“Yesterday we covered a patent filing form Microsoft that clearly demonstrated their intentions of copying Apple’s Pinch and Zoom feature. Samsung, who is trying everything in their power to invalidate Apple’s Pinch & Zoom, is now trying to patent this all-important touchscreen feature as well,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“A new patent application published last week by the US Patent Office clearly demonstrates this fact,” Purcher reports. “With published applications from Microsoft and Samsung surfacing at the US Patent Office in the same week claiming that the Pinch & Zoom function is their own original invention is testament to how critical a feature this is for modern day touchscreen devices.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
USPTO tentatively – and likely temporarily – declares Apple’s ‘pinch-to-zoom’ patent invalid – December 20, 2012
2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act made it easier to tentatively review Apple’s patents – December 20, 2012
The Apple patent Steve Jobs fought hard to protect, and his connection to its inventor – August 7, 2012
You have got to be kidding me 😳
The only joke here is the US legal system populated by judges like Judge Lucille Ball, I mean Koh, who encourage this type of brazen disregard for intellectual property.
Oh, puh-lease. Try to keep the bombastic stupidity in check. All countries have judges. I think you need to look elsewhere for the reasons the US legal system is sooo broken. 95% of the world’s lawsuits! This is not due to US judges being, somehow, spectacularly different from the rest of the world’s judges.
Stupidity? All countries have judges so therefore they must all be the same? You have no clue about the US legal system based on your remarks. When Judge Koh unilaterally slashed Apple’s judgment by almost half while another judge in TX upheld another judgment against Apple in favor of a patent troll almost equal to the reduced Samsung judgment you don’t think stupid judges wield extraordinary power here? Your remarks my sir are stupid!
Judges in America don’t even need to understand law like lawyers do to practice so they often end up making wildly illegal judgments. There isn’t really the bar like there is for lawyers.
billyjackblack, you reveal your profound ignorance when you attempt to use Lucille Ball as a negative character example. She was an amazing, incredibly talented woman and does not deserve to be disparaged by the likes of you.
My bad, kingmel. I apologize. I agree that Lucille Ball was an amazing comedic genius.
Ab fucking surd!
Title should have been: Microsoft and Samsung Voluntarily Prove They Are Willing and Knowing Thieves.
Microsoft actually has patent sharing in place with Apple and only has to not substantially copy the trade dress of Apple’s products and with the exception of their stores which are direct copies, and Windows which Apple gave them legal permission to steal with a bad contract, they have done a good job of that.
Apple already has this patented and they are trying to patent it for themselves? Isn’t this like the Borg – futile? What are they thinking? Or wait I think I read that Apples patent was invalidated? WTF?
The crazy illogical injustices found in our current judicial system is mind boggling in most cases. Between the judges and some of the juries you just hope you’re never caught up in some judicial mess yourself someday. Don’t count on logic to prevail.
/sarcasm ON
Rounded corners, Pinch to Zoom, tap to zoom, rubber-banding…….they are OBVIOUS!
/sarcasm OFF
What a bunch of piss-ants. (Don’t ask me what Piss-Ants are, but it doesn’t sound good.) When Apple was up-and-coming it brought good solid, high integrity, original competition – conceptually and marketing-wise. Now that Apple’s at the top they provide their competition with the ideas that their competition tries to compete with them – with.
I’m ALL for capitalism, but there’s something fundamentally wrong here.
Piss-ant: One of the more common species has the scientific name myrmica rubra. In some regions they are a true nuisance, so your use is apt and appropriate.
Now there is the entomology FYI for the morning. Piss Ants are real critters. Whodathunk?
@ Peabody, perhaps I am reading your comment incorrectly?
Yet simply put, after Windows robbed Apple of the UI – I believe Apple NEVER intended to allow competition to ever come so close in coping iOS.
A piss-ant or pissant is a 14th-century term for ant and you are right, ants aren’t very good news for if humans unleash all their nuclear weaponry they still won’t be able to wipe them out.
I don’t think it’s relevant to compare Samsung to ants, it’s really derogatory to the ants, they work hard, have an evolved society, have been here long before humans and the odds are likely they will be here a lot longer than humans.
Now comparing Samsung to dodo birds, well that’s a different story…
Points taken.
“Now comparing Samsung to dodo birds, well that’s a different story…”
That’s derogertory to the dodo birds, whose demise occurred due to human intervention…better to compare Samdung to bottom feeders like parasites, slugs, etc.
Now you’re insulting parasites and slugs. if you wanted to go to the absolute bottom of the food chain, you could compare Samsung to the Kardashians.
I was thinking Justin Bieber
Nope, Justin Bieber recently apologized to fans when he went on stage late for a show. He has some integrity. Not a good fit.
Yes it is derogatory to the dodo birds, but they can’t do anything about it, and like Samsung their demise will occur due to human intervention.
Bottom feeders like parasites, slugs, etc. do serve a recycling purpose in the overall ecosystem of things, so I’ll stick with dodo birds.
Shameless! They are like the school kids that cheat to win and try to copy the answers from the kid that actually does all the work to study.
I boycott them both. In fact, I’ve not installed any MS software on my computers for over 10 years. I’m highly productive without it.
When it comes to spending my money, mine goes to the company that deserves it. I don’t sell out. I’d rather not have than to sell out.
I would think this would hurt Samsung and Microsoft because they are simply reinforcing validity to Apple’s claims… Right?
In the article it says Apple’s application for ‘pinch to zoom’ was originally filed on August 30, 2012 and wasn’t granted until a few days ago.
Why would they delay the application so long? Wasn’t this already being contested in court by that date?
Hi Greg, Of course Apple has an original Pinch & Zoom patent. I was making reference to the most recent granted patent last week that precedes Samsung’s current patent application. It’s just more proof that Apple owns this function.
Apples original pinch to zoom patent was Patent #7,812,826 was first applied for on December 29, 2006. And was granted on October 13, 2010. The one your referring to is the updated one.
Fsck those asshats.
Although you may not like what they are doing, do you have to put such filth on all our screens?
It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t you be in church Mr. Moral Highground?
no time for church, 313c7ro was just awarded the Kool-Aid concession for Reverend Jim Jones.
Perhaps you like to be spoken to like that but it is rude and unnecessary. It has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with politeness and respect for each other.
I have no respect for statists.
better expressed: “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
I consider your kind my enemy. Politely said, that is my morality.
Nothing like a fine-upstanding christian right-winger.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Would that include the tyranny of religious belief?
A lovely double-bind/catch-22.
And I never cease to marvel at how the supposed teachings of god are turned to such frothing hatred.
Hatred for statism and tyranny? Not only frothing, but hydrophobic, rabid hatred. Jefferson applied the term God, but any rational individual can use the term truth. You might consider that alternative, Seamus.
“But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god.”
“fsck” df:
“Before the rise of journaling file systems, it was common for an improperly shut-down Unix system’s file system to develop a corrupted superblock. This possibly-serious problem could only be resolved by running fsck, which could take anywhere from a few seconds to hours, depending on the volume’s size and disk I/O throughput. Because of the severity of fsck not being able to resolve this error, the terms “fsck” and “fscked” have come into use among Unix system administrators as a minced oath.[2]
It is unclear whether this usage was cause or effect, as it has been anecdotally reported that Dennis Ritchie has claimed “The second letter was originally different.””
And the hat comment?
Settle down Francis, not everyone believes in the imaginary ‘sky-gran-pa’
Which means, have a coke and a smile and STFU
Respect has little to do with your statement. Would you speak to your grandmother that way?
I’d rather see the sexual related filth than some wannabe tyrant trying to censor, limit or restrict freedom of speech with guilt or power filth.
But buy all means, please continue to excerpt your right to express yourself the way you want to. Many have died so that you can have that simple privilege.
Again with the calls for freedom without responsibility. I doubt that you will ever take responsibility for your actions with your attitude.
Pearls before swine. Thx for trying.
Let up on being the new moral police here. Sometimes you have a point when it’s over the top, but Cubert’s statement wasn’t that bad. Fsck is a legitimate Linux check and repair command and asshat isn’t that profane, it’s rather humorous.
From the USPTO to the circuit courts, these assclowns are treating the patent system like a rented stepchild. And the courts are perfectly content to lean back with their opposable digits firmly lodged and let them do it.
This is a clear play by both of these companies to forge another bullshit counterclaim patent to cancel one of Apple’s biggest IP assets. It’s so bald-faced even the PTO should be able to shoot them down for the blatantly obvious circlejerks that they are.
Pathetic. None of them deserve the patent.
Apple created it years before either of them.
It came out of university research in the 1980s. There were demonstrations of pinch to zoom as early as 1983.
I guess if each company implements it differently then they could well all end up with patents on their implementation.
Implement it differently, LOL, 😆. Yeah, make them use the Pointer and Ring fingers to pinch and zoom. No Thumb and Pointer fingers for them!
Lol I don’t know what they’d have to do in order to implement it differently but I find it funny that any of them are trying to lay claim to the idea when none of them invented it.
You will have completed your journey to the Dark Side! Forever will it dominate your destiny
As DM would say, “calling Samsung a piss-ant is a slap in the face to self-respecting piss-ants everywhere.”
Samsung is the K-Tel of the 21st century: “The Best Of The Beatles!” on eight-track! …then you get it home, stick it in the player and it’s a Bondo Asphalt singing “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” on banjo backed by Mantovani’s 101 Strings.
With backup by the Mormon Tubercular Choir…
Oh! That’s incoherent:
Samsung, who is trying everything in their power to invalidate Apple’s Pinch & Zoom, is now trying to patent this all-important touchscreen feature as well
Apple’s is invalid, so let’s patent it ourselves.
That’s ShameScam in a nutshell. And I DO mean NUT. 😛
What does it mean when one corporation can use the courts to steal the inventions of another? Is it justice to say to Apple, we have these other companies who pay us more to give them your patents, so we will. That sounds like corruption to me.
Next we’ll learn from the USPTO that Samsung has applied for a trademark on the silhouette of an apple with a bite out of it.
Samsung knows no shame. But hey, they are Asian…
The real stupidly is if the patent office approves it for both Samstupid and Microsloth! lol
Wanna cry seeing how this tech patents thing has been developing.
The very obvious can become very distorted with all these reasoning “experts” in name of fairness and justices. They really should screw themselves rather than the world.
People say SJ has his reality distortion field kinda power. But after all these years of observing the tech industry and comparing to all those who have been criticizing SJ, I believe it is to the contrary… that most of the evils (Eric in particular) and those slavish copiers are indeed masters of this reality distortion field. They turn truth into lies, lies into truth, copying into originating…
SJ is more like a uncompromising kid being bullied by those sweet talks evils.
In most legal systems around the world the word ‘truth’ has disappeared and been replaced with a more correct term, ‘$$$$’. This has allowed for more ‘flexibility of purpose’ when dispensing ‘Justice’ thus validating ‘right’ equalling ‘wrong’. Get used to it!
Legal, ethical, and moral have always been distinct terms. And political and legal process perversion by money is also an old well-established corruption.