RandomFailure

A great deal of fuss has been made over the last week or so regarding a patent application providing evidence that an iPhone nano is in the works. This analysis will hopefully clear up those misconceptions.

First, the reports all mentioned “a patent”. This is a basic confusion by most non-patent people. The document in question is a patent application, which serves only a notice function (that someone is attempting to patent the material disclosed in the application) and can grant some provisional rights, provided that the claims presented in the patent application issue in substantially the some form as a patent. A published application is vastly different from a granted patent (also called an issued patent), which confers distinct legal rights.

Second, the focus is on a single application, when in fact four different applications were published on July 5, 2007 that relate to entering alphanumeric characters via an iPod’s scroll wheel.

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Title: Back-side interface for hand-held devices

Patent application publication number: 20070103454 (8 pages)

Publication date: May 10, 2007

Filing date: January 5, 2007 (priority to April 26, 2005)

AIPW Summary: A multimedia device uses separate surfaces for input and output. The input surface is a touch-sensitive surface so that the device can be operated with one hand. The back surface is preferably the input side (hence the title) so that the user can view the output surface while controlling the device. Devices mentioned in the application include an iPod, a mobile phone, and a video playback unit. However, I wouldn’t read too much into this, since the way the devices are mentioned in the text is as part of background material, rather than describing particular embodiments of the invention.

Having the input and output on opposite sides of the device is desirable so that the output is not obscured while the user is providing input to the device and to help preserve the output screen. The user only needs to look at the output side; a cursor on the display indicates where the user’s hand is on the input side (see paragraph 0014). This would obviously take some getting used to, since your hand movements would be counterintuitive. In an alternate embodiment, UI controls could be etched into the input surface (see paragraphs 0016 and 0017).

The claims cover the device itself with separate input and output surfaces, and a method for operating the device.

(Silly note: Figure 5 shows a virtual keyboard with two “V” keys and no “D” key.)