Apple Now Owns the Page Turn

The New York Times Bits Blog has a post on the latest dubious design patent Apple has secured. Design patents are not a bad idea in the abstract, and they can play an important role in design innovation. But too often these patents simply give firms exclusive rights over simple and obvious designs, allowing them to wield the “patent” as a cudgel against competitors. As the Times writes:

If you want to know just how broken the patent system is, just look at patent D670,713, filed by Apple and approved this week by the United States Patent Office.

This design patent, titled, “Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface,” gives Apple the exclusive rights to the page turn in an e-reader application.

Yes, that’s right. Apple now owns the page turn. You know, as when you turn a page with your hand. An “interface” that has been around for hundreds of years in physical form. I swear I’ve seen similar animation in Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons.

(This is where readers are probably checking the URL of this article to make sure it’s The New York Times and not The Onion.)

The Times Bits Blog goes to describe some of the detail of the patent. And it puts the patent in context:

Of course this isn’t the most seemingly obvious patent Apple has been awarded in recent years. The company has also been granted patents for an icon for music (which is a just a musical note), the glass staircase used in the company’s stores – yes, stairs, that people walk up — and for the packaging of its iPhone.