“Pinch to Zoom”
Posted on November 3, 2009 at 9:46 pm by kyliu
Tags: apple, intellectualproperty, ip, iphone, patents, ui
Filed Under geek | Leave a Comment |
I am a skeptic when it comes to intellectual property, especially patents and copyrights. You are not going to describe me as some kind of patent defender.
Whenever critics point out some aspect of the patent system that’s failing, defenders jump in to (1) explain that accumulating a lot of nonsense technological patents and filing law suits are “just the way business is done” or (2) justify every patent as “innovation” worthy of monopolistic protection (and sometimes throw in a “if you are really smart, you can always design around it” comment).
Both of these responses are, in my view, wrong. But at least they are simple to critique and show internal consistency.
Another response is to argue that specific technological patents are obvious — not in the sense of being obvious to those “skilled in the art” but in the sense of being obvious to anybody in the world — and therefore not worthy of patent protection. In other words, these patents cover things that are such natural outgrowths of human intellect that extending patent protection to them is just “absurd.”
The implication of this argument, of course, is that there are other types of technological innovations, ones that are not obvious to “anyone in the world” which would be worthy of protection.
What about the use of multitouch “gestures” on the iPhone to zoom in (spreading your fingers) and zoom out (pinching your fingers)? Apple has, it seems, patented these “gestures.” And now people are arguing that these “gestures” should not be patentable, because they are so obvious, like a language and no one should be able to own them.
Here’s Jeffrey Sambells:
Personally, I’m all about innovation. Allowing an innovator to benefit from his or her innovation through patents is what makes businesses innovate in the first place. At the same time however, gestures are not innovative, nor should they be patentable. Pinch-to-zoom is just common sense. How else would you do it with one motion? If Apple wants to patent something, patent the technology that allows the device to recognize multi touch and react to it, don’t patent the gestures themselves.
Set aside, for now, the point about whether a “language” can be patented or not. (For what it’s worth, I don’t see the problem. A language is most definitely a technology. If you can patent genes, cryptography algorithms and protocols, and business practices, why not languages? They are all “languages” in some sense. I’m opposed to the state of our patent law, but the law is what it is, and the argument that “no one should be able to own it” applies to genes, algorithms, and business practices just as well, and yet has never convinced any court.)
Let’s focus on the two other aspects of this argument. One, it’s “obvious.” And two, there’s no other way to do it.
I have trouble with the “obvious” part of the argument because there’s no technical definition for what is “obvious” or “common sense.” It’s ripe for retcon in light of later knowledge.
Is using a mouse and a keyboard to interact with a computer “obvious”? Is designing a graphical user interface with buttons and menu items natural? Is “pinching” a picture on the screen to “zoom out” common sense? They seem seems so now, but it’s hard to remember how we felt when these things were first demonstrated to us. What seems “natural” and obvious now has become so only because we are so used to it.
This sort of argument is subject to easy manipulation to favor and disfavor any invention the speaker wants. I don’t think it’s terribly useful.
As for the “how else would you do it” part of the argument, I can imagine a pretty obvious and common-sensical set of alternative gestures for zooming in and out: move your finger in a spiral motion. If you are moving “into” the spiral, then you are zooming in; if you are moving “out of” the spiral, then you are zooming out.
I’d say that these are just as “common sense” as spreading and pinching fingers. There may be many other gestures or even other methods of communicating our intent to a machine that would be even better.
I don’t think either the “it’s obvious” argument or the “there’s no other way to do it” argument work well in the case of these iPhone gestures. I don’t think Apple should be able to get a patent here either because I’m opposed to the patent system as a whole — I don’t accept the premise of “people won’t innovate without patents” — but these two argument don’t hold up.
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