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The image on a screen never moves. | 443 comments | Create New Account
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The image on a screen never moves.
Authored by: dio gratia on Monday, December 31 2012 @ 06:02 PM EST

Were we to look at the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) 2106 Patent Subject Matter Eligibility we find:

Non-limiting examples of claims that are not directed to one of the statutory categories:
i. transitory forms of signal transmission (for example, a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se), In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1357, 84 USPQ2d 1495, ___ (Fed. Cir. 2007);
Where you could best describe video to a display as a transitory signal transmission. Never the less the 7,469,381 patent is currently under threat of having all claims invalidated by prior art (USPTO Reexamination Control No. 90/012,304).

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The image on a screen never moves.
Authored by: dio gratia on Tuesday, January 01 2013 @ 04:07 PM EST

Expounding further on the idea of transitory signals, as you point out illuminating pixels on a screen is also a transitory effect that produces no material change, a signal.

The claim at suit of the '381 patent, claim 19 is a device claim of which the claim doesn't cover a sequence (method) rather limits on the device (it's behavior).

Contrast this with RE41,922 patent, the remaining claims added during reexamination (claims 29 - 35) recite "A method for displaying images on a display screen of an electronic device" reinforced with various limitations ("selectably active to receive user input", "wherein the electronic device is a handheld device", "wherein said translucent image contains at least one feature of interest...", etc.).

While the device(s) are mentioned in the claims ( Gottschalk v. Benson at 70, "Transformation and reduction of an article "to a different state or thing" is the clue to the patentability of a process claim that does not include particular machines.") the mentioned devices only enablement is found in the written description, the preferred embodiment, description for Figure 1 and Figure 1.

The added written description (in red) for Figures 18 through 26 provide the only enablement for the methods besides prior art. This tells us that the claims are on field of use limitations (e.g. claim 29 "A method for displaying images on a display screen of an electronic device, comprising the steps of:...").

We know from the chain of cases through Diamond v. Diehr at 183 and 184 (Gottschalk v. Benson at 70, Cochrane v. Deener, 94 US 780 - Supreme Court 1877 at 787-788) that "The machinery pointed out as suitable to perform the process may or may not be new or patentable; whilst the process itself may be altogether new, and produce an entirely new result. The process require that certain things should be done with certain substances, and in a certain order; but the tools to be used in doing this may be of secondary consequence.", which leads us to the question of whether or not abstracts (transitory signals) are or should be the subject of a patentable process even produced by a machine. This has the effect of conceding a machine is involved, the machine itself not additionally patent eligible herein and the very subject of Gottschalk v. Benson, wherein transitory signals were held to not be patentable subject matter. See the claims in suit 8 and 13 in APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT (scroll down) where we find a striking similarity to the method claims depending on devices (machinery).

You or I might hold that the two Apple patents should be held invalid by Gottschalk v. Benson, a feat apparently not within the means of the USPTO's patent examiners. Man has had a problem distinguishing between symbols and referents (names and things) since the at least the time of Aristotle at the dawn of our written history.

Our learned judges have embraced symbol for referent in the definition of document ("3 : a computer file containing information input by a computer user and usually created with an application (as a word processor) ") in the last decade or so allowing electronic filing. If the legal profession can accept the instructions for creating the display of or printing a document as being embraced in the word's meaning we would require that the display on a computer screen be seen as a transitory signal to distinguish performing the display from patent eligible subject matter. You could postulate the claims in Gottschalk were rejected for mentioning the words 'signal' and 'representation' directly.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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