In theory, patents exist to cover ideas which are hard to think up, but obvious once you've seen them. Double-tap fits this description perfectly.
I am against patents in general. But this is perfectly in line with past hardware patents. For example compare to 1950s radios where the volume control was also the on/off switch. Pull it out, and the radio was on, push it in, it was off, and it remembered the volume that you wanted. That button design was patented.
I don't see a difference in kind on that patent and the double-click patent.
I'd wager anybody with a little work, when told "Don't add another interaction point to this radio" or "Try to find some way of cutting down on distinct inputs" would stumble upon the radio knob solution given a little time.
This isn't art--even a cursory exploration of the solution space with vague constraints should get you there.
I've been trying to think up a practical way to use that very test as the barometer for patentability. Announce the problem that has been solved, and let the public submit solutions. If any of them are close to what is in the prospective patent, the patent shouldn't be granted.
It's tough though, because often the inventive thing is framing the problem correctly, or even identifying that there is a problem to be solved here. By assuming that, you're in danger of a hindsight bias.
Patents were never intended to grant monopolies over a given problem. If you're solving a problem that no one else has solved before, people will try to solve it once they use your product. I don't think granting monopolies over a problem space helps society. Quite the contrary.
> Patents were never intended to grant monopolies over a given problem.
Well I didn't say that they were... but I'm not sure I agree with your statement anyway. Do you have any evidence that that isn't what they were intended for?
I don't have any evidence. It just doesn't make sense to grant monopolies on a problem. It would harm innovation rather than help it. We'd have one medicine to treat each ailment, for instance.
Like the article that was recently posted about smart headlights letting drivers see through rain. Once you read the headline, you instantly know "camera(s), projectors, and motion-tracking algorithms" without having to click through to the article. Maybe the specific combination of motion tracking algorithms could be patentable for a short time, but not in such a way that an independent implementation necessarily infringes the patent.
That may be. But my point is that the standard that is being applied here is exactly what has been applied in hardware for decades, and what has been held up before legislators as exemplars of what patents are supposed to be for.
Incidentally I think that there was some ingenuity there. When Jacob Rabinow created the pull-button, he had been asked to improve a push-button tuner. (A review of the source informs me that when you pulled it had the station, not the volume. My bad. I have not seen one of these radios in decades...) His reason for switching is that he knew the problems with existing push-button tuners, and could design a better pull-button tuner. The manufacturer he invented it for did not want to accept it because nobody else was building them.
Incidentally the inventor of that was Jacob Rabinow. Take a glance at http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/rabinow/patents.html to see all of his patents. Given how many inventions he had, he clearly did not spend long on each. But his claim would e that without the patent system he would have had no incentive to invent them, and would have worked on other stuff.
I'm not defending this either way. Merely stating the official view of what the patent system is supposed to have been for. (And my personal feelings are the other way.)
The patent system is supposed to encourage the progress of science and useful arts, not to reward inventors. While that is a good thing, it's not something to sacrifice progress for.
We're heading towards a world where all the money is getting funneled towards patent lawsuits and away from building products. This is not a good thing.
That's well and good too--excepting the fact that the free market already does this, and at the rate the patent system/legal system move, the deck is utterly stacked against the pioneers unless they've got gigantic money behind them.
And since software has such low barriers to entry, this really does not help progress.
Excuse me, what on earth is non-obvious about that?
When enumerating the alternatives to the pinch-gesture (the awkwardness of which becomes obvious within the first few days of use) then you end up with a rather short list of 10-12 items - and that's counting rather esoteric ones like a physical jog-dial.
Apple chose double-tap, just like anyone else in their right mind (other than Sony) would.
If that's not textbook example for a trivial "invention" then I don't know what is.
Actually, double-click was invented at Apple in 1980 or 1981, some ten years after the WIMP paradigm was invented at Xerox, and 18 years after Ivan Sutherland invented a sort of graphical user interface for Sketchpad, which Alan Kay credits as "the invention of the GUI".
See http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s..., in the comments: "I remember when Larry was doing that testing. One of the things he tested was the three-button mouse, which is what Xerox had used. He found out that inexperienced computer users (the market that Lisa was aimed at, believe it or not) got too confused -- they couldn't remember what each of the buttons did. Same problem with a two-button mouse. So the one-button mouse was born. Of course, that meant that we needed double-click and triple-click, but that's another story..."
That doesn't mean that Apple deserves a patent for every double-finger-twitch action in perpetuity, or that double-click doesn't logically follow from the reduction in mouse button count.
The parent was pointing out the conflation of action (double-tap to fit, overloading volume control with on/off features) and mechanism (fitting algorithm, physical design of said button). The former is not patentable, or rather should not be, while the latter might be.
It's the difference between going to the patent office with an idea for "an engine that runs on steam" and actually designing a steam engine. See how much broader in scope the first one is?
I am against patents in general. But this is perfectly in line with past hardware patents. For example compare to 1950s radios where the volume control was also the on/off switch. Pull it out, and the radio was on, push it in, it was off, and it remembered the volume that you wanted. That button design was patented.
I don't see a difference in kind on that patent and the double-click patent.