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| Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, January 02 2013 @ 03:56 AM EST |
I thought the 'transitory signal' argument a bit of a stretch, but you have
given it weight with this addition. I was more comfortable with the symbol triad
of sign-vehicle, interpretant and referent, but a sign-vehicle is just the
medium for signs and an image is transitory signs (aka, transitory signals)
carried by the sign-vehicle (the display). (I take it that transitory is
correctly to be taken as both signals that appear and then disappear as well as
signals transiting from one place to another. A computer with anything other
than a transitory display vehicle has not got a useful display.)
You
then went on to fry my synapses. Starting at the end, you point out that the
courts have moved from the sign-vehicle of paper and ink documents physically
transported, to the electronic signalling of the signs by facsimile and the
duplication of the original sign-vehicle as printing on paper, to the electronic
signalling between many sign-vehicle stores (symbol signals on keyboard, signs
in memory, signs in file, signs in memory, transitory signals, signs in memory,
symbols on paper, symbols on screen). I note that, during the electronic storage
and the transmission of transitory signals there are no interpretants, because
human beings cannot directly interpret the signs and signals. People need
visible or audible signs for them to be symbols (although touch can also be a
sign-vehicle). The courts have accepted the electronic storage of files of
computer signs, which can be displayed or presented as symbols, as legal
documents. If the courts understood how computers work, this would not have been
so readily accepted. Mind you, if the courts knew how computers
worked...
Applying the 'so blooming what' test to the above analysis, I
apply my few, remaining, unfried synapses to the 'translucent'
patent.
translucent
adj 1: allowing light to pass
through diffusely; "translucent amber"; "semitransparent curtains at the
windows" [syn: translucent, semitransparent]
transparent
adj 1: transmitting light; able to be seen through with clarity; "the
cold crystalline water of melted snow"; "crystal clear skies"; "could see the
sand on the bottom of the limpid pool"; "lucid air"; "a pellucid brook";
"transparent crystal" [syn: crystalline, {crystal clear}, limpid, lucid,
pellucid, transparent]
The patent refers to a translucent image
over a base image created on the display screen of a computer system, and
a transparent overlay image over a base image provided on a screen of a pen
computer system and The overlay image can serve as an input device for
application programs without obscuring images made on the screen by the
application programs. The provision of the transparent overlay image of the
present invention makes it possible to use much or all of the screen of the pen
computer system for input.
This is the improved, broadening
reissue, and so we should assume that the USPTO has been especially careful not
to permit invalid claims and disclosures.
As with the Apple 'bounce'
patent it is a method narrowed to the technological environment of a hand-held
electronic device, but with a pen-sensitive display. The base image can be video
(i.e. a transitory, transitory signal), and the overlain image
may be
translucent or transparent.
However, the 'preferred embodiment' cannot
embody the invention! I have driven myself round the bend trying to think of a
device of any kind that places a translucent image over a base image and allows
a pen to control what the base image looks like by a method wherein said
translucent image contains at least one feature of interest, and conducting an
image operation on said first selected image using said feature of interest.
I am more confident that the 'transparent' overlay image in the disclosures,
being 'crystal clear', could not proffer any 'features of interest' to the
device user.
Once again, the patent is talking about the display of
transitory signs. In this case, the signs are narrowed to the illusion of
one translucent image laid partially over another image and the illusion that an
input device is interacting with the illusory translucent image. I note that the
disclosures go on at length about a technical overview, in general terms, of how
a computer device with a display could create this illusion. Where this differs
from the Apple patent is that the elements of the actual claims can be met
without a computer, but the whole invention does not make much sense as a useful
invention except when narrowed furiously to the technological environment. For
instance, the on-screen display of a television set often gives the illusion of
a translucent volume control symbol controlled by the remote control input
device being pointed at the control and changing the volume. However, the use of
a pen-style input device is technically possible, but not useful. The past is
full of prior art whereby a 'screen pen' is used as an input device. I soldered
one up for my Atari 800. The 'pen' picks up the illuminated scan lines from the
screen and the software moves the cursor symbol to that point on the display.
The 'mouse' buttons on the pen then manipulate any 'features of interest' (aka,
icons). So, pen 'control' of icons on a display screen is prior art. The
illusion of translucent images over opaque images is prior art. The invention is
the combination of two bits of prior art in an obvious way. So, there you have
it. Another example of patenting an illusion. So, one can patent an illusionists
trick without even knowing how the illusion was created! Stunning!
The
USPTO guidance says transitory forms of signal transmission (for example, a
propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se) is a
non-limiting example of claims that are not directed to one of the statutory
categories. A display is transmitting transitory signs to the observer. In
any case, the USPTO says the prohibition is not limited to the actual
propagation of the signal and so we should consider any part of the process of
transitory signal production, non-statutory.
PolR's application of semiotic science to fields of computer science provides a unifying
framework for otherwise disparate USPTO guidelines and Supreme Court opinions.
IBM should stop asserting that the law has been left 'unsettled' and apply
computer science to computer based patents (and the rest) as well as applying
the actual word of the law.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jesse on Wednesday, January 02 2013 @ 03:24 PM EST |
...Man has had a problem distinguishing between symbols and
referents (names and
things) since the at least the time of Aristotle at the
dawn of our written
history.
Goes back way farther than
Aristotle. Writing goes back some two/three thousand
years earlier.
Even
stone age people without written language had trouble distinguishing
the
difference. Hence so many bans on taking pictures. It was believed the
picture
(a symbol) captured the soul of a person that was the subject of the
picture.
Now both concepts are abstract, but the individual could not
distinguish the
difference. Even today, certain images are illegal in some
societies (considered
sacrilegious) as they cannot or do not want to distinguish
the difference
between a symbol and a person.
This inability is in my
opinion, the source of magic.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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