You make a good point here. In their brief, Samsung
argues:
In order to infringe under the construction
argued by
Apple and
accepted by the PTO, both the visual effect of edge
alignment must
be present and the specific
purpose or cause of the computer instructions
performing the
snap back must be to perform edge
alignment.
But they cite to the van Dam declaration, which is
Samsung's expert's analysis of the interaction between the
PTO and Apple. The
language that the PTO and Apple used
does seem to be more focused on what
constituted the "stop
condition":
Lira's function clearly
does so through the use of executable program instructions
having a different
stop condition based on centering of the
column.
So, it may be
that the "purpose or cause"
language is from Samsung's expert, as an attempt to
read the
prior art exclusion as broadly as possible, to Samsung's
advantage.
Nevertheless, even if one accepts the argument that the
distinction rests on what the stop condition is rather than
what the purpose
of the code is, there seems to be no non-
obvious invention left in the claim.
Both the center and
the edge of a document are basic aspects of a document's
geometry, and to one skilled in the art of positioning
elements visually in a
2-D space using software
instructions, the use of one over the other to trigger
an
effect is obvious and not at all innovative. I still
believe the PTO
should have rejected the claim,
notwithstanding Apple's efforts at narrowing it
to exclude
Lira. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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