decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
WHEREUPON, A VIDEOTAPE WAS PLAYED | 198 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Thread
Authored by: jezevans on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:19 AM EDT
Post corrections here with a hint to the correction in the title.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic
Authored by: jezevans on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:20 AM EDT
Nothing on topic at all, please. Include links and a hint of your subject in
the title.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks
Authored by: jezevans on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:20 AM EDT
Want to discuss the news, do it here. Please include links and make your
subject obvious.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes posts
Authored by: jezevans on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:21 AM EDT
Well done if you post something here.

[ Reply to This | # ]

WHEREUPON, A VIDEOTAPE WAS PLAYED
Authored by: jez_f on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:26 AM EDT
A VIDEOTAPE?

I hope that this is a phrase used for all video media.
Otherwise I would say that this casts a little doubt on the professors
expertise, most computer science professors would at least I would have thought
have progressed to avi files.

Even though I think a video tracking dial does show bounce back quite well. So
even then he was not well informed.


[ Reply to This | # ]

Duff evidence
Authored by: Wol on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 05:33 AM EDT
It seems clear that Apple's expert "should have known". Ignoring
perjury for the moment, can Samsung argue that his evidence was material in the
jury verdict, it was also "clearly erroneous", and that as a result
the verdict is tainted?

Okay, that'll probably get rejected as "Samsung should have objected at the
time", but *did* Samsung object? It wouldn't surprise me if they did and
got shut down ...

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | # ]

'So it gives the illusion of a very lively system that's not frozen'
Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 06:15 AM EDT
As I said in a comment under the previous story, the patent is a simulation of a picture being moved with a finger and bouncing back.

The picture is not a picture. It is pixels on a display screen simulating a physical picture. The moving of the picture is a simulation of moving, say, a photograph on a table top using a finger-tip. The only reason the invented illusion is useful is because the telephone display screen is poor at simulating a table top due to its limited size.

In other words, the invention is useful because of the inadequacy of the simulated or modelled physical behaviour. The patent applies to any simulated document, not just pictures. It is a useful illusion. What's more, the simulation is not of a real physical thing. The display screen is an abstract idea of a display surface that does not exist in the physical world. You see the real physical surface when you turn off the phone.

So Apple have a number of patented inventions based on simulating the illusion of a display surface that does not exist in the physical world. The patents are specifically on the modelling of the physical behaviour of moving or manipulating simulated objects on the illusion of a display surface using the modelling of a finger tip touching action.

The patents are not on the modelling and simulating software and hardware, but on the illusion that the software and hardware create. For this reason, the invention can be found on devices as different at the Microsoft Surface Pro and the Samsung Galaxy phone which use different display technology, processor, touch screen technology, operating system, software language, physical dimensions, memory devices and graphics control devices.

So, let's see which type of patentable invention this is under U.S.C. 35 § 101:
'Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.'
Can you see what it is, yet? Which of these is the illusory patent class?

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Desert Fog"
Authored by: JonCB on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 08:05 AM EDT

I don't want to disparage the good doctor from Toronto, but his characterization of this issue as "desert fog" is a bit simplistic and his assertion that no-one fixed this is a little bit disingenuous.

"Desert Fog" AFAICT is a term that was created by Jul and Furnas in 1998. It properly refers to an issue where there aren't enough features visible to navigate in the current context, either because those features don't exist, exist but are in a different context or exist but are "overwhelmed" or "obstructed" by other features. Suggesting this patent "solves" desert fog is, to be blunt, ridiculous.

But leaving that aside, to say that "no-one" solved "it" is on one level disingenuous and on another, wonderful lawyery misdirection. If by "it" you mean both problems simultaneously, then i would maybe agree with you. If however by "it" you mean just this limited vision of "desert fog" then that is incorrect. The standard textbook solution was to use a (to quote an academic resource) "combination of constraints on rotating, panning, and zooming". Which is to say, you only allowed the user to move the item in such a way that it always maintained a piece of the item in view.

All in all, i'm not that impressed with Dr Balakrishnan critical faculties.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Samsung Has Workarounds for All 3 "Infringed" Apple Patents; and Some Testimony on the '381 Patent ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 08:48 AM EDT
"Don't read on, if you don't wish to read specifics regarding
several patents."

In a nutshell, the patent system is broken.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Samsung Has Workarounds for All 3 "Infringed" Apple Patents; and Some Testimony on the '381 Patent ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 11:19 AM EDT
AFAICT, this "expert witness" makes two claims in his testimony
[Y]ou'll find testimony by Dr. Balakrishnan about that patent, telling the jury that without a doubt Samsung infringes claim 19 of Apple's '381 patent. He asserts as well that there is no prior art.
  1. Samsung infringes
  2. There is no prior art
Based on his background:
Sure. I'm a professor the computer science at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where I also hold a Canada Research Chair in Human Center Interfaces, and I also co-direct a user interfaces and graphics laboratory at the University of Toronto.
What makes him an expert in knowing what constitutes prior art in a country in which he doesn't even reside. For that matter what constitutes anyone being an expert on the matter. I can stand here and say "I don't know of any prior art" and be 100% truthful. But just because i don't know of any doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

~ukjaybrat - IANAL

[ Reply to This | # ]

frozen screen and desert fog
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 12:51 PM EDT
I can't beleive these problems had not been solved before, probably in different
ways.

Also attempting to look up some information it seems that the 'desert fog'
problem generally refers to ZUI situation where it is possible to zoom so tight
that some screen elements get lost off screen. That is not a scrolling problem.


In other older interfaces this was often handled by slide bars or other edge
indicators that a portion of the content is off the screen.

I used a CAD program in 1989 that implemented this feature for the current view
and provided vertical and horizontal slide bars which gave a representation of
the current view that was off the screen. The browser on my Galaxy SII does
pretty much the same thing.

But I probably misunderstood something.

Checking on the "frozen screen" problem was more difficult because so
many mentions of Windows Frozen Displays. Since that portion of the testimony
was not included I need to go back to try to figure out what it means.

Finally since Samsung did know about the prior patents was he cross examined on
them?

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Apple Whoppers
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, October 24 2012 @ 07:03 PM EDT
I am reading through the testimony and came across this excerpt:

"THEY HAD TO BASICALLY DEVELOP A GLASS THAT WAS NOT BREAKABLE ENOUGH,
SCRATCH RESISTANT ENOUGH,"

I don't beleive that Apple developed the glass but adapted a technology
developed by Corning called "Gorilla Glass" which Corning had
developed but had found no significant application for.

According to Wikipedia:

"Corning could find no practical use for the glass at the time and the
predecessor of "Gorilla Glass" was never put into mass production,
excepting its use in approximately one hundred 1968 Dodge Dart and Plymouth
Barracuda race cars," ...

"When Steve Jobs subsequently contacted Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning
told him of the material the company had developed in the 1960s and subsequently
mothballed."

---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )