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| Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 01:40 AM EDT |
IIRC there was a limit to the scope of re-examination requests that tended to
restrict the review to prior art. Also IIRC, the scope for re-examination was
broadened in recent times.
There is, I think, some patent politics in re-examination requests in that, as
with court cases, the request is limited to the requester's likeliest
criticisms.
The requester won't ask for something to be reviewed if such invalidation would
also overturn USPTO current custom and practice.
There is a flaw in the 'obvious to implement' argument. If the invention is a
machine and a PHOSITA knows how to mount the floggle-toggle on the humgrummit
and that is the inventive concept then ease of implementation and the
obviousness of hindsight does not invalidate the invention.
However, if the inventive concept is an abstract idea that can be easily
expressed in a particular field of art by a PHOSITA then the invention is
non-statutory.
These Apple inventions are different ways of doing what smartphones already do
and are both abstract functions tied, for the purpose of the patent, to a
smartphone and they are also not a significant inventive concept in that they do
not achieve anything new and they are not of significantly more utility than any
other way of doing what they do.
Yes, they are easy to implement in software on a smartphone, but they are
equally easy to implement on a touch-screen desktop of the type currently being
marketed. Indeed, Microsoft has demonstrated most of the 'inventions' on the
Microsoft Surface (a table-top demonstration touch computer) and Steve Balmer
demonstrated the 'two-appendage zoom' on a giant touch screen. The invented
functions do not become newly inventive because they are tied to a smartphone.
The the functions would be more of a challenge to implement with a touch display
and logic circuitry on a slide projector, but slide projectors also indicate
first an last slide with bounce back and have manual zoom in and out. The Apple
inventions are abstract functions, aka abstract ideas.
Apple are using the 'smartphones are magic' principle to pass abstract functions
off as smartphone inventions.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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