Modred189
Can't Read the OP
- Joined
- May 24, 2006
- Messages
- 16,321
Actually it makes it easier. The patents tell you precisely (in theory) what you cannot do, and give you a baseline to work from.Pretty hard to innovate when some douchebag company tries to patent a bunch of menial shit that they don't necessarily even use.
For example, if the Apple Patent just said, "A touchscreen interface whereby a user's finger is dragged from one side to the other in order to unlock said device."
A later company could overcome that patent by making something that did just that, but added something to it. For example, if you dragged your finger from one side to the other and then OFF the end of the device, or in a curving motion, or a circle, or even a user-defined gesture, it would not infringe.
The patent told the second company where to START. Most companies would love ot be told where to start their innovation.
The point being, what if it was? Ford would have been the only car company. Options and competition drive innovation just as much as being forced to do it a different way. Granted, GM could have just gone with a joystick/button speed control system. but personally I prefer to have all cars the same so I know how to drive all of them.
The apple patent is on "any predefined gesture to unlock a device"... meaning any swipe to unlock (samsungs puzzle piece to unlock, any of androids 5 different unlock styles available in cyanogenmod) is blocked. What other ways are there to do this? Face-to-unlock doesnt work very well and has its own set of flaws. Audio unlock would be a bitch to use in loud environments. A hardware button is bumpable... a swipe gesture of any type is intrinsically logical.
Android's pattern lock screen is what i personally use... Is the gesture "predefined" since it was defined before the screen was locked or does "predefined" mean coming from the factory that way? Sometimes even when other people ARE trying to innovate and do things other ways, patent vagueness and patents on intrinsic ideas get in the way.
When you evaluate a patent, don't focus on one particular point. In order for later tech no infringe, it must infringe on EACH of the patent's points. If it fails one, or has extras added on, no infringement, or at least it is unlikely to beheld infringement.