Or, as per Andrew Tridgell (see http://lwn.net/Articles/371044/ ), the community could get
together to try and create workarounds for those patents and leave Apple with no case.
Posted Mar 8, 2010 12:25 UTC (Mon) by rwmj (guest, #5474)
[Link]
Why though? I mean, take "#7,657,849: Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an
unlock
image." There are several physical devices where you have to move or slide a (physical) knob in
order to unlock the device. This patent just describes the same thing, done in images on a
computer screen. This is just physical affordances translated to the computer
screen, in the same way that patenting "online" auctions is not novel because they have existed for
centuries "offline".
Why should we have to deny ourselves obvious techniques like that? We should keep using them
and get rid of obvious software patents instead.
Apple's patent attack
Posted Mar 8, 2010 13:32 UTC (Mon) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183)
[Link]
The reasoning behind what he had to say was that proving a patent invalid is very hard and
expensive, even if it is trivial to see it.