The patent wars continue, with Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola, Microsoft and Bob & Trudy's Discount Phone Barn all attempting to sue each other in assorted permutations over alleged patent-based naughtiness.
But with all the news about the global goings-on, we rarely hear much about the patents themselves. What, exactly, are these patents covering, and why does each smartphone and tablet apparently require 4,000 different patented elements?
I sat down with a cup of coffee, an interface to the U.S. Patent Office search system, and a jug of off-brand grappa to answer these questions. Fourteen hours later I awoke to find the following written on my iPad.
Apparatus for Avoiding Talking to People on Public Transportation
This Apple patent from 1998 outlines the creation of a device with "at least 600 ways to listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival" and "constant, always-on access to Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns" as well as "games where you kill pigs." Armed with this device and a conspicuous pair of headphones, Apple claimed, users could avoid talking to even the friendliest and most interesting people on a bus, train or passenger jet.
Method for Using Up All Your Battery Power at Once
Motorola took out this patent in 2004, which describes a software approach to making it so that your electronic device takes several hours to get down to 50 percent battery power, then suddenly drops to 10 percent "in, like, half an hour, and you're not even watching movies or anything." The fact that this functionality is apparently necessary for practically any device with a touchscreen puts Motorola in a strong bargaining position.
Fingerprint-Retention Screen for Touch-Based Devices
Google presciently filed this patent in 2005, just as Steve Jobs was gearing up to release a device that, in his words, would "allow people all over the world to communicate, connect and leave greasy smears all over their fancy $600 gadget." In creating a touchscreen that would extract and retain an unprecedented number of different human body oils, Google put a big, expensive stumbling block in Apple's way.
Automobile Suicide Device
Samsung acquired this extremely wide-ranging patent from The Hemlock Society in 2003. It covers, in vague terms, "a device designed to induce drivers to take their eyes off the road for up to a minute at a time, several times an hour, thereby increasing their chances of being killed instantly in a car accident." Critics say that this patent is worded in such a way that it could cover DVD players, stereos and small children, but courts have so far declined to declare it invalid. Until they do, the makers of every smartphone and arguably most tablets owe licensing fees to Samsung.
Pornopticon
Back in 1994, Microsoft filed a patent for a device that would beam pornography directly into the eyes of a user at all times under all circumstances forever. Apple's famously quirky attitude toward lewd apps is not, as many think, due to prudishness or desire to maintain a family-friendly image. It is, instead, an attempt to get around paying obscene, if you will, licensing fees. Microsoft insists that the ability to save porn bookmarks as app icons puts the iPhone squarely under the auspices of this patent, however, and with the term of the patent running out in two years, wants to cash in as quickly as possible. Nothing less than the future of online erotica, and therefore civilization itself, is at stake.
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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a researcher, a reseller and a resenter.
