Apple Patents Drop Down Menu After 11 Years

[rantoc]

The patent system needs to be "rebooted", make a global patent office and don't even allow this kind of crap patents to even exist - It only hinders progress and allow corporate bullying for something not even worth mention as an "invention". Transparentt menus SHEESH!

 

[johnsmithhatesVLC]

[citation][nom]davewolfgang[/nom]/Sigh....the people at the patent office need to be FIRED.[/citation]

Agreed. These patents are just outright insane. It's like patenting the freaking circle! You're just not supposed to be able to do that.

If they really do make people pay a fee to use drop down menus, I don't know what will happen to the millions of software that already do.

 

[Silmarunya]

[citation][nom]will_chellam[/nom]Personally I think patents should only apply to completed articles that is to say you can only patent a device or a drug for example.To be able to patent a transparent menu out of context is trivial and pointless, it has no meaning outside of the context of a finished piece of software or operating system in the same way that patenting the phenoxy-methyl compound has no use or purpose until you use it to create phenoxymethyl-penicillin. It's like patenting cog-wheels or cabling outside of the context of a functioning item.With regards to things like menu transparency, icons, user interface, surely these things could fall under the same type of copyright as art and music - things that are an overt imitation/copy/rip-off should be clamped down on, however influence from prior artistry should be allowed.[/citation]

The problem is that this would cause some difficulties. Take the manufacturing of organic compounds for example. Many processes yield a product that is utterly useless, but that is essential to the manufacturing of a finished plastic. In this case, the middle of the road substance clearly deserves patent protection (due to its massive commercial value), yet doesn't qualify as a finished product.

The same thing applies to many mechanical engineering parts - imagine an engineer inventing a hugely effective piston. That part could yield to vastly improved engines, yet it isn't a finished product. So the engineer couldn't take a patent on it and not gain anything from it, while car manufacturers would get more efficient engines for free.

Most of the time, it's not the finished product that's revolutionary - it are the components and materials involved that take most of the research. A patent on a cup, for example, would be plain ridiculous. A patent on a new type of porcelain on the other hand...

 

[bhaberle]

[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]REALLY? This is stupid. What are they going to paten next...clicking on an icon?[/citation]
...good call *apple runs to patent office*

 

[chickenhoagie]

This is awesome. Pretty soon there will be nothing left to patent in the world and everything will be required a royalty fee being directed to a single large group of companies in the entire world. Why do companies like Apple think that they need to rape the entire economic society in the world by saying they created the simplest idea possible? Why don't they just allow them to patent human life, so everyone who is born has to pay a toll to them or the human must be sentenced to death. Jeeze some people are just plain idiots..especially CEO's and inventors. Actually, inventors were once smart, until they thought patenting something already invented made them the inventors.

 

[bill gates is your daddy]

[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]REALLY? This is stupid. What are they going to paten next...clicking on an icon?[/citation]

You are speaking about steve jobs. I would not put a single thing past him.

 

[awood28211]

Hmmm. Patent the dropdown menu....implement licensing....free to use but track and pay per dropdown activated...on a per click basis...trillions!

 

[eamon]

"However, if you consider that Apple had the idea in 2000, the scenario changes and the claim is suddenly valid."

...wait - what? Great argument there. I mean, it's not as if this was, you know, a trivially obvious idea that merely combines two obvious, preexisting techniques in an obvious fashion.

 

[eamon]

"However, if you consider that Apple had the idea in 2000, the scenario changes and the claim is suddenly valid."

...wait - what? Great argument there. I mean, it's not as if this was, you know, a trivially obvious idea that merely combines two obvious, preexisting techniques in an obvious fashion.

 

[fnair]

[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]Yet prior to 2000 in linux we could use transparent menus and windows...[/citation]

That's exactly what I was thinking... Several window managers had transparent menu bars etc...
The whole patenting thing has gotten totally ridiculous...

 

[jaybus]

I don't blame the PTO for delaying on this one. I mean, really? Does anyone care if a menu is semi-transparent? How does this advance the technology in any useful way? I believe Apple, Microsoft, and a few others are implementing a denial of service attack against the PTO for the very reason of pushing through trivial patents they can use as weapons to frustrate and curb the appeal of open source software. If anyone is to blame for the delay, it is primarily Apple and Microsoft for flooding the PTO with trivial, useless patents. Their goal, I believe, is to make it nearly impossible to write software without a team of lawyers.

 

[fnair]

[citation][nom]will_chellam[/nom]With regards to things like menu transparency, icons, user interface, surely these things could fall under the same type of copyright as art and music - things that are an overt imitation/copy/rip-off should be clamped down on, however influence from prior artistry should be allowed.[/citation]

Exactly! I think if Apple were recording artists, they would probably try to patent the use of electric guitars and drums, to make everyone else pay royalties...

 

[megamanx00]

wtf

 

[pale paladin]

I'm telling you guys and gals right now that these are the reasons Apple sucks. It will be interesting to see how the patent effects the software developing community in terms of licensing but I hope it won't stand up in court. I am all for competition but apple is getting greedy and dishonest. Google needs to hurry up and turn into skynet and blow them up.

 

[Hupiscratch]

And in the Google ads right down the page, there is a Rambus ad.

 

[jrjayce]

can I patent the pixel...ALL OF YOU GIVE ME MONEY NOW!

 

[will_chellam]

[citation][nom]Silmarunya[/nom]The problem is that this would cause some difficulties. Take the manufacturing of organic compounds for example. Many processes yield a product that is utterly useless, but that is essential to the manufacturing of a finished plastic. In this case, the middle of the road substance clearly deserves patent protection (due to its massive commercial value), yet doesn't qualify as a finished product.The same thing applies to many mechanical engineering parts - imagine an engineer inventing a hugely effective piston. That part could yield to vastly improved engines, yet it isn't a finished product. So the engineer couldn't take a patent on it and not gain anything from it, while car manufacturers would get more efficient engines for free.Most of the time, it's not the finished product that's revolutionary - it are the components and materials involved that take most of the research. A patent on a cup, for example, would be plain ridiculous. A patent on a new type of porcelain on the other hand...[/citation]

However a piston has a clear function as a device to convert energy in the form of pressurised gasses into a linear motion, a camshaft then converts linear motion into rotary motion and so-forth - a novel use / advancement of the pre-existing technologies that brings about better function / efficiency is clearly patentable and should bring economic benefits to the inventor. What the big tech companies are doing at the moment is patenting the equivalent of a coiled spring inside a tube, with a bend in the middle, wrapped around a pipe etc etc in the hope that it might become a fundamental part of some other technology in the future that they can claim royalties on without ever having show even a modacom of insight as to what this might be.

I may as well patent an idea for a bioelectric magnetometer built that senses your hand movements and interfaces with an electronic graphical user interface to control it. I may have no idea how to build this so it *actually* works, or have any idea how to make the software to control / interface with it, but if someone else does, then I can sit back and watch the cash roll in...

 

[reddozen]

I've said it in another news post, and I'll say it again here...
You can't patent software. The supreme court deems computer code as mathematical algorithms and are thus not valid to patent. You can include a generic software based model used to control a piece of hardware, but the software itself cannot be patented.

I can patent an electric stapler. I can also patent an electric stapler that uses software and a sensor to recognize the number of pages to staple, and that it's not a finger, but the software to control the said stapler can only be included as mentioned. The specific calculations of the program cannot be. Nor can it's interface etc.

If you want to protect your programs, then you have to get a copyright on it. Not a patent, and even then,you would have to prove that the person duplicating your results was using a very similar code set to your own to even have a solid case. If I write a C++ program and someone else writes a java program, they will be similar, but will look nothing alike even though they may accomplish the same thing.

 

[acadia11]

Are they serious, I had transparent drop down menus on my e-term for enlightenment, like in 1998 or 99, WT...F????? Seriously, come on now, seriously, come on now???? Dude once you start with transparent windows,whcih I also had on enlightenment on my debian box, who would not think to make the menus transparent. Honestly, the patent, office should not be allowed to exist any longer on account of stupidity.

 

[spellbinder2050]

The patent system is ridiculous. Having to patent a drop down menu? I mean, come on.