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England and Wales High Court (Patents Court) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Patents Court) Decisions >> HTC Europe Co Ltd v Apple Inc [2012] EWHC 1789 (Pat) (04 July 2012) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1789.html Cite as: [2012] EWHC 1789 (Pat) |
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CHANCERY DIVISION
PATENTS COURT
Rolls Building, EC4A 1NL |
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B e f o r e :
____________________
HTC EUROPE CO. LTD |
Claimant |
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- and - |
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APPLE INC. (a company incorporated under the laws of the State of California) |
Defendant |
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And between : |
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APPLE INC. |
Claimant/Part 20 Defendant |
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- and - |
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HTC CORPORATION (a company incorporated under the laws of the Republic of China) |
Defendant/Part 20 Claimant |
____________________
Simon Thorley QC, Guy Burkill QC and Joe Delaney (instructed by Freshfields, Bruckhaus Deringer) for Apple Inc.
Hearing dates: April 19-20, 23, 25-27, 30, and May 1-3, 8-10, 12 2012.
Approved JudgmentI direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
____________________
Crown Copyright ©
Mr Justice Floyd :
Introduction
Legal principles
"The question of obviousness must be considered on the facts of each case. The court must consider the weight to be attached to any particular factor in the light of all the relevant circumstances. These may include such matters as the motive to find a solution to the problem the patent addresses, the number and extent of the possible avenues of research, the effort involved in pursuing them and the expectation of success."
"(1)(a) Identify the notional 'person skilled in the art'.
(b) Identify the relevant common general knowledge of that person.
(2) Identify the inventive concept of the claim in question or, if that cannot readily be done, construe it.
(3) Identify what, if any, differences exist between the matter cited as forming part of the "state of the art" and the inventive concept of the claim or the claim as construed.
(4) Ask whether, when viewed without any knowledge of the alleged invention as claimed: do those differences constitute steps which would have been obvious to the person skilled in the art or do they require any degree of invention?"
"A piece of particular knowledge as disclosed in a scientific paper does not become common general knowledge merely because it is widely read, and still less because it is widely circulated. Such a piece of knowledge only becomes general knowledge when it is generally known and [accepted without question] by the bulk of those who are engaged in the particular art; in other words, when it becomes part of their common stock of knowledge relating to the art" (square brackets added)
"I think the test of added matter is whether a skilled man would, upon looking at the amended specification, learn anything about the invention which he could not learn from the unamended specification."
"(1) European patents shall be granted for any inventions which are susceptible of industrial application, which are new and which involve an inventive step.
(2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1:
…
(c) … programs for computers;
(d) presentations of information.
(3) The provisions of paragraph 2 shall exclude patentability of the subject-matter or activities referred to in that provision only to the extent to which a European patent application or European patent relates to such subject-matter or activities as such."
"(1) properly construe the claim
(2) identify the actual contribution;
(3) ask whether it falls solely within the excluded subject matter;
(4) check whether the actual or alleged contribution is actually technical in nature".
"The second step—identify the contribution—is said to be more problematical. How do you assess the contribution? Mr Birss submits the test is workable—it is an exercise in judgment probably involving the problem said to be solved, how the invention works, what its advantages are. What has the inventor really added to human knowledge perhaps best sums up the exercise. The formulation involves looking at substance not form—which is surely what the legislator intended.
Mr Birss added the words "or alleged contribution" in his formulation of the second step. That will do at the application stage—where the Office must generally perforce accept what the inventor says is his contribution. It cannot actually be conclusive, however. If an inventor claims a computer when programmed with his new program, it will not assist him if he alleges wrongly that he has invented the computer itself, even if he specifies all the detailed elements of a computer in his claim. In the end the test must be what contribution has actually been made, not what the inventor says he has made."
"i) whether the claimed technical effect has a technical effect on a process which is carried on outside the computer;
ii) whether the claimed technical effect operates at the level of the architecture of the computer; that is to say whether the effect is produced irrespective of the data being processed or the applications being run;
iii) whether the claimed technical effect results in the computer being made to operate in a new way;
iv) whether there is an increase in the speed or reliability of the computer;
v) whether the perceived problem is overcome by the claimed invention as opposed to merely being circumvented."
"what achieves patentability is some real world technical achievement outside the information itself"
The 948 patent
Technical background
The witnesses
Q. So really, you are not in a position to speak about knowledge and attributes of those involved in the design and implementation of GUIs in 2008?
A. I am sorry, I do not see how that follows. No, I disagree.
Q. On what basis?
A. On the basis that I have a broad knowledge of the computer industry as a systems person so, in the course of my career, I have interviewed for jobs at various companies and I have friends who were undergraduates with me who went on to work at various companies. So I have knowledge from personal acquaintance in the computer science community with who can wind up working on what at a firm that develops software, at a firm that sells a product of software. So there is an ethos in computer science, especially in the building community of people who develop software, that one often learns by doing; that after an undergraduate degree, you have knowledge in software engineering. When you join a company, you may be put on a project where you work on developing an artefact of software where you do not have research level training in research in the area of that software, but rather you are an implementer, you are a programmer, and you have broad software development expertise, as I believe I characterised in my report. Then you work on extending and enhancing some existing software artefact using your broad based knowledge of software engineering.
Q. But, of course, in relation to the design and implementation of GUIs, you have never learnt by doing?
A. I have not. I have acquaintances who were in that position at companies that they worked for.
The skilled addressee
Common General Knowledge
The specification and claims
"Depending on the configuration of a view, touch events in that and other views can be either ignored or recognized. Ignored touches need not be sent to the application. Selectively ignoring touches can allow for simpler applications or software elements that do not take advantage of advanced multi touch features to be executed at the same device (and even at the same time) as more complex applications or software elements."
i) The multi-touch flag which indicates whether a particular view is allowed to receive multiple simultaneous touches;ii) The exclusive touch flag, which indicates whether a particular view allows other views to receive touch events while the flagged view is receiving a touch.
"[0045] Thus, embodiments of the present invention can allow relatively simple software elements that are programmed to handle only a single touch at a time to keep their multi-touch flag unasserted, and thus ensure that touch events that touch events that are part of multiple contemporaneous touches will not be sent to them. Meanwhile, more complex software elements that can handle multiple contemporaneous touches can assert their multi-touch flag and receive touch events for all touches that occur at their associated views. Consequently, development costs for the simple software elements can be reduced while providing advanced multi-touch functionality for more complex elements."
"[0049] Thus, the exclusive touch flag can ensure that views flagged as exclusive only receive touch events when they are the only views on the display receiving touch events. The exclusive flag can be very useful in simplifying the software of applications running on a multi-touch enabled device. In certain situations, allowing multiple views to receive touches simultaneously can result in complex conflicts and errors. For example, if a button to delete a song and a button to play a song are simultaneously pressed, this may cause an error. Avoiding such conflicts may require complex and costly software. However, embodiments of the present invention can reduce the need for such software by providing an exclusive touch flag which can ensure that a view that has that flag set will receive touch events only when it is the only view that is receiving a touch event. Alternatively, one or more views can have their exclusive touch flags unasserted, thus allowing multiple simultaneous touches at two or more of these views."
"(i) A method for handling touch events at a multi-touch device, comprising:"
(ii) displaying one or more views;
(iii) executing one or more software elements, each software element being associated with a particular view;
(iv) associating a multi-touch flag or an exclusive touch flag with each view, said multi-touch flag indicating whether a particular view is allowed to receive multiple simultaneous touches and said exclusive touch flag indicating whether a particular view allows other views to receive touch events while the particular view is receiving a touch event;
(v) receiving one or more touches at the one or more views; and
(vi) selectively sending one or more touch events, each touch event describing a received touch, to one or more of the software elements associated with the one or more views at which a touch was received based on the values of the multi-touch and exclusive touch flags.
It is common ground that although feature (iv) ends with the word "touch event" it should, for consistency, read simply "touch". Claim 2 adds the feature:
"if a multi-touch flag is associated with a particular view, allowing other touch events contemporaneous with a touch event received at the particular view to be sent to the software element associated with the other views."
Construction
Integer (iv) and "per view granularity"
Integer (vi): "selectively sending one or more touch events"
"If, on the other hand, the multi-touch flag is not set, the OS can ignore or block the second touch. Ignoring the second touch can result in not sending any touch events associated with the second touch to the software element associated with the touched view. In some embodiments, the OS can alert other software elements of the second touch, if necessary."
Infringement
Validity
Obviousness over common general knowledge
i) There was little or no motivation for providing legacy support in the new multi-touch environment: some developers might have preferred the approach of "all new everything" meaning that all applications would have to be specifically written for multi-touch.ii) What excited the research community rather more was the new functionality of multi-touch, not the "more pedestrian" question of how to modify legacy software.
iii) The DTMouse application prevented multi-touch events from reaching the application software: this was the all or nothing approach which Dr Wigdor said that the skilled person would think undesirable.
iv) The alternative to DTMouse would be to send all events to the application and leave it to the application developer to write software to deal with these events.
v) The flag solution had only ever been applied to different types of events, not to events differentiated by reference to their time stamps.
vi) The skilled person would not have the idea of controlling at the UI element level.
vii) Insight would be required to see that multiple touches can be directed to the same UI element or across different UI elements.
viii) That Dr Wigdor had used hindsight.
i) UI elements which will need the ability to receive multiple concurrent touches;ii) UI elements which require only a single touch, and multiple concurrent touches to that element will not be acted upon: e.g. keyboard buttons;
iii) UI elements which need to be able to receive input which is concurrent with other input at other UI elements: eg holding down a shift key whilst pressing a letter;
iv) UI elements whose functionality should not be invoked concurrently with that of other UI elements: for example operations which were in conflict with each other, such as "yes" and "no".
Q. If you leave to it the application to have the code in [semble "to"] process events relating to all concurrent touches and work out which events should be responded to in what way, that is a pretty complex exercise, is it not, for the application software developer?
A. It requires the writing of additional code to implement that functionality.
Q. It definitely increases the complexity of the software that has to be written by the application software developer?
A. I think that the degree of complexity would depend on the application and the number of elements that we are talking about.
Q. It could be very complex indeed, could it not?
A. I could envision cases where, for a very complex application, it could be very complex, yes.
Q. That is a burden which the system software developer would wish to avoid placing on the application software developer, for the reasons we discussed yesterday?
A. There is a broad and general ethos in the design of systems software to make the writing of applications software simpler in ways -- yes, to make the writing of application simpler.
Q. Right. So I would suggest that the system software developer would be looking for ways to avoid the application software developer having to write code to deal with those sorts of issues. Do you agree?
A. In general, developers of libraries seek to make their libraries easy to use by programmers and to make the writing of applications as easy as possible and no easier.
Q. So I would suggest to you that, in those circumstances, it would be obvious to the system software developer that a way of providing for UI elements which, when touched, do not allow other UI elements to respond to subsequent concurrent touches is to have the system software not pass on the unwanted touch events to the relevant UI elements.
A. So I do not find that behaviour to be obvious.
Q. When you say "that behaviour"?
A. Sorry, I do not find that implementation of the system software to be obvious.
Claim 2
Obviousness over Jazz Mutant Lemur and Zotov
Excluded subject matter
The 022 Patent
Technical background
The witnesses on 022 and 868
The skilled addressee and common general knowledge
The specification and claims of 022
"transitioning such devices, touch screens and/or applications between user interface states (e.g. from a user interface state for a first application to a user interface state for a second application, between user interface states in the same application, or between locked and unlocked states."
"As used herein, a gesture is a motion of the object/appendage making contact with the touch screen. For example, the predefined gesture may include a contact of the touch screen on the left edge (to initialize the gesture), a horizontal movement of the point of contact to the opposite edge while maintaining continuous contact with the touch screen, and a breaking of the contact at the opposite edge (to complete the gesture)."
"[0064] In some embodiments, the interaction includes dragging the unlock image to a predefined location on the touch screen. For example, the unlock action may include dragging the unlock image from one corner of the touch screen to another corner of the touch screen. As another example, the unlock action may include dragging the unlock image from one edge of the touch screen to the opposite edge. The emphasis here is on the final destination of the unlock image (and of the finger). Thus, the user can drag the unlock image from its initial location along any desired path. As long as the unlock image reaches the predefined location and is released at that location, the device is unlocked. It should be appreciated that the predefined location may be, as described above, defined narrowly or broadly and may be one or more particular locations on the touch screen, one or more regions on the touch screen, or any combination thereof.
[0065] In some other embodiments, the unlock action includes dragging the unlock image along a predefined path. For example, the unlock action may include dragging the unlock image clockwise along the perimeter of the touch screen (the path being the perimeter of the touch screen), from one of the corners and back. As another example, the unlock action may include dragging the unlock image from one edge of the touch screen to the opposite edge in a linear path. The emphasis here is on the path along which the unlock image (and the finger) moves. Because of the emphasis on the path, the final location to which the unlock image is to be moved may be defined broadly. For example, the unlock action may be to drag the unlock image from its initial location, along the predefined path, to any spot within a predefined region on the touch screen. The predefined path may include one or more straight lines or lines with twists and turns."
(i) A computer implemented method of controlling a portable electronic device(ii) comprising a touch-sensitive display,
(iii) comprising detecting contact with the touch-sensitive display while the device is in a user interface lock state;
(iv) transitioning the device to a user-interface unlock state if the detected contact corresponds to a predefined gesture;
(v) and maintaining the device in a user-interface lock state if the detected contact does not correspond to the predefined gesture,
(vi) characterised by moving an unlock image along a predefined displayed path on the touch sensitive display in accordance with the contact,
(vii) wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device.
(i) The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:(ii) displaying a first unlock image and a second unlock image on the touch-sensitive display while the device is in a user-interface lock state; and
(iii) wherein transitioning the device to a user interface unlock state comprises: transitioning the device to a first active state corresponding to the first unlock image if the detected contact corresponds to a predefined gesture with respect to the first unlock image; and
(iv) transitioning the device to a second active state distinct from the first active state if the detected contact corresponds to a predefined gesture with respect to the second unlock image.
(i) The portable electronic device of claim 6 wherein the predefined displayed path is a channel.
Construction
"gesture"
"a predefined gesture"
"predefined displayed path"
"in accordance with the contact"
"user interface lock state" and "transitioning to a user interface unlock state"
"In some embodiments, the lock/unlock feature may apply to specific applications that are executing on the device 400 as a whole. In some embodiments, an unlock gesture transitions from one application to another, for example, from a telephone application to a music player or vice versa."
"Channel"
Infringement
i) the Arc unlock,ii) the Ring unlock, and
iii) the Icon mechanism.
All three mechanisms are said to infringe the independent claims 1, 6 and 18. In addition, the icon mechanism is alleged to infringe claims 5 and 17.
The Arc unlock
i) the point at which the user landed on the screen must be above, approximately, the point at which the lower black arc meets the sides of the screen;ii) the distance the Arc has travelled in the y-direction from the point at which the user touched on and that at which he or she lifts off must exceed a set threshold. If the user lands on the display above the Arc, and picks it up, then the distance is measured from the top of the Arc.
If the conditions are satisfied, then the Arc continues to move on the display, and disappears from view.
Infringement - Arc unlock
The Ring unlock
Infringement - Ring unlock
The icon mechanism
Infringement - Icon mechanism
German and Dutch decisions on construction and infringement of 022.
"it can no longer be considered a predefined gesture "along a predefined path" … within the meaning of the patent in suit when the position-related movement of the unlock image [can be] chosen at will by the user in its entirety between the starting contact point and the end of the contact on the touch sensitive display."
"The predefined path … is displayed within the meaning of the patent if the precise position-related progression of the movement of the unlock image (still) necessary for unlocking is as such visualised by the user."
Validity
Hyppönen disclosure
Anticipation by Hyppönen
Plaisant disclosure
"Slider toggle: in this toggle a sliding/dragging movement is required to change the position of the yellow pointer from one side of the toggle to the other. A simple three step animation shows the movement of the pointer along the slide. If the device is ON the pointer is on the ON side. Users can then grab the pointer and slide it to the other side. If the finger is released before reaching the other side the pointer springs back to its previous position. "
"Even if sliders were not preferred, the fact that users used them correctly is encouraging since many other controls can be designed using sliding motions. Another advantage of the sliding movement is that it is less likely to be done inadvertently therefore making the toggle very secure (the finger has to land on and lift off the right locations). This advantage can be pushed further and controls can be designed to be very secure by requiring more complex gestures (e.g. a U or W shape slider can be used for a 2 or 3 setting control respectively)."
Was Plaisant CGK?
Obviousness over Plaisant
"73. Catherine Plaisant's goal was "to select a usability-tested/error-free toggle and to better understand some of the problems and issues involved in the design of controls for a touchscreen environment" (page 667, column 2, lines 9-12 of the Plaisant Paper). The Plaisant Prior Art is merely describing a transition from one user-interface state to another. Transitioning a device from a lock state to an unlock state is simply one particular example of such a state change. In Catherine Plaisant's implementation, she has chosen to label these two states as "on/off", but the labels do not matter: her work applies equally to transitions between any two states, including "lock/unlock". Catherine Plaisant's goal also applies to any underlying functionality whose user-interface state change is controlled by toggle switches.
74. Consequently, at the level of the graphical user interface, there is no difference between the Plaisant Prior Art and the '022 Patent. It would have been obvious and trivial to the Skilled Person at the '022 Priority Date to use and implement the techniques described in the Plaisant Prior Art to transition a device from a locked to an unlocked state."
Q. It was appreciated by 2005 that sliders of this nature [i.e. Plaisant] did have a place in touchscreen device ----
A. I would say it would be one of the things that could be considered when making design choices, yes.
Q. It was considered, was it not? It had been considered?
A. It certainly had been considered in this article, yes.
Q. No, it had been considered in the Palm environment we looked at with -- it was looked at with Professor Keyson.
A. So maybe I should explain what I mean by "considered"?
Q. Yes, of course.
A. We are talking about a skilled person who has to decide what features they want to implement on their touchscreen, in this case on the touchscreen device, be it portable or not, depending on -- sorry, be it portable or not. A person in that role, their job is not to just blindly say, "Here is one technique and we will apply it". Their job is to consider the interface as a whole. Part of their job and part of, in fact, the majority, a large part of what they have to do is to consider all the interaction techniques at their disposal and to make choices between them. So one could consider a broad variety of interaction techniques and then choose one which best fits, for example, the kind of interface they have, the kinds of things being done on it, the other aspects of the interface in terms of consistency, other kinds of tasks the person is performing, the context of use and so on. There are many, many decisions or many factors that a person would have to make. So when I say "considered", I mean that the skilled person would be considering this amongst one of the many other options.
Neonode disclosure
Obviousness over Neonode
"89. Upon observing the Chevrons Unlock Feature and the Text Unlock Feature I noted that a number of obvious modifications could be made to improve upon them. For example, neither unlock feature provides the user with any feedback. It would be routine, and part of the standard design process, to provide some form of object on the user interface with which the user can interact, in conjunction with feedback, so that the user knows that progress has been made towards unlocking and/or whether they are carrying out the correct action.
90. The chevrons and the text "Right sweep to unlock" provide no more than an indication of the direction in which the swipe should be made. The Skilled Person would view it as a straightforward improvement to place a feature on the user interface, the visual affordances and constraints of which were such that the userwould know clearly what they had to do to unlock the touch screen and in which specific part of the screen they had to make the required input. One possible obvious addition that I put forward to PG (before seeing the '022 Patent) that would address all of the above suggestions in this and the preceding paragraph would be to add some sort of slider to the user interface, where the user would have to drag an object/handle along a slider in order to unlock the touch screen."
"A. Again, I can only restate that I was putting myself in the shoes of somebody in 2005, this is a really, really basic improvement on a device, there is nothing unusual about that at all. The fact that I had an iPhone, yes I had an iPhone. Would it have changed my opinion at all if I had not? No. That is -- I will stay firm on that. That is what it is."
Sub-claims
Added matter
"The application as filed discloses the use of a pre-defined path (see [0069]).
The teaching of a pre-defined displayed path is at [0071]. This teaching refers to figures 4A-4B which include visual cues which display a channel 404 indicating the path of the gesture/movement along which the unlock image 402 is to be dragged. Para. [0071] teaches only the use of a channel as the visual cue to display the pre-defined path.
The rest of the teaching and the figures also only disclose the use of channel as a visual cue to display the pre-defined path. Nowhere in the application as filed is there a disclosure of displaying a predefined path by means other than a channel.
Yet in the 022 patent as granted, claim 1 is not so limited and covers any pre-defined displayed path (whether or not a channel). There is no basis for this in the application as filed. In the patent as granted, the fact that the pre-defined displayed path is a channel has been relegated to claim 9.
Claims 1 and 6 and the dependent claims (other than claim 9) add matter."
Excluded subject matter
Q. What 022 gives you by way of the unlock image and its associated channel, that you do not get from Neonode, is that the user is given some information about what to do and whether they are doing it successfully.
A. Among other things, yes.
Q. What are the other things?
A. I just explained that in my previous ----
Q. You mean their anxiety, that sort of thing?
A. It is providing an incremental path that you can start off slowly and understand so it is a very secure way of -- I mean secure in the sense it is secure from a user experience viewpoint, so it is an easy to understand way that it is a very simple way to do it and yet it is a very safe way so it is not going to copy accidentally an unintentional thing, and it teaches me how to do this sweep gesture so it creates this common understanding. So it is not just about for that moment, that unlock, it is teaching me about how to use the product as a whole, it is teaching me what a gesture is, it is teaching me about a sweep gesture which I can then apply later through the interface. The teaching experience, let us say, is not specifically limited only to the unlock mechanism.
Q. Would it be fair to say that the specific embodiment of 022 provides a more intuitive user interface than was provided by Neonode?
A. Yes, that is fair.
Q. It is a better way of providing an unlock mechanism to avoid the consequences of accidental touches than is provided by Neonode?
A. Yes, that is correct.
The 868 patent
The witnesses
The skilled addressee
The specification and claims
(i) A computer implemented method, comprising:(ii) a device with a touch screen display:
(iii) detecting a first movement of a physical object on or near the touch screen display;
(iv) while detecting the first movement, translating a first digital object displayed on the touch screen display in a first direction,
(v) wherein the first digital object is associated with a set of digital objects; characterised in that:
(vi) in response to display of a previously hidden edge of the first digital object and continued detection of the first movement, displaying an area beyond the edge of the first digital object;
(vii) after the first movement is no longer detected, translating the first digital object in a second direction until the area beyond the edge of the first digital object is no longer displayed;
(viii) detecting a second movement of the physical object on or near the touch screen display;
(ix) and in response to detecting the second movement while the previously hidden edge of the first digital object is displayed, translating the first digital object in the first direction and displaying a second digital object in the set of digital objects.
Construction
"digital object" and "set of digital objects"
"In computer systems, we rarely if ever compose a unit as a single thing. A very, very standard process is to actually build it up of constituent parts, each itself of digital objects. Like a webpage, for example, is often composed of a hierarchy of digital objects and so characterising it as a single unit is not how we would do it and it is not how we actually perceive it as well. A webpage is [made up of] many constituent parts that can be acted upon independently."
"display of a previously hidden edge"
Infringement
Validity
Anticipation by Lira
Obviousness over Lira
Excluded subject matter
The 859 patent
Technical background
The witnesses
The skilled addressee
The common general knowledge
The specification and claims
(i) A portable radio communication apparatus comprising:
(ii) an antenna for transmitting and receiving a radio frequency message signal;
(iii) radio/modulator-demodulator means for demodulating a received radio frequency message signal by converting its frequency and for modulating a message signal to be transmitted to effect its frequency conversion into a radio frequency;
(iv) message memory means for storing messages which are received or to be transmitted;
(v) and display means for displaying the messages which are received or to be transmitted;
(vi) characterised by alphabet memory means for storing a multilingual alphabet comprising sections with alphabetical notation for each language;
(vii) selection means for selecting a section corresponding to a language of the multi-lingual alphabet to be used in forming a message to be transmitted at the time of inputting by character; and
(viii) control means for sequentially selecting characters from the section corresponding to a language of the multi-lingual alphabet and for forming and displaying messages which are to be transmitted.
2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the alphabet memory means comprise a ROM for previously storing a plurality of linguistic alphabets; and wherein the control means are adapted to cause the display means to display the names of languages of the multi-lingual alphabet stored in the alphabet memory and select and confirm any of the plurality of charactersets by the selection means.
4. The apparatus according to claim 2 or 3 wherein the alphabet memory means comprise a ROM for previously storing a plurality of sections, and wherein the control means are adapted to form a message in the selected language while displaying on the display means the character set of the selected language name.
6. The apparatus according to any of claims 1 to 5, wherein the alphabet memory means comprise a ROM for previously storing a multi-lingual alphabet, and wherein the control means are adapted to input a home system information by the selection means and select and confirm any of the plurality of sections stored in the alphabet memory means in accordance with a nationality-based management table.
7. The apparatus according to any of claims 1 to 6, wherein said selection means comprise an IC card interface section capable of mounting a subscriber ID card; and wherein the control means have the following functions:
inputting the home system information from the subscriber ID card through the IC card interface section, selecting and confirming any of the sections stored in the alphabet memory means in accordance with a nationality information obtained from the home system information against the nationality-based management table, and displaying the selected language on the display means (7).
Construction
Infringement
Validity
Obviousness over GSM TS 03.40
Obviousness over Arabic TDoc
"190. In particular, it would not be obvious in 1994 that a user could change the character set used to construct messages on a mobile telephone by selecting a different language setting. The approach adopted at that time by GSM telephones, such as the Nokia 1011 (see paragraph 57), was to cycle through a fixed set of characters (drawn from a variety of languages) as the user made successive presses of a given key on the keypad. A comparison of Figure 5 (paragraph 57) with Figure 8 (paragraph 64), above, shows that there was no relationship between the mapping of characters to keys in a GSM telephone and the coding of characters in the default SMS character set and, indeed, not all of the SMS character set was available. An obvious implementation of a mobile telephone in the light of the Arabic TDoc would be simply to extend the mapping of key presses to characters, for example, adding the Arabic characters to the end of the list of characters associated with each key in Figure 5. A more attractive option for Arabic markets would be to have handsets that followed exactly the same tried and tested principle, but had Arabic markings on the keypad and presented the Arabic letters with the first few presses of a key, followed by Latin letters (if required at all) for subsequent key presses."
Obviousness over the Hagenuk MT900
i) On HTC's construction of feature (vi), which I have held to be correct, the only difference between the disclosure of the MT900 and the inventive concept of claim 1 is that the MT900 did not have SMS capability. In particular Dr Brydon accepted, correctly in my judgment, that the text entry method of the MT900 was the same as that described for the second embodiment in the specification of the 859 patent.ii) On Apple's construction of claim 1 there is a further difference. It is not known how the MT900 stored its alphabets, and accordingly there is no disclosure of storing it in the way Apple maintains the claim requires, that is to say with a different address for common letters in each language. The experts agreed that it was likely that it was done in the more efficient way, that is to say with overlap of the common letters.
Q. What I want to put to you is that it would have been obvious, that one way of doing it which would have been immediately apparent would have been to provide a different characterset for each of the different languages, even though many of the characters were common?
A. Yes, it would.
Q. It would equally have been obvious that although one could have done it that way, and the facility existed to do it that way, that would be inefficient because you would have duplication and so you would need a large number of charactersets.
A. Yes, it would.
Q. It is one of those situations, it is a little bit like it being obvious to walk to Newcastle, it is obvious to do so but everyone knows it is better to take the train?
A. Yes.
Excluded subject matter
Time estimates
Overall conclusions
i) 948a) 948 is not infringed by the HTC devices;b) Claim 1 (but not claim 2) of 948 is invalid for obviousness over common general knowledge;c) Claims 1 and 2 are invalid for excluded subject matter.ii) 022
a) Claims 1, 6 and 18 of 022 are infringed by the Arc mechanism, but 022 is not infringed by the other unlock mechanisms;b) Claims 1, 6, 9 and 18 of 022 are anticipated by Hyppönen;c) Claims 1 and 9 (but not claim 5) of 022 are obvious in the light of Plaisant;d) All the claims of 022 are obvious in the light of Neonode;e) 022 is not invalid for excluded subject matter.iii) 868
a) 868 is not infringed by the HTC devices;b) 868 is valid over Lira;c) 868 is not invalid for excluded subject matter.iv) 859
a) All the claims of 859 are invalid over Arabic TDoc;b) All the claims of 859 are invalid over the Hagenuk MT900;c) If 859 had been valid it would have been infringed by the HTC devices;d) 859 is not invalid for excluded subject matter.