Bonum Certa Men Certa

Design Patents (e.g. Sliders) Are Becoming as Much of a Problem as Software Patents

Copyright already covers many designs, so why extend so-called 'protection' to the vastly broader domain of patents?

Slide to unlock
Slide to unlock: put it on a computer and you're apparently a genius deserving a patent



Summary: A fine demonstration of how dumb a lot of patents in the United States have become, including so-called 'design' patents that pertain to an abstraction on a computer (hence software patents)

IN SOME sense, many design patents are inherently software patents, as schematics attached to patent applications often serve to show. I have personally reviewed some patents before, so I know how particular lawyers -- not programmers -- try to give a 'life' (or a form) to algorithms by drawing things*. Doodles are not algorithms. They're often a spurious presentation that attempts to give a physical form to something which is inherently abstract. It can mislead examiners and judges, presumably by intention. Just look at the many post-Alice articles composed by patent lawyers; just look at the tips they're giving to one another. They almost self-incriminate.



"Doodles are not algorithms. They're often a spurious presentation that attempts to give a physical form to something which is inherently abstract."Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols called Microsoft's latest high-profile patent attack "design patent wars" and said that the "Electronic Frontier Foundation has declared "User Interface for a Portion of a Display Screen" to be this month's stupid patent. Here's what's really going on between Microsoft and Corel over the Office ribbon design patent."

We wrote about this in last week's coverage regarding Corel. "The EFF named Microsoft's design patent for a slider as its Stupid Patent of the Month," one person wrote to us, just over a week after it all happened. But actually, it's more of a software patent, or something in the blurry line/s between design and software (like interface elements).

"Just because one takes something that has existed for thousands of years before computers (like a fence/gate's metal or wooden lock) and draw it on a computer with some callback function/s doesn't (or shouldn't) make it magically patent-worthy, just as doing something "over the Internet" doesn't make old and trivial ideas patent-eligible."Consider today's patent lawyers' views [1, 2] about Apple's attacks on Samsung, which include the infamous slide-to-unlock patent (slider again, amongst other patents). And speaking of sliding, how about the "LANDSLIDE article" mentioned by Patently-O today? "And as a larger policy issue," said the author, "it’s questionable whether verbal claim dissection is either desirable or appropriate in the context of design patents. The better approach may be, as Chris Carani argued in the LANDSLIDE article mentioned above, to simply instruct juries “that design patents only protect the appearance of the overall design depicted in the drawings, and not any functional attributes, purposes or characteristics embodied in the claimed design.”"

We wrote quite a lot about Apple's so-called 'design' patents (in principle software patents) more than half a decade ago when Apple's patent war against Linux/Android began. When authors mention terms like "design patents" it would only be fair to read or interpret this as software patents, or a particular subclass of these. These patents don't allude to any physical thing like a bar that you slide, only an abstraction thereof. Just because one takes something that has existed for thousands of years before computers (like a fence/gate's metal or wooden lock) and draw it on a computer with some callback function/s doesn't (or shouldn't) make it magically patent-worthy, just as doing something "over the Internet" doesn't make old and trivial ideas patent-eligible. Then again, this is what the USPTO brought about with its laughable quality control. ____ * I am a software professional with experience both as a programmer and a researcher, having reviewed papers for the world's top international journals (even in my twenties), which meant I needed to identify prior art (existing/published research) in areas like computer vision and machine learning.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries