io9.com: If you're making a flicking gesture with a pen near your computer, watch out. Microsoft may own the rights to the gesture you're making. And if you like to draw letters of the alphabet using one penstroke per letter, you may one day find yourself paying a licensing fee to Xerox.
13 comments:
I know patents are important to protect intellectual property rights but some times I feel like companies take things too far. There are definitely items on the list that I understand, like Apple's swipe to unlock and single stroke alphabet, but swiping a pen or two-handed motion just seem way too broad. Sometimes I don't understand what the patent office people were thinking when they approve things. First allowing companies like Monsanto to patent seeds, living organisms, and now physical gestures? What's next? A company patenting the way we breath so we have to pay a licensing fee to live? Gestures don't really cross the line yet in my mind of what goes too far, but they do come pretty close.
I suppose that with technology becoming more and more gesture-based, it only makes sense that companies would seek out patenting rights. I don't know anyone today who doesn't own a touchscreen. I can understand why apple would want to protect the trademark 'slide to unlock' design. But it still seems a little over the top. I never would think that you could put a patent on certain movements. How can you be upset that someone put a video of themselves doing the electric slide on the internet? Does that mean that every bar mitzvah and wedding of the 90's owes one guy a copyright infringement fee? I can't believe that there are patents based on the different ways people may write their letters. It all seems very superfluous. I like that Nintendo simply patented their technology, not the movements that accompany it. That should, after all, be the more important thing here.
Well this is a little out of hand. As an owner of a handy tablet PC (and a user of the mouse gestures add-on in firefox), I've probably infringed on these already. Legal patents, especially in the ever-quickening pace of technological innovation, are more likely to hinder process than advance it. Whatever happened to giving patents away for free for the betterment of mankind (polio vaccine, anyone)?
And Apple's looking like it's handing a pen and paper to a two-year-old, then taking the results and attempting to decipher the scribbles into something it can use as a patent. Which didn't sound like too bad an idea until I actually thought about it.
Patents on gestures? Kinda crazy. I understand a company wanting to be the sole user of a certain gesture for their particular technological device, but I have to say it still seems crazy. I know this is a bit over the top, but if you accidentally make a gesture (because you are human and that is what humans do) and then get sued for it…that's madness. I don't think that would actually happen (would it?) but just the idea is a bit outrageous. I liked to read that Nintendo focused on the components of the controller instead of the specific movements you make. Makes a lot more sense if you ask me. Maybe that should be more where new techno- patents are focused, rather than on physical gestures that seem like they shouldn't be owned. Can't we all just share?
Ok, copyrights in the digital age, as have many other things, have just seriously gotten out of hand. When I read this article all I could think was "are you freaking kidding me?" I mean I understand that they came up with these cool new things and they don't want anyone to steal it, but the thing is they aren't really new and there are only so many ways to move your hands on a touch screen so eventually were going to run out of "new" movements. I feel bad for the guy ten years from now who thinks up the worlds coolest device but it can't be legally operated because all the touchscreen movements are taken already. Seriously though what is next. Oh, I created this tablet that is white and now no one can ever make a white tablet agin because I thought of it first? I am just rolling my eyes at so much in the world of technology and I am somewhat afraid of where all this is headed in the next fifty years.
To continue my diatribe on patents, copyrights, licensing fees, etc. This is just wrong. Blatantly wrong. I understand that companies want to protect their technology. Who wouldn't want the credit for building something? But gestures and a human movement, not some bit of technology that can be patented and sold. It would be fine for them to patent the bit of technology that the movement or gesture operates, but not the gesture its self.
The best inventions come about when people share their knowledge, not hoard it away. Is their really a point in patenting a single stroke alphabet? What is that possibly doing to help the world. Patented invention are supposed to be unique and helpful to society. Truly one of a kind inventions. I'm sorry Apple, but you did not invent the finger swipe. You may have invented the technology that requires a finger swipe to activate it, but even that bit of technology is not truly patent worthy.
Furthermore, if companies stopped patenting gestures, maybe they would be spurred to make better products. If every phone had touch and zoom capabilities then companies would have to work harder to make their technology one step above the rest.
When I first read the title of this article I thought that is was going to be yet another example of copyright getting out of control. However, after reading the article, I'm not at all surprised at the gestures that have been patented. All of these gestures are things that companies have invented and if they didn't patent them, someone else would have. In today's world, yes it is a little outrageous the lengths people will go through in order to make more money, but in order to survive, it's necessary to patent things that may seem otherwise ridiculous to a completely reasonable person.
Patents of this nature are always very strange. While patenting software design or physical things makes sense because it would be very easy to deliberately copy someones design, it seems very strange that you can even patent physical moves. How can you claim a body movement and demand that people pay money if they move in that way. That seems like a violation of rights to me.
It is this kind of nonsense that makes it clear that copyright and patent law needs to be reformed or replaced. Being able to patent something as simple as a gesture is ridiculous. I understand that there are many inventions that benefit from being patented, but gestures are not an invention. Patenting a gesture someone can make with their fingers is almost as absurd as patenting the fingers themselves.
I personally think that patents and copyright protection is starting to go overboard. With patents for movements of the human body start to appear, I begin to worry what will be patented next. Every single aspect of our lives are falling under control and people are so concerned about protecting themselves, but how is society supposed to progress if we don't share each other's creations and ideas to build upon and improve. I'm even more surprised by artists who sue when a piece of their art is sampled in other art.
It is absurd how companies can patent just about anything today. Patent laws are important, and technology companies should be allowed to use them, but they should not be allowed to be so hyper-specific with their patents. Patents that are this constricting in what people can do prevents others from exploring and making innovations in areas just because somebody else already thought of it. By overly protecting the information/ideas that they have, companies are preventing the innovations that can create/change the future.
I actually never put much thought into the idea of patenting a physical gesture but I guess it makes sense.
The younger generations are so used to using certain hand gestures to receive certain results that we forget that some of these gestures are not intuitive at all - like sliding your finger sideways to open your phone.
I'm not sure what to feel about this, is it absurd or does it make sense? I feel like it might be too much to patent some of these gestures because they become almost second nature to us, and for example, we would like to use them on all phones not just the phones of one company.
This article muddies up a relatively clear issue by refusing to define patent. It makes it seem as though if you yourself make certain gestures, you will be in trouble. This is not the case. Instead, it is if in making these gestures you are attempting to make a profit. While it is clear, both logically and through looking at the focus of the article, touch screen tech companies would be most interested in this, for the lay-consumer this has very little bearing on our everyday lives. Yet even so, one might argue that these companies would like their own gestures as a form of branding. While it seems a little extreme, there is very little long term impact of this article.
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