“Texas based Rotatable Technologies is suing Apple for infringing on a 1999 patent that they acquired titled ‘Display Method for Selectively Rotating Windows on a Computer Display,'” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“The lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPhone and iPad tablets infringe one or more claims of their patent. Rotatable Technologies also launched a similar lawsuit against Nokia earlier this month,” Purcher reports. “Rotatable Technologies has listed six other companies in the lawsuit including Callvine, Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., Netflix, Inc., Quickoffice, Inc., Target Corporation and Whole Foods Market, Inc.”
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Purcher reports, “The case was filed in the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, Marshall Division.
Read more in the full article here.”
MacDailyNews Take: Rocket docket!
This is getting really old. And its only making the lawyers rich.
That’s the patent game. And it’s not making just lawyers rich, the winning company either gets to use technology they didn’t patent or wins monetary awards plus some kind of ongoing licensing agreement.
Apple does the same thing right back. Not saying it’s right. But good for the goose…
Apple makes actual products that they ship to customers. They sue competitors that copy their designs and ideas and sell similar products.
That is not similar to what this company and virtually every single other company that sues Apple does.
Not even close to the same thing, but thanks for playing.
Strange. First, the illustration in the article clearly shows a Mac OS window from some time before OS X. Second, The patent clearly refers to the rotation of a window with controls. I have been a Mac user since 1984. I do not ever recall this being a feature of pre-OS X systems and I don’t see this being used in andy version of OS X. Nor is it a feature of iOS.
When I first read this, I thought that it might refer to the Widgets in the dashboard that flip over to get to the controls. that’s the only “rotation” feature that I can remember in and Apple OS.
I suggest that they are probably talking about the rotation of the full window in iOS from portrait to landscape. Which is a little different Though similar. it does use a control – you rotate the device.
Strangely, I don’t think of that as rotating the window (since there really are no windows in iOS) but rotating the device. As someone else here has said. The window stays upright.
In any case, somehow I doubt that the algorithm for this rotation on iOS devices is anything like what they cam up with in 1999. I expect that Apple engineers were quite original with their solution.
Sadly, this is likely a case of the company patenting a concept and not the underlying code for it.
Radius used to make rotating displays for Macs in the early 90s that could display portrait or landscape depending on whether you were doing page layout or spreadsheets.
My thoughts exactly, WAY prior art
Radius used to make rotating displays for Macs
I still have mine! It still works (with a bit of a work around fiddling).
Yeah cocoanuck! It’s very strange to have a patent from 2001 specifically showing an old Mac OS window as its illustration. WTF?
I suspect this weird patent will be thrown out. There is plenty of prior art from a dozen different 1990s graphics programs. Swinging boxes around on screen is old vector technology. Lazy lawyers sucking on money at the behest of patent trolls, as per usual. Tech illiterate patent office clerks approving baloney patents, as per usual.
How long are patents valid? 25 years? 50?
Radius had rotating displays long before 1999. They made a display (Radius Pivot) that could auto sense orientation and rotate the image resizing windows automatically to use the aspect ration correctly – in 1991!
This was long before Microsoft offered and screen rotation in Windows 98.
This is not about rotating monitors, though. But about rotating windows. I’ve never seen that on any system.
I had a Radius Pivot on my SE 30 long ago. Nice monitor, very useful for designing full page items and wordprocessing.
I don’t rotate the window, I rotate the device. The window is still oriented @ 0 degrees for the x-axis relative to the device.
EXACTLY!
They (RT) will lose…
The abstract and the diagram show a *window* rotating, presumably against the rest of the OS desktop. None of Apple’s OSes do that. iOS rotates the entire desktop to remain upright. And I recall more than one company making tiltable monitors (portrait/landscape) as far back as the Mac IIci days—which, again, is not what the patent appears to be describing.
These guys are going to have a tough time winning. I remember a display company (Radius?) who made monitors that you could rotate 90º and the screen would rotate. Worked wonderfully with PageMaker on Mac, and that was back in 1992 and earlier!
Snapity Snap Snap! Read the previous posts above!
Radius RADIUS RADIUS!
Hey, the patent has the word “rotate” in it and they are going to Marshall texas… what more do you need to say.???
LOL
en
Rotate, as in what they need to do after jamming the patent firmly into the sunless zone and then sitting on it?
No Apple product ever had this window rotation capability.
About the closest Apple came to this kind of thing was with MacPaint and or MacDraw and rotating an object. Not quite the same thing as rotating a window.
Go to Monitors in System Preferences and you can keep the monitor still and rotate all the windows 90°, 180° or 270° — seems like prior art to me.
There is no Monitors panel in OS X 10.7.4 System Preferences. And the Displays panel has no mention of rotation.
You are right, it says Displays in 10.7.4, but my 24″ Apple LED Cinema display definitely offers four axis of rotation. It is reminiscent of the Radius Pivot when I choose them!
Apple’s so brilliant. It’s hide unneeded options until they are needed. Must only work like that with certain displays.
What I’m trying to figure out is how “rotating a window” is a technology, let alone a patent.
Just another company protecting its IP
Software patents are evil
Just another mindless troll regurgitating the mindless and idiotic phrase that software patents are evil.
Here’s a tip: create something original, then have someone else steal your idea and sell it cheaper than you can. Then come tell me how protecting your ideas from theft is evil.
Been there.
Don’t act like you know me or anything about what I’ve done.
Apparently they live in an extraordinarily remote area. Why else would it take over a decade to discover an alleged infringement?
There must be prior art.
Any vector graphics program for the 1990s is prior art.
Anybody think about the “rotating windows” when fast user switching occurs? they rotate on the z axis to reveal another side of a “cube”
I have seen that in a version of Linux as well
Look at the illustration. That’s not what they are talking about. They are talking about turning a regular application window around its centre point (or I suppose any other point) but staying in the 2d plane. No pretend 3d.
Target and Whole Foods Market?
Having just read the patent, I cannot see how this even IS an invention! The “inventor” does not describe HOW his “invention works, just what it would do IF it somehow did what he wants it to do… he has no code, no steps on how to rotate the window, just a list of steps that are required in ANY drawing program to rotate any graphical object around any arbitrary rotation point and merely applying it to window with a desktop metaphore screen. He leaves it to others to actually create his “invention!” None of his steps are used to rotate the screens on iOS devices.