this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
107 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37717 readers
433 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You already told me what the patent was. I saw it. No part of it resembles an invention in any way. It's vague enough that anything that sends content to a display will inherently violate it. Google argued it's not valid because it's not a fucking invention and has literally nothing in common with one. It's the exact same horseshit as "a shopping cart, but online" or "volume control multiple devices, but online". Almost no software can possibly justify a patent being awarded and this is an especially offensive example of it.
ARM designed a complex instruction set and explicit hardware implementations. That't not the same as owning trivial features.
"Rounded corners" is one small element of a design patent. Design patents are an entirely different, unrelated category not connected to utility patents at all and only protect against companies deliberately ripping off your entire package of branding choices. That's not the same as pretending you can own a very basic idea that thousands of people had before you did.
Utility patents for basic software features are fundamentally broken and massively detrimental to society. If the actually innovative algorithms over time had been patented and enforced, we probably wouldn't even have an OS yet, let alone the rich ecosystem modern software is, all built on the fact that you don't own basic features, only the code of your specific implementation of it.
If you read the full patent, the claims describes a complex process with multiple explicit hardware implementations. On the high level, an ARM processor has "trivial features" - eg a memory block is made up of a specific arrangement of transistors which themselves are all defined in layers of Verilog code. To us, it's just memory, something that stores 1s and 0s, but the patent specifies the exact way memory works. This is exactly what the patent does here, it defines a process in which various different hardware elements interact and synchronise to deliver a "trivial" function. It's not just "this function, but online" but a detailed way of arranging and synchronising the devices to make the function work efficiently.
I think the key part of this patent is that the server provides the stream to all devices. Another, more directly apparent implementation could involve streaming from the server to your phone, then your phone to the other screen. That would achieve the same "trivial" function, but with a different method. Their patented method is to synchronise between the controller (also maybe a moderator, if multiple devices are involved) and the server, such that the server directly connects to the screen being streamed to. This method is novel. Can you provide an example of even one idea that does this, specific process? You claim there are thousands.
"Rounded corners" is literally all there was to Apple's design patent. They drew a drawing of an iPhone, made up of solid and dashed lines, then put a note at the bottom saying "only the solid lines form this patent". The solid lines were a 2D image of the rounded rectangle of the outline of an iPhone along with the rectangle of the display itself. That was clearly a frivilous patent. This is not so clear, and I think meets the bar of a novel implementation. You keep saying it doesn't, but you haven't given any solid reasons why.
I did read it, and no, it does not describe a complex process. It's an obscenely broad general idea. None of the elements are 1 % of the way to novel or nonobvious.
It is unconditionally impossible for a system that enables this to be owned to possibly be a functional system that can benefit society in any way. The entirety of the existence of computer software is a product of iteration of millions of actually new ideas, every single one of them more novel than this ridiculous horseshit.
Design patents and utility patents are not the same thing and have no connection to each other.
I agree after seeing the patent , there's nothing groundbreaking or novel there.
Replace video for audio then there's already prior art for both control and synchronization with Sonos (2005). And a plethora of Winamp web interface plugins.
For video there was already the XMBC web interface. Sure there was no "app", but the patent is vague enough that the web-browser on the smartphone accessing the web interface can be considered the app
I am more than aware of the difference between design patents and utility patents. That doesn't make Apple's rounded corners any less of a frivilous design patent, nor does it make Touchstream's casting patent a frivilous utility patent. Just because an idea seems obvious after the fact does not mean someone can't be the first to implement and patent it.