patent.
You only need to patent it if you wish to stop the competition using it or you wish to build up your patent portfolio as part of the patent arms race.
Lawyers - bookmark this thread, I suspect it will grow into a useful resource.
Here's the Sony Ericsson P800 from 2001: http://www.flickr.com/photos/takenbyhim/5154996194/ and the Ericsson R380 it was the sucessor to: http://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_r380-195.php, both of which did exactly this OBVIOUS function for a soft keyboard.
Windows has had an on screen keyboard for a while now. It has button that when you click on them change the layout of the keyboard. For example, when I press the 'shift' key, all of my letters turn upper case. Isn’t a parent supposed to be something that 'someone skilled in the art' wouldn’t think of easily? I don’t make smartphones or computer operating systems, but I could have come up with this idea.
... because... well, you know... CNET... so I have no comment to make on how overblown and/or misanalyzed that article may be, but *this* article in fact understates the situation - see other post for details.
(It is, however, misanalyzed, I must admit, unclear as it is on the relative roles played by claims and embodiments in a patent application.)
Because 1) it didn't have a soft keyboard 2) when you pressed one of the "multitude of shift keys" it did not display a number of objects corresponding to alternative layouts from which you could choose which alternative layout you wanted.
(This post applies to many of the claims of prior art in this thread but I won't be posting it in reply to every individual one of them! *Read* the actual patent, folks, it's linked from the article.)
Is taking a real keyboard and reproducing it's functionality in software and then changing the icons on the keys when you press another key.
And no I haven't read the Patent because fore every one I read I treble the potential damages some stupid patent troll can demand from me
No, that's not the real innovative step. There is no innovative step, and if you'd read the patent you'd know that and be able to defend yourself against false accusations, which seems to me a better plan than voluntary self-lobotomy.
(How the hell would they ever know you'd read a patent if you weren't daft enough to tell them you had, anyway?)
Except for the rather inconvenient fact that the Newton was released 4 years prior to the Palm Pilot (the Newton was released in 1993, the Palm Pilot in 1997). The Pilot 1000 didn't have the features mentioned by this patent (released 1996).But hey, it's out thereinks so it must be true now. You win the internets. Medal is in the post.
On top of the obvious drug feeding they probably have targets to meet based on the number of applications deemed successful. They should all be re-educated in order to better understand that a successful application is not celebrating success of the US Patent Office, it is the successful demonstration of a patent's innovation.
It must be tough trawling through all the sh(te they have to read, imagine studying a patent for days on end and then having to constantly use the 'reject' stamp with it's worn, stubby, dry and cracking rubber whilst the fresh, moist, green and supple 'approved' stamp stands perky on the other side of the desk.
Was RISC OS ever used to power a "A portable electronic device" (1st sentence, 1st paragraph of the 'claims' part of the patent. So no, it doesn't constitute prior art. It would help if most of you self appointed 'legal experts' actually RTFP before spewing your, ahem, wisdom onto the Internet.
http://www.fitaly.com/tabletfitaly/fitalymanual.htm
First used on a PalmPilot.
Then, I have an RSI thing now, but I can use a stylus. Actually, stylus plus clicker works pretty well. I use an optical Bluetooth mouse with the optical censor taped over, currently.
So it sounds as though Apple will want to buy Fitaly and its patents and prior art. And destroy them. Drat.
Apple are being F'ing cheeky patenting this, they must know about the numerous prior art for this e.g.
the excellent "Thumb Keyboard" App I bought on the Google Market, does this adaptive keyboard stuff already!
Mouse keyboards and most touch interfaces also change the keys/buttons displayed based on control keys, including years old Retail POS and Windows programs; so Apple are sooooo taking the piss!
Software Patents MUST end, they are routinely abused and too often based on Prior Art of some sort!
...are Apple going to Trademark their name so that you can't even use the name of a pre-existing fruit of Biblical Notoriety?
The USPTO needs more than a kick in the nom des plumes, it needs to be abolished immediately. It's stifling creativity, innovation, and technical advancement. re[lace it with a USIPPO if you must (United States Intellectual Property Protection Office (I coined it first, kindly pay me the royalties!), with a MUCH tighter definition of what is and is not patentable and eligible for IP Protection. You could always model it on the British model, which, while far from perfect, is at least sensible enough (or has been in the past) to tell what should and should not be patentable.
Ignore the embodiment, that is just a distraction. While the embodiment may help block other patents (been there, they tried that) it won't help with getting any parti coloured (or green, in Yankville) revenue directly.
It is all about the claims and nothing but the claims.
Make them big and general (but not so general that they are vulnerable to easily being stricken), with lots of dependent claims to cover the dangley bits. Only a few need to remain standing to to get the investment back.
This is not a new idea, and the fact that the USPTO is issuing a patent for this concept is just plain disgusting! I can point out "soft" keyboard mappings from the early 1980's. I used to do this for clients who had disabilities - missing fingers, hands, etc. so they could interact with the computer effectively. Press one "hot key" and get one mapping, press it (or another) again, and get a different one. That way, they could do things like the "three finger salute" to reboot the computer with a single key.
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