Good, one less ridiculous obstacle for us poor designers who literally now have to refer to a bible of Don't's when designing every part of a screen and interaction.
This was only a preliminary office action. Apple can still appeal and modify the claims of the patent to make it more acceptable. There is a chance that the patent will survive, potentially with stronger claims that Apple can use against others.
Almost every tech news site has interpreted this incorrectly, mainly because of a lack of understand of the patent process. The Verge is one of the few to provide a balanced and well researched article on this: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/24/3549214/the-real-story-be...
The linked article you gave has some good and valid information, but it also include new problems. One is the use of the PTO's statistics to show that (as it say in large red letters), "Most reexamined patents come out with valid claims".
The problem is, that those numbers are average out from 1981 to 2012. During that time, there been several patent reforms, changes in patent scope, software patents, supreme court cases, and a radical change in the market of patents. The 11% all claims canceled is a number, but the number doesn't mean much. Ad to that, the nature of this patent (software) and I have seen any number from 11% to 95% to the statistical chance of an software patent having all claims being invalid.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 23.4 ms ] threadIt won't be over for at least several months.
The problem is, that those numbers are average out from 1981 to 2012. During that time, there been several patent reforms, changes in patent scope, software patents, supreme court cases, and a radical change in the market of patents. The 11% all claims canceled is a number, but the number doesn't mean much. Ad to that, the nature of this patent (software) and I have seen any number from 11% to 95% to the statistical chance of an software patent having all claims being invalid.