Apple patents the page turn (opens in new tab)

It's novel only if the book is fiction. :]

prior art can be found in software. I'm fairly sure "page turning" existed in Lotus Organiser in the mid 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Organizer

Well, I think for starters, you're missing context for the first example. Prior art must pertain to the context, and animated film is not a touch enabled computing device. For instance, just because Roddenberry thought of the idea of teleportation doesn't mean this concept in the show is prior art. If and when a company does invent a teleporter, then they will be able to patent it.

And your second point about obvious is flawed. Everything is obvious when you know the correct answer. For instance, a wheel is so obvious that a very young child could rationalize its creation and use. Because it's obvious once seen. But if it's so obvious, why did it take us 245,000 year or so to invent the wheel? Microsoft has been touting the tablet for ten years. Why didn't they create it, if it's so obvious.

I think all patents need to go away, I think they cripple innovation and make it impossible to create something new if you're not a giant corporation. But in so long as we're stuck with these laws, then every company has to try to patent everything it can so it doesn't get sued.

But this is not just an ornamental artifact. What it attempts to do is simulate the actual way someone would turn a page in a large book, such as a dictionary, with lots of thin pages. I would argue that the technical way of implementing this would warrant a patent (utility) more so than the simple depiction of a thing that people naturally do with books. In no way is this design unique to Apple; there is already prior art from the way people turn pages in books. The choice to depict realistic page turning on an ebook reader is not artistically novel. From a video game perspective, this is like patenting the idea of showing a game world from an isometric point of view. This is a bad patent.

Now, I would agree with you that the NY Times article does exaggerate the impact of this patent. Apple has not patented the page turn, instead they have patented a particular realistic way of showing turning pages. In theory, Amazon could implement a page turn style where someone grabs the top corner of the page instead of the bottom and get around this patent.

The system is not "broken and completely f* cked up." Certain aspects are dysfunctional (as one would reasonably expect given the extent to which technological progress exceeds legislative progress), but you cannot impute those specific flaws onto the system as a whole. It's like saying democracy is "broken and completely f* cked up" because one particular elected official was found to be corrupt. Give it a rest already.

You know patents really aren't that hard to understand. If prior art exists then the patent will be invalidated in court. Just as has been done in the past and will be done in the future.

Real books are not ugly. But they are more than text on a dead tree. Books age; books gather a patina of use. As the glue and the paper and the binding and the spine age together, the smell of them changes. Real, physical, well-made books are pieces of art onto themselves -- something we've lost in reading these things on a flat, lifeless screen.

Digital books can be more than simply text on a screen as well; I noticed in a recent Amazon title that passages which were frequently highlighted by other users were set differently (I think it was a highlight as well; I can't remember the title I saw it in). Never mind the privacy concerns; it's the morphing of a medium.

On the other hand, applying the skeuomorphs of such a thing cheapens it. It's a mask, trying to hide its nature. For me, it's almost an uncanny valley feel. And I think the best design is that which unleashes full intuitiveness: if I had never seen a book, why would I expect this animation to be there when reading an e-book? It's superfluous to the nature of the media.

Even the page turning itself is superfluous to the media. Its purpose is to add pauses to the interaction. You lose part of that experience when there is no longer a physical page.

Why do we need a metaphor for a physical page on a digital device?

I think so, yes, but I think the application was applied for a year or so ago (or maybe two years, too lazy to look it back up.)

Rumor has it they are (the designer responsible for it left a little while back). No idea why they would have patented it.

The stairs in the Apple stores are made almost entirely out of glass. There are no steel beams holding it up, the glass itself bears the load. The ones you usually see at high-end buildings/shops only have glass steps and/or sides. And don't forget the curved ones [1][2]. They are also earthquake-resistant for the japanese stores.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/29/stunning-photo-of-glass-...

[2] http://www.eckersleyocallaghan.com/projects/project/apple-sh...

Design patents are the US version of a registered industrial design. It only stops competitors from copying your design, and doesn't harm innovation at all, and may actually encourage it. The shape of an akg headphone, a coke bottle, nike shoes, swatch watches, macbook, ps3, tic-tac box, bic pen, a ferrari... This is what stops chinese factories from legally selling exact copies (visually at least) of everything you know.

Did you read the link you pointed to? It says this Article establishes yet another basis for policy makers to free design patent standards from the unworkable and inappropriate nonobviousness requirement. If I sell a computer that is just a small completely clean white cube, which no one else does, is it an obvious design?

Design patents are only granted if the design is novel and not obvious for all items. Utility patent must be novel, non-obvious, and be useful (legal defined term).

Both has requirements that must be fulfilled. non-novel and obvious design can not, should not, would not if the patent system worked, be granted as a design patent.

If our Patent laws allow for Patents (of any variety) that are this painfully and blisteringly obvious and come with 1,000+ years of prior art, then the law is more broken than I thought.

Amazon design patented the original kindle shape and then boasted about using it to prevent others from making kindle-compatible covers, in clear violation of design patent law.

Companies are using similar abuses of both patent systems.

Do you have some evidence that Classics had this before Apple ?

> Have you seen the Classics app for the iPhone?

Nope, neither did anyone else. I was talking about major e-book competitors, not every reading app ever made regardless of popularity.

> Apple even copied the bookshelf from them.

That's funny because if you ask the Delicious Library folks, they would say it was copied from them. Just goes to show that the concept of a digital bookshelf looking like a real bookshelf is a good one.

> Silly and obvious things

First of all, the best ideas are obvious once someone has thought of them. Of course we all want a minimal tablet, right? Well that's news to Microsoft who was letting 3rd parties sell Windows tablets for a decade. Not one of those tablets was minimal or boasted a clean design.

Then Apple comes along and does it, everyone ridicules them, it sells like crazy. Now, suddenly it's obvious. As someone who has stood by them, it's hard to really give a shit that Apple is getting the patents they filed for.

I find it much more bothersome that the rest of the tech industry gets to use Jony Ive as their hardware designer than Apple being afforded some small protection from what is slowly becoming an industry of clones.

> And many act like it's OK. Why?

Because they filed and were granted the patent. Where is the patent from the Classics team? Exactly. If you aren't going to even participate in the system, don't be surprised when things don't go your way.

Delicious Library had bookshelves before the iPhone was invented. This whole conversation around drawing pictures of objects silly.

It's not necessarily the inventors who filed it. More likely, it's an Apple patent lawyer. Naming and shaming the inventors is a bit unreasonable as inventors working for large companies may not have much sway over which parts of their work gets filed for patent protection.