Every time Apple wins a multitouch gesture patent a baby unicorn dies in the wilderness,  cold and alone.

I don’t think gestures should be patentable.  A gesture is a common movement that expresses an idea or meaning.  Gestures by their very definition are commonly used.  If Apple is the only company allowed to use certain gestures in their program then they aren’t really commonly used and therefor aren’t really gestures.

Imagine if only one club or organization was allowed to use a certain handshake.  Would it be a gesture?  Nope.  I’d be a secret f**king handshake not a gesture.  And you can’t patent a secert handshake.  (lord knows I’ve tried)

Today multitouch is on a variety of different platforms, devices and operating systems.  Microsoft has Windows 7, the Android OS is multitouch capable and there are even some Linux distros getting into the game.  We should be focussing our efforts on coming up with an agreeable set of gestures that users can understand and can expect will perform certain actions across all of these operating systems.   Patenting gestures doesn’t help this cause.

Apple hasn’t really been challenged on these patents, as far as I can tell.  However, Apple recently has begun rejectingapplications from their own app store based on the application’s use of gestures deemed ‘associated solely with Apple applications’.  This is bad news for anyone who wants the use of gestures to survice across multiple platforms and devices.  This is bad for the general public’s understanding of multitouch

What makes me worried is that Apple may not stop at regulating their own devices.  Apple may believe that their patented gestures are enforceable across a variety of different platforms and devices.  And while I’m super rich and world famous, I don’t have enough greenbacks to fend off the Cupertino lawyer mob squad just because I’ve used gestures in one of my amazing flash multitouch applications.

Here’s an image (via Patently Apple) of there latest multitouch patents:

Why we shouldn’t fear Apple

Turns out that a number of developers have been using Apple’s multitouch gestures for their own research, applications and profits for a pretty long time.  These ‘Apple tribute artists’ are particularly nasty because they were developed long before Apple started dabbling in multitouch.  In particular, the pinch and zoom gesture has a bit of history.

• Jeff Han copied the Apple iPhone pinch and zoom gesture in his presentation at the Ted conference in 2006 or about a year before the iPhone was launched.
• Bill Buxton pirated Apple’s multitouch technology and did gesture research at the University of Toronto in 1984, the same year the Macontosh computer came out from Apple .
• Myron Krueger was stealing Apple’s pinch and zoom gestures as early as 1983.  This video from 1988 is pretty amazing.

And it turns out that multitouch technology predates all of these guys.

So, what’s it called when someone copies your work but has the nerve to do it long before you’ve created that work?  I think they call it ‘prior art‘ and it means most of Apple’s gesture patents are a complete sham.

Patents bad, Copywriting good

Apple should instead focus it’s efforts on copywriting the way that it implements each gesture.  We’re all geeky programmers here and we respect the fact that Apple Inc. has written proprietary code to for tracking individual touch points.  That code is yours.  You can defend that.

What you can’t claim is the ownership of common meaningful movements.  Jeff Han, Bill Buxton, Myron Kruger all knew gestures were not patentable.  When will Apple figure it out?

Question for Apple:

• Shouldn’t we try to get developers to standardize on gesture meanings for ease of use across varied platforms and applications?
• If a gesture is a common movement that expresses meaning, then shouldn’t we be looking to make these ‘gestures’ more common?
• Couldn’t we do that by encouraging all developers to use them in their applications regardless of platform or device?
• Doesn’t Apple want to save the lives of countless baby unicorns?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 7:06 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.