Scary Smartphone Motion Control Patent Granted 163
An anonymous reader writes "On March 16th, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a very broad patent on motion control in computing devices, one that seems to cover any smartphone that uses a built-in accelerometer. It was filed in July 2006 and preceded by a nearly identical patent granted in 2004 after a 2001 application. So it predates many of today's popular smartphones — the iPhone, the DROID, the Nexus One, etc. What will happen if the company that owns the patent asserts it?"
To hack a patent... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how you hack a patent. From claim 1:
As long as the iPhone or Android do not use one threshold and are more generic than detecting reverse direction, they do not infringe on that patent. Whoever wrote that claim made it way too specific, and easy to work around it.
--
co-founders wanted [fairsoftware.net].
Patents (Score:1, Interesting)
What about inertial navigation systems? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:To hack a patent... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh noes, they only claimed their invention...whatever shall they do???
You call it an invention, I call it an algorithm.
I'd claim my pedometer as prior art. (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a pedometer in the 90s that used motion to record events, each motion event would trigger an update on the display, it was hand held when reading the display, and it was a computing device that would calculate distance traveled (not to mention history). Sounds like it covers just about every aspect of that patent.
Re:motion detection? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious how this is legitimately patentable. I can understand patenting an accelerometer, and even understand patenting the software techniques for motion sensing (even if I disagree with software patents), but how exactly do you take two technologies that already exist, tie them together in an ever so slightly different way, and call it patentable? The only difference between this and something like the WiiMote is that the input from the WiiMote's accelerometer is transmitted wirelessly to the console base station. How does putting the CPU in the WiiMote itself, connecting the accelerometers with a wire instead of a signal, and allowing it to make phone calls somehow make it original enough to warrant patent protection?
It's like would be like patenting sticking a compass in a car and connecting the needle to the GPS system so the car can determine orientation. When no one had done it, it was new, but it wasn't exactly novel; no one had done it because there was no GPS to connect to. Similarly, motion sensing has existed for quite a while, but no one connected it to a smartphone because:
Patenting the techniques used to miniaturize it and make it battery efficient would make sense, but patenting the mere combination of technologies seems ludicrous.
Re:To hack a patent... (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like it's Google's patent? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the patent application:
First: Note the question mark in the subject of this post. Then read the following;
Inventors: Uhlik; Christopher R. (Danville, CA), Orchard; John T. (Palo Alto, CA)
Appl. No.: 11/497,567
Filed: July 31, 2006
http://home.pacbell.net/cuhlik/cu_resume.html
Dr. Chris Uhlik
7/2002 to present, Engineering Director -- Google, Inc. Mountain View, CA
http://www.spoke.com/info/p2WHRbr/JohnOrchard
John Orchard, Dir Engineering, Vyyo Inc.
Re:To hack a patent... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To hack a patent... (Score:2, Interesting)
What does copyright have to do with patents?
a) Nothing, but they are often unintentionally used in an interchangeable fashion.
b) Both are often abused by those who hold them with what can be reasonably described as nefarious or deceitful intent.
c) Both a & b.
d) All of the above.
Its about the assignments... (Score:2, Interesting)