Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) [LWN.net]

The New York Times describes the latest innovation from Apple: a page turning animation for e-readers. Not only is it astonishingly brilliant, it's patented. "Apple argued that its patented page turn was unique in that it had a special type of animation other page-turn applications had been unable to create. [ ... ] The patent comes with three illustrations to explain how the page-turn algorithm works. In Figure 1, the corner of a page can be seen folding over. In Figure 2, the page is turned a little more. I’ll let you guess what Figure 3 shows."

to post comments

"Design patent!"

Posted Nov 16, 2012 22:48 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (5 responses)

Has anyone else noticed that "Design patent!" has become the war-cry of the apologists for this kind of looting of the commons? Given that Apple will probably use this in offensive litigation, quibbling over whether a "utility patent" or a "design patent" is involved is like claiming that one nuclear bomb is nicer than the other because it uses uranium rather than plutonium.

"Design patent!" - are they causing problems for software?

Posted Nov 17, 2012 13:08 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

I don't follow the news about litigation between the megacorps. I know that design patents cause problems for manufacturers of hardware such as tablets, but are they causing problems for software developers?

This design patent certainly sounds like it could cause problems for software developers, but it depends on how much scope judges generally give to design patents. I mean, every pair of scissors has a design patent or "patent pending" stamped somewhere, but that doesn't stop thousands of companies from making scissors. In the household utensils world, design patents are only as broad as copyright - a product would have to be pretty much an exact copy for anyone to have a case.

Are design patents like that for software, or are they posing real problems?

"Design patent!" - are they causing problems for software?

Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:19 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

A design patent SHOULD be just part of trade dress. I think it's an American thing - the UK equivalent is "Registered Design".

And the UK legal standard is very clear - if an *informed* consumer would not be fooled, then there is no infringement. Basically, the likeness has to be so extreme as to seem intended to fool the consumer.

It makes sense - if a customer is tricked into buying the wrong product it's fraud. Which is why Judge Birss's comments in Apple vs Samsung were so pleasant to read - "Samsung's Galaxy isn't as cool ... Case Dismissed!!!"

Not that I agree with his idea of coolness, but it was very much "no observant customer would be fooled, so what the f... are you doing in my courtroom!".

Cheers,
Wol

"Design patent!" - are they causing problems for software?

Posted Nov 18, 2012 16:46 UTC (Sun) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

If the consumer is tricked by trademark fraud to buying a non-Apple product then it's the consumer that is defrauded, not Apple. It should be then up to the consumer to seek damages against the fraudulent corporation.

Ergo.. if a individual purchases a Samsung Galaxy phone because Samsung deliberately mislead the customer into thinking it was a Apple product then Samsung should be forced to refund the purchase and compensate the consumer for any damages caused by fraud to the consumer. Apple has no damages here.

They way trademark law or "design patent law" is setup now is really ass-backwards. Fraud that tricks the customer into purchasing a product from a company they didn't want to purchase from is a crime against that individual; not against the rival corporation.

The only logical way that Samsung could really damage Apple is by releasing shoddy products masquerading as Apple products with the intent of ruining Apple's reputation. Since you do not 'own' your reputation as it is a something that exists in the minds of other people, proving damages is should be extraordinarily difficult.

The way it is set up now smacks as the evil corporate/government/fascist mentality that people are the products. That we are 'consumers' that are products the products that are to be bought and sold to the mega corporations. This is something that everybody needs to learn to reject completely.

"Design patent!" - are they causing problems for software?

Posted Nov 19, 2012 17:46 UTC (Mon) by admax88 (guest, #75035) [Link] (1 responses)

If customers are fooled into buying the wrong product, and it would harm the image of the real product, as well as make people more wary of buying the real product for fear of being ripped off.

If someone thinks they're buying the an iPad2 and they actually bought shiity iPad2 knockoff as made by some company you've never heard of in China, they'll probably thing "wow the iPad sucks! I'm never buying another Apple product." This hurts Apple even though they did nothing wrong. By letting them go after people who try to fraud their customers, the customers get protected and Apple's brand gets protected.

Now when they abuse this position to try to monopolize something stupid like rounded corners or page turning animations then obviously its bad for the customer and should be illegal.

Do you really believe that customers who got defrauded are going to actually take the time to sue the fraudsters? Many of them might not even know they were defrauded and the remainder would probably just cut their loses and move on.

"Design patent!" - are they causing problems for software?

Posted Nov 19, 2012 18:52 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> If customers are fooled into buying the wrong product, and it would harm the image of the real product, as well as make people more wary of buying the real product for fear of being ripped off.

Yeah. So it's the customer that has the problem and is the one that should have restitution.

I fully support the notion that is somebody was fooled into buying a Galaxy S3 because they thought it was a Apple iPhone they should be refunded, for example, if they can get a judge to agree that Samsung tried to fool them on purpose.

> If someone thinks they're buying the an iPad2 and they actually bought shiity iPad2 knockoff as made by some company you've never heard of in China,

Or, going back to what actually happens in reality: when they call Apple customer support to complain and Apple informs them they were ripped off they would be pissed off at the people that ripped them off.

> This hurts Apple even though they did nothing wrong.

No it doesn't. Or it is extremely unlikely that it did and is even harder to prove. This is why the law is ass-backwards. The consumer is the only one that has any obvious damage from fraudulent sellers.

What if the consumer actually WANTED to buy a Apple knock-off? What if they wanted to look as if they paid 500 dollars on a phone, but in fact paid about 150? Why is that illegal? How is that 'protecting' the consumer?

The answer is, of course, it doesn't help the consumer at all.

The logic needed to defend the current IP regime is very wormy indeed.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 16, 2012 22:48 UTC (Fri) by leifbk (guest, #35665) [Link] (16 responses)

How the f**k can you patent such a thing, without bribing the patent officer?

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 16, 2012 22:53 UTC (Fri) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [Link] (2 responses)

Oh, just put some banknotes behind an electronic page, and then e-TURN THE PAGE!!!

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 21:10 UTC (Sat) by twm (guest, #67436) [Link] (1 responses)

I do believe you meant iTurn.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 18, 2012 17:03 UTC (Sun) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

iPad, iPage, iConsumer.

It's all the same and should all be owned by Apple.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 0:12 UTC (Sat) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (11 responses)

Maybe patent officers get payed by the number of approved applications they can't be *that* incompetent. I still waiting for someone to sue the patent office for the damage done by approving trival patents like this one.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 7:09 UTC (Sat) by niten (subscriber, #87616) [Link] (6 responses)

I think it's more like the patent officers are so caught up in the bureaucracy and legalisms of their office that common sense ceases to apply. I mean, did you see that recent AMA on reddit by the patent examiner?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ww982/iama_paten...

He or she was so caught up in legal artifice around terms such as prior art, that whether some concept is genuinely worthy of patent protection doesn't even enter the picture. He frets about precise legalese surrounding claims rather than think critically about their value.

This is the nature of the bureaucrats who hold our industry hostage.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 19, 2012 22:35 UTC (Mon) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link]

> He or she was so caught up in legal artifice around terms such as prior art, that whether some concept is genuinely worthy of patent protection doesn't even enter the picture.

How do you propose the worthiness of a patent application should be measured and rated?

> He frets about precise legalese surrounding claims

Examiners are bound by laws, rules, decisions and guidelines (called MPEP in the US). The purpose is to provide an uniform service so that applicants do not get a patent granted because of irrelevant issues such as company size or political connections. Nobody in the profession believes the system is perfect, instead we have an enormous body of rules and more that have accumulated over the years and that are hugely complicated also for those working with this every day. These are continuously discussed but so far no alternatives have been agreed on.

> rather than think critically about their value.

Anyway, I am curious about what you mean by value here.

> This is the nature of the bureaucrats who hold our industry hostage.

Care to expand on this?

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 7:54 UTC (Tue) by bosyber (guest, #84963) [Link] (4 responses)

Thanks for that link, it does indeed show the problem: obvious isn't obvious, prior art isn't prior art etc. unless they can find a patent that does exactly the same, almost. And in case of doubt the policy is to accept the patent rather than reject.

I'd like to think it is different here in the EU, but the way SecretEuroPatentAgentMan argues how much it isn't a problem here while the EU commissioner regularly seems to lobby/push for problematic practices for the EU patent office makes me wary.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 22:22 UTC (Tue) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link] (3 responses)

> obvious isn't obvious

I prefer not second guessing what is meant. Rather, could you expand a bit on what you feel is wrong with the US method for obviousness, or the EPO method for inventive step (called "Problem Solution Approach")?

> prior art isn't prior art etc. unless they can find a patent that does exactly the same, almost

Laws differ between countries. Germany allows equivalence for novelty. EPO does not but allows for equivalence for determining inventive step. Either way most countries allow for equivalence for at least one step. Could you expand on what you find problematic here?

In either case a problem is to perform an impartial analysis without the use of hindsight.

> I'd like to think it is different here in the EU, but the way SecretEuroPatentAgentMan argues how much it isn't a problem here while the EU commissioner regularly seems to lobby/push for problematic practices for the EU patent office makes me wary.

Again I am unsure what is meant. And in any case I see US end EPO practices differ, yet neither are without problems. If you read any of the patent blogs you will find many patent agents/attorneys see plenty of problems in the patent systems.

As for the EU they have wanted a patent office for decades but get bogged down in politics every dingle time. There is truly a lot of money at stake and politicians no doubt see themselves as qualified to dispose of these sources of income and will no doubt allow themselves to be elected to prestigious positions in order to solve problems noone else have seen.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 22:31 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> I prefer not second guessing what is meant. Rather, could you expand a bit on what you feel is wrong with the US method for obviousness, or the EPO method for inventive step (called "Problem Solution Approach")?
Because it has devolved into "it's not obvious if a brain-dead patient can't do this".

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 22, 2012 21:39 UTC (Thu) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link] (1 responses)

> Because it has devolved into "it's not obvious if a brain-dead patient can't do this".

Really? The "Problem Solution Approach" (PSA) has an element of hindsight in that you look at the claims and see if you can combine two documents or one combined with common general knowledge to get there. Arguing against PSA is not trivial, if even possible.

One thing to keep in mind is that the analysis for inventive step has to be framed based on the state of the art at the priority date, not the state of the art of present time which can easily be 5 years after the priority date. Hindsight is not supposed to be used for this analysis.

Finding a good objective method to determine inventive step is hard and the discussions on how to do it have been ongoing for decades. USPTO, UKIPO, JIPO and EPO all have different methods.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 29, 2012 14:07 UTC (Thu) by yeti-dn (guest, #46560) [Link]

Well, your arguments make a lots of sense. Telling that something is not obvious is indeed difficult. The simplest solution: assume everything is obvious. The other possibility, assuming that nothing is obvious, is currently being tested and does not work well.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:12 UTC (Sat) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (1 responses)

It used to be the case that patent examiners were paid per application; whether that was for approvals only or regardless of outcome, I do not know. But it was some ridiculously short time per application, like 30 minutes.

Whether this has changed in the last few years, I do not know.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 29, 2012 22:12 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

I don't know if they were/are paid per application, but I read a story from a patent examiner somewhere which indeed mentioned an average time of something like 30 minutes (less than an hour) per patent application was what they got considering the then (5-10 years ago, I think) current workload & staffing.

Of course that average includes patents that can be discarded in 5 minutes, but it also includes patents that come with lots of attached documents that go back & forth through tens of iterations (versions) over several years before they get granted.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:21 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

No - design patents *should* typically be approved as a matter of course.

The problem, as with ALL patents (and this is a very good argument for renaming design patents to something less confusing) is that trolls keep prosecuting them beyond their valid scope.

Imho, this particular design patent is out-of-scope even before you get to the first page ... :-) (It's not something the buyer will particularly notice until AFTER they've bought the product - so how can it confuse a potential purchaser?)

Cheers,
Wol

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 19, 2012 22:26 UTC (Mon) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link]

> Maybe patent officers get payed by the number of approved applications they can't be *that* incompetent.

Do you seriously believe that?

This belief comes up every so often but I am puzzled why people don't just look it up when the system is published.
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/CountSystem.jsp

It used instead to be that Examiners issued a lot of rejections that were seen as needless churning just to get points, the main measure of productivity. Getting paid by grants opens for rather obvious moral hazards. My own experience when prosecuting patents in the US (via US agents) is that a successful outcome can never be taken for granted.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 19, 2012 18:11 UTC (Mon) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]

Do you *really* not know the difference between an innovation patent and a design patent?

Design patents are for trade dress - how an article looks. Innovation patents are for how a thing works. Both cover the embodiments of ideas in different ways and have different time periods of monopoly in the marketplace.

Please check your facts and knowledge before shooting off like that!

K3n.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 16, 2012 23:09 UTC (Fri) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (1 responses)

It makes me want to cry. This is 2012, how come we humans have not come further? How is it possible for this stupidity to prevail?

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 0:19 UTC (Sat) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

Evolution works in cycles. Everything that grows has to die. I think by now it is fairly obvious that our civilisation as we know it will die.
Either our inability to live in harmony with nature or our greed and lack of compasion will make it end.
Democracies add more and more bureaucracy to point where only lawyers prosper and they fail .. the US shows all the symptoms. Rome all over again.

New middle ages we are coming!

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 0:27 UTC (Sat) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link]

I’ll let you guess what Figure 3 shows...

Trick question. The answer is not obvious by definition.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 0:38 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (10 responses)

For a change some good comes from a software patent! Maybe this will discourage page-turn animations. They are *ferociously* annoying.

(OK, OK, so it would be just as good to have page-turn animations that you can turn off.)

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 0:48 UTC (Sat) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link] (1 responses)

> it would be just as good to have page-turn animations that you can turn off

Maybe patent that, too.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 1:36 UTC (Sat) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link]

> > it would be just as good to have page-turn animations that
> > you can turn off
>
> Maybe patent that, too.

That's not enough. What needs to be patented is an apparatus or method that allows some specific features to be turned off depending on whether that feature is patented in a country.

That way producers of "intelectual property and wealth" are finally able to extort you whether you are using their "invention" or not.
*t

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 1:01 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (7 responses)

Maybe this will discourage page-turn animations. They are *ferociously* annoying.

Absolutely. They're a needless distraction. I like being able to advance the text one page at a time instead of line by line, and I guess there should be some kind of transition rather than a sudden change in the text, but copying a paper page turning is just unnecessarily slow and showy.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 2:41 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link] (6 responses)

This page turn animation is only used in iBooks, on iOS (so only iPhone/iPad/iPod), not the desktop. It works _very_ well with a finger interface, it makes more sense than any other sort of transition. I absolutely loathed using readers without any subtle animation... they were far too jarring an experience (something that apparently doesn't impact some people at all).

Apple's implementation is actually quite nice, very well thought out with subtleties that aren't immediate obvious how useful they are (being able to pull down a corner is actually very nice... much nicer than swapping pages, even though you'd never assume that). Being able to get a /patent/ on it is still absurd, but I'm long past looking down on the companies for applying for them, it's the patent office's fault for granting them, and the governments for not having any problem with it (you could eventually get back around to the company, but they're just exploiting a broken system, just like happens with every other broken system in the world).

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 10:29 UTC (Sat) by cyanit (guest, #86671) [Link] (5 responses)

Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition.

No 3D required, fast, simple and more intuitive for people who have never seen a physical book (which hopefully will be the majority at some point).

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 14:25 UTC (Sat) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Why have pages at all.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 17:31 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

No matter how you manage things, you'll still have a screen full of information as a basic presentation unit, and that "screenfull" becomes the new page. My experience is that it's easier to read if you replace the whole page rather than trying to scroll by an arbitrary distance. I suspect this is because replacing all the text lets me move my eye to a well defined place on the screen to continue, while scrolling the text requires me to either track the text as it moves or hunt for the last thing I read if I can't. Neither tracking nor hunting is as efficient as moving my eyes to a defined position on the screen, so I find them more of a strain. Hunting for the last read text is especially bad because it can be slow enough that I lose the flow of the text and wind up having to backtrack a short distance to recover it.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 18, 2012 13:54 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

Okay. I personally rely on smooth animations that make it possible to track the display update nowadays, so I find no difficulty with partial updates. On the other hand, when such smooth animations aren't provided -- which is all too common in some operating systems -- then there's some hunting involved before the reading can resume.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:00 UTC (Sat) by bokr (guest, #58369) [Link]

Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition.
No 3D required, fast, simple and more intuitive for people who have never seen a physical book (which hopefully will be the majority at some point).

I like that.

Left/right for next page / previous page.

Then up/down slide can be to next major section.

Diagonal slide gestures can go to obvious special places,
NW to beginning, SE to end, NE to undo, SW to redo.

Obviously multifinger slides can do special things,
to navigate between other elements of a document:

TOC, index, tables and illustrations, footnotes (NE
to go back we already established), and other helpful
things for presentations.

For fancy transitions between illustrations, an  animated
cartoon graffiti artist from Brazil could spray over the old
and paint the new ...

Patents galore ;-/

Sheesh, this autocratic granting of privilege
to extract tribute is so feudal.

Couldn't we instead invent a way to establish rights to actual revenue
from putting actual things in the market, with no restrictions on
using patented ideas, just a right to claim a share once real money is
being made?

RMS could invent a new patent license, so anyone could make a claim
as easily as writing (c) now -- maybe (p) instead: a claim to have
established prior art in the publishing of it, and claiming a right
to a fair share of benefits. "You are free to use this patentable
prior art, which I hereby claim under <RMS legalese ;-)> ..."

Maybe people or companies would want to elect to convert their existing
ordinary patents to the revenue-sharing form, rather than trying to
promote with venture capitalists, especially if they are clever but
more interested in tech and science than in financing.

Imagine being able to give away your idea and hoping all kinds
people "steal" it and use it without restriction to create a variety
of products. Just go on with your fun work and wait for it:

The inevitable robocalls ... "Do you have a (p) patent in force?
We can offer services to find who is using it and making money.
We have experienced lawyers. Our fees are reasonable ..."

IOW, invent a new game without scaring the old players too much.

;-)

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:55 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]

> Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition.

You could. The question is if that's a more pleasing experience than Apple's design of emulating physical pages. I doubt there's been any real studies done trying to figure that sort of thing out (simply designing such a study wouldn't be easy). For now, all we can do is go by personal experiences. I've used both iBooks as well as Android apps that did something along the lines of what you describe, and just in my personal experience I've found Apple's approach to be less intrusive (because it acts as my brain expects something physical to act).

> No 3D required
I don't see how that's a plus. Every device Apple ships includes a GPU that's far more than powerful enough to do the 3D animation (even the original iPhone). The Raspberry Pi's GPU is far more than powerful enough to do the same sort of things. That's not to say using 3D is inherently a positive, but the only devices where I can imagine it being a negative wouldn't be capable of doing a sliding transition either (e-ink displays, due to the horrible refresh rates). If you have 3D capable hardware readily available, I see no reason to shy away from using it where it provides a benefit.

> and more intuitive for people who have never seen a physical book (which hopefully will be the majority at some point).

How many people have never seen a book that own an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (or any smart phone/tablet)? I'd be rather shocked if the number of people that owned one and that could read, was a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the population of the entire world. Designing a product for a demographic that doesn't exist, and likely won't for 50-100 years, seems quite weird to me.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 13:58 UTC (Sat) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (1 responses)

Pretty sure I played any amount of games and even some early webpages and CD-based encyclopaedia that did exactly the same.

Again, if you are going to patent something, make sure NOBODY else got there first.

Hell, I can remember making an animated GIF for page-turn for a website back in the Geocities days.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 18, 2012 22:45 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Most probably it was not exactly the same. That's the trick: you get the patent by adding tiny alterations of what was done before (thus prior art does not invalidate your patent), then when you sue everyone try to downplay these changes.

Often you don't even need to downplay anything because people naturally tend to recreate most popular environment (think how MS Office changed it's look over time and how huge number of developers immediately followed).

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 14:12 UTC (Sat) by Tara_Li (guest, #26706) [Link] (10 responses)

Can we get the name of the patent official who approved this thing for a public shaming? I don't mean getting address and making harassing phone calls and all that - just a full page ad in one of his local newspapers, or on his local cable system, with a shot of a page turn on some other device, preferably from 5-10 years ago, followed by a picture of him captioned "This man just gave Apple a patent on this. Seriously, he did."

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 18:24 UTC (Sat) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (1 responses)

I finished reading the comments on the NYT page and now I'm afraid that if you did that, said official could find a cheering crowd outside his (or her) home the next day.

Maybe there's a lot more truth in the "iSheep" jokes than I suspected.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 17, 2012 22:19 UTC (Sat) by mtaht (guest, #11087) [Link]

I am just so reminded of the only way I've heard of to combat this mess, in Stross's accellerando ebook.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 19, 2012 22:00 UTC (Mon) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link] (7 responses)

> Can we get the name of the patent official who approved this thing for a public shaming?

Well, what's a little threat of public shaming between, umm, friends?

> [...] followed by a picture of him captioned "This man just gave Apple a patent on this. Seriously, he did."

Except from that it is a she.

Had you actually read the patent you would have seen this line:
Primary Examiner: Lee; Angela J

Let's just overlook details such as threats, gender issues and reading comprehension, and let us turn to rule by law. Examiners are bound by law. Really, they are. If they go outside the law they can be overruled and if they granted a patent that never should have been granted the patent can be invalidated. When you prosecute patents you will look at all these aspects since a wrongly granted patent is likely an invitation for trouble. The file history is as public as the name of the Examiner. Just where in this 100 MB sized history with more than 70 documents do you see the problem?

If you have an issue with the law you might wish to direct your complaints to those who actually make the laws.

Also, if you read the documents you will see there are other patents relating to this, moreover there is a continuation underway which no doubt will ensure more patent discussions on LWN.

Is it just me or has there been a marked increase in patents related news lately?

And if the readers feel so strongly and also so certain that this is all wrong, wrong, wrong - why not file for reexamination?

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 14:00 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (6 responses)

> Well, what's a little threat of public shaming between, umm, friends?

That's how public officials control nameless bureaucrats that work for them.

When bureaucrats enforce some law in a way that is unpopular then some elected bozo swoops in publicly ridicules said bureaucrat and then fires them. In the common vernacular it is called 'Throwing somebody under the bus'.

This is one of the important mechanisms in how our government is ran.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of laws. There have been academic attempts by various groups to try to number the federal laws we have in the USA and they all have failed miserably. It's simply beyond human scope to make sense of any of it. It's a total disaster.

If you take in guidelines and so-called 'administrative law' (ie: arbitrary bureaucratic rules that are created by committee or fiat decision by mid level bureaucrat) you are looking at, very literally, millions of rules. They conflict and most are written to be deliberately vague and difficult to interpret. Most are really badly written and worded on top of that.

So how government law functions in the USA in the past 50 years is that congress runs out and passes laws and creates new authority and bureaucracies with each new crisis. Then they provide funding for 3-5 years to enforce their new laws and groups. After 3-5 years the funding will expire, nobody will have any money to enforce the rules and people that enforce laws that are unpopular or enforce them in a unpopular way are shamed, passed up for promotions, and fired.

There are thousands of news laws and rules passed every month.

This is the literal truth on how the USA federal government is ran and has been ran for the last 75 years or so.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 22, 2012 21:26 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Interestingly, in Australia they thought of a solution for this: automatic sunset clauses. Most legislative instruments must be reviewed on a regular basis or they are automatically repealed:

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2012C00709

The first expiry dates are in 2015 (for Acts prior to 1930), but by the end of the decade all legislative instruments will have been renewed or repealed.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 22, 2012 22:25 UTC (Thu) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link] (4 responses)

> > Well, what's a little threat of public shaming between, umm, friends?

> That's how public officials control nameless bureaucrats that work for them.

> When bureaucrats enforce some law in a way that is unpopular then some elected bozo swoops in publicly ridicules said bureaucrat and then fires them. In the common vernacular it is called 'Throwing somebody under the bus'.

The expression is rather interesting. However I have never heard of any Examiners having been fired. The relationship between patent attorneys/agents on one hand and Examiners on the other can at times be rather tense. Quite a few Examiners are well known within the profession for their style. A few are also known in several fora and one has been banned on one forum. Yet I have never heard of any being fired.

[about the US legal situation]
> This is the literal truth on how the USA federal government is ran and has been ran for the last 75 years or so.

My impression is that many US lawmakers are themselves lawyers. I don't know of other countries like this.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 23, 2012 9:58 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

My impression is that many US lawmakers are themselves lawyers. I don't know of other countries like this.

You call yourself SecretEuroPatentAgentMan yet don't realise that the largest profession of UK Members of Parliament by far is the law? Bad sign. Perhaps the 'Euro' in your name indicates the eurozone only, or you don't pay attention to politics?

(That's not the most disturbing concentration in Parliament though. The most disturbing concentration is the number of members of the front benches who are ex-special advisors, closely followed by the number who have taken Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford. The French grandes ecoles have nothing on this for insularity. That's not to damn PPE at Oxford -- not all PPEers become politicians, my cousin took it but became a Google lawyer instead -- but it is a sign of a dangerous lack of wider experience among the UK political class.)

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 23, 2012 11:43 UTC (Fri) by SecretEuroPatentAgentMan (guest, #66656) [Link] (1 responses)

That "Euro" part is to indicate I am somewhere in Europe which incidentally is larger than the Eurozone. It is mildly amusing that you believe I should be an expert in British political matters when the view from GB is "Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off"".

I had the impression that the Parliament and the civil service had a lot of graduates from Oxford and Cambridge (or "both universities", as I once heard it). That the largest profession was law is interesting.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 23, 2012 12:53 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

In the current parliament the most common prior career is "party hack".

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 23, 2012 10:17 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I'd be very surprised to find a country where lawyers are not a larger proportion of the legislature than the population at large. America probably ends up with the highest proportion of lawyers simply due to never having had a mainstream socialist party.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 19, 2012 17:13 UTC (Mon) by xylifyx (guest, #29041) [Link] (1 responses)

They can keep their skeuomorphism to themselves, the world will be better without it.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 21, 2012 16:19 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Apparently the designer who did that stuff has left (probably to go infect some other company with that disease).

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 12:19 UTC (Tue) by djzort (guest, #57189) [Link] (1 responses)

shouldnt the democrats be punishing big business? especially the NYT? wheres obama to save us?

oh thats right... they just *say* they hate big business and that they are for the little guy when the elections come around, hehe all their donors (like apple) know they are just joking - they love patents and regulations.

Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)

Posted Nov 20, 2012 23:22 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

I think the best summary of the political situation is summarised in the following article under the heading "Will this lead to a substantial change in patent law?":

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/09/alt-text-apple-v-s...

Are you really astonished?

Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:15 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link]

This is from the same company, and the same patent office, which brought you the Slide to Unlock

Turns out the ROMANS already copied it! In 200 B.C.! And they probably got it from the egyptians! Sue them!

As for this modern "page-turning"-thing, I suggest you just go back to the previous technology, the scroll. It's easier, you don't need this Tech support for the book