From the linked article,
" Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon By Linux Devices 2006-11-07 "
Presumably that means this was 7th November 2006.
So, in exactly 2 months ( on January 9th 2007) , Apple was able to design a prototype based on this concept, write all the software and demo it onstage ?
What other obvious ideas are out there right now that some company will make billions off of? There's a few right under your nose that you'll probably say is "obvious" 10 years from now. I guess that's why they say hindsight is 20/20.
I am arguing that the technology itself was obvious. This is also what the OP is arguing. Several examples of prior art for patented technologies such as pinch to zoom, rounded corner rectangles, etc. have been presented in other articles here and elsewhere.
What is not obvious was the sum of each tiny part that Apple put into the design of the iPhone was commercially viable in such a spectacular way.
My understanding (though admittedly, I have not been following this case as much as some others) is that Apple is asserting several individual patents in the one lawsuit against Samsung. I argue that for the most part, each of these patents are "obvious". Sure, when putting all of them together into a single product, Apple made a successful device. However, weren't they just asserting several individual patents? I'm not sure they have a patent on "all of their working patents together in one device".
In addition, it is often the case that several groundbreaking inventions/ideas in science are not just spontaneously invented. Rather, they are the cumulative (and perhaps inevitable) result of small steps in other areas. For example, the invention of Calculus by both Newton and Leibniz, or the theory of evolution by Darwin and Wallace.
Yes, there are ideas which are truly revolutionary, but I'd argue that the iPhone was more the inevitable (I use the term very loosely) outcome of several small steps in related areas of technology.
EDIT: This is why I am so against the patenting of human genes. Sure, some companies have put billions of dollars into researching specific genes. But why should they get a monopoly on that gene, whereas every scientist who put work into sequencing DNA, cracking the genetic code, understanding hereditary, evolution, scientific thinking in general, and anybody before, gets nothing from it?
It feels a little like they are doing an economic version of a Steven Bradbury[0], because they raced to patent the "inevitable/obvious" solution first.
Apple refuses to admit that they got where they are (i.e. iPhone/iPad/iPod by "standing on the shoulders of giants" [1]
[0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=steven%20brad...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...
I think Apple did create a product that warrants a design patent though. These are defensive mechanisms that prevent copycats from producing identical products in fashion where appearances and "feel" matter more than the practical purpose of the invention. Gucci applies for design patents all the time so that copycats won't produce an identical bag and sell it on the market.
Apple is worried about the same thing here -- they've produced a product that has a certain appearance and style they feel Samsung is making a direct copy of. Design patents can cover product packaging, and if you look at how Samsung packaged their tablets, you can see how identical the boxes are compared to Apple's.
So in summary, I have 2 main points: Apple can and should defend their design patents. The technology that Apple implemented for scrolling was non-obvious otherwise competitors would have implemented these long before Apple.
However, as I look at all the various LCD monitors that are around the office right now, I can't help but think about what would happen if there was originally a design patent on the form factor of a monitor. They all seem to have relatively similar:
- border widths - button placements - rounding of corners - status lights and their positions
The same could be said for keyboards, computer towers, even many laptops. There is probably a finite number of practical design available when building a touch screen tablet. If all of them were to be patented, then nobody could build a reasonable tablet.
In response to your second point about the scrolling: It may well be true that the scrolling implementation was non-obvious. Based on your comments, I would agree that this particular aspect is perhaps non-obvious.
I'm just worried about the number of patents being asserted, and that it is highly unlikely that all of them are non-obvious, especially based on the coverage I have read. It seems more likely that Apple hit the big one with the iPhone by building incrementally on existing technologies and techniques, then adding some nice, non-obvious features, rather than building a device so chock full of non-obvious ideas that nobody else would have developed something which was somewhat similar to what we now think of as a smart phone using similar technology.
I don't think the few non-obvious ideas, nor the fact that they brought together existing technologies should be the basis for court fights and attempts to block importation of competitors products. I understand that this was a relatively narrow case, against Samsung and not Android in general, but it seems pretty clear to me that this it is a business decision by Apple to attempt to reduce competition through the courts.
There's probably only so many ways one can manufacture a box to store 10 sticks of nicotine, but they own a patent for the rounded corners box. Same may apply to handbags as well. Although you may perceive women handbags to be very different from each other, there are categories of handbags where it's harder to create extremely different designs due to constraints, for example many evening clutches are similar because they are all required to be small. Should cloning be allowed if constraints prevent designs to be significantly different from each other?
It would be an uphill battle to try and prevent all those fashion companies from filing design patents for products limited by constraints. So if one were to revamp the patent system, one would also need to be mindful of all those other companies who are not in the tech sector and may have a bigger voice.
My Sony-Ericsson P800 (from 2002) was pretty close to the iPhone interface.