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Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

This first showed up in Tweetie, whose author filed for a patent on it, so be aware:

http://gorumors.com/twitter-patent-drag-to-refresh/2754292

Edit: Since there is curiosity about the claims, here's the application: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=C3PTAAAAEBAJ

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The Reeder functionality is slightly different: it is not used to refresh but to get to the previous/next article. Of course it is possible that the patent is broad enough that it covers this too...

Wow, a patent? I wonder if theoretically “infinite scroll” web pages could be considered prior art?

This also might explain why Apple isn’t busy updating Mail on iPhone to also use pull-to-refresh…

I thought the general consensus of the iOS community is that Loren filed the patent defensively to protect anyone using pull-to-refresh from being sued by someone else who could have patented it.

That's good to hear. I was intimidated by the patent's existence myself.

As an aside, I thought all that's required for that kind of defense is a provisional application. And if you really want it to pass into the public domain, you can simply let a year lapse without completing application.

Is that right? I'm not an expert and I've never patented anything. Maybe it's better to actually get the patent.

Hmm, the Facebook iPhone app has the same drag to reload functionality. I thought perhaps it was just a (newish) iOS widget.

I thought non-transformational software patents were deemed invalid last year?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-or-transformation_test

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