now, i'm no lawyer but I am a tech profesional and my interpretation of this patent is that the 770's virtual keyboard is prior art.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...%20computer%22

they spend a lot of time in that legaleese talking about things related to making sure parts of the application wanting input don't get covered by the virtual keyboard when it is triggered, as well as how to get rid of the keyboard in a way the user would seem to expect. With WinCE, I found that it often would either cover my input area or reduce the screen or input area to something not entirely unlike unsuable, sometimes the kb wouldn't come up when you thought it should, and didn't go away when you thought it should. With the 770 things are resized, new scroll bars appear, content is scrolled up to make sure the relevant area is visable, the kb comes up mostly when you think it should and never hangs around when you done with it. Seems exactly like what Apple is trying to parent here. Am I wrong?

IMO, this is just more evidence as to why software patents are a Bad Idea.

I have been at this 20 years and had on-screen virtual keyboards that were touchscreen driven in 1986. The catalog of prior art that should be used to deny this application is so massive that it would not fit in the Rose Bowl. The people at Apple who are attempting to get these touchscreen patents are clearly hoping to exploit prior art and the broken patent system to their advantage, somehow. It's beyond shameful. This needs to be exposed. If some of these tech writers want to write pieces that can actually do some good for their readers they will jump all over Apple for this. Like I said, it's beyond Shameful, and there's plenty of blame for the government to share, too.

Wow, I never thought about that. I guess most people have been hypnotized by fashion/tech trends at one time or another. Just enough to get you to stop looking behind the curtain.

The interesting stuff comes in claim 10: launch input method by touching multiple points on screen, like a default writing hand posture. But it refers back to claim 9 (depends how you interpret the word "gesture"), which refers to claim 1. And from what I understand: if claim 1 has prior art, all the claims that refer to it fall under prior art.

That patent application refers to two previous applications, one should read those also before jumping to any conclusions.

Important: the patent law in the US changed some time ago, and now patents are published BEFORE they are examined. What you see here is what Apple applied for, not what they might get.

I would expect this patent application to be searched, relevant prior art to be found, and the patent to be refused. Or at the very least, the claims to be massively restricted.

BTW: third parties can get involved in patent proceedings, so if you wish so, you can send the uspto a note that the Nokia 770 antecedes this application. The examiner will get your note, believe me. You'll need to give the patent application number, a link to the 770 manual, short explanations why this is relevant, and proof that your doc is pre-published. You won't get an answer, but unless the examiner finds much better prior art, you will probably find out (in 18 months), that your doc is amongst the cited document.


And this is the problem: this applications is a continuation in part of 10/903,964, filed on July 30, 2004 and claims this priority. You'll have to find a document published before July 30, 2004 and the 770 won't do.

and therin lies the interesting challenge. the 770 doens't so much do this as GPE, which certainly predates the 770, but being open source and not documented for the sake of documenting like a patent would be it's going to be quite a challenge to prove when GPE started with inteligent screen re-arranging and it would have to be proven with source code and/or a demo app compiled from a cvs/svn snapshot. a bit more complex than dropping a note.

In this case, relevant prior art would be found in the archives of the discussion groups for the GPE developpers.

What I meant was that I myself was doing this 20 years ago. I personally have prior art on tons of touchscreen graphic and input effects. It's impossible not to see derivative effects of my work on today's touchscreen GUI's. Buttons that reverse, buttons that light up, X/OR color changes and scores more - it's all OLD, OLD, OLD. It seems that everybody except Apple and the odd patent lawyer here and there understands that there's nothing really new in today's touchscreen GUI's and there's nothing 'not obvious' that they've included in their application in the way that touchscreen GUI's are being used by millions of people today. I don't mean to bore anybody but it just irritates the hell out of me when some big company, or some lawyer, tries to gain ownership of how, for decades, we have literally been interacting with toushcreens. Apple deserves all the scorn and resistance that we can muster.

The trick is to PROVE it existed before the patent was filed. And I can tell you: for a patent examiner, it is increadibly frustrating to have to grant a patent, because you can't find a document which shows that the silly subject of the application existed 20 years ago.

But you know what: if you have documents on what you did 20 years ago, you can send them to the USPTO. The people there will put them in their database and use them against future patents.

I lurk in the IRC channel and the mainling list this kind of feature was never discused, it's a natural extention to the technology and so it was just done without any fanfare, documentation, or discussion.

this should not be part of any kind of patent, for that matter, most patents on things that can only be done in software shouldn't either. can you patent a painting? "a method of creating a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object" - there, i just patented a painting. software has no place in the patent system. and yes, i see things created in software as art not engineering.