2 
Apple has just been granted a patent for 5D technology. Wait, what the hell? Has it traveled to the future and come back with something we don’t know about yet? What advanced life forms are the suits in Cupertino communicating with?
Turns out 5D is essentially an agressive marketing ploy for a patent that has gigantic range of applications for watching TV, gaming, and more. Like a Disneyland ride on steroids, the system Apple proposes harnesses gesture-controlled gaming in the style of Kinect or Wii, video-conferencing, and virtual reality gloves for what could be a super-immersive home entertainment experience. The gloves, as described, could change their resistances to electromagnetic forces, heat, or air, and more.
The patent also covers tactile feedback technology—meaning the ability to start a futuristic car or signal a device through a handprint instead of any sort of key or button. And in Apple’s version of our 5D future, touchscreens don’t necessarily need a capacitive panel; they could be pretty much any material.
What this broad-sweeping intellectual property grab would mean in terms of a real consumer product isn’t exactly clear. But one thing’s certain: Apple has entered the Matrix. [Patently Apple via CNET]
This Beautiful Hand Mixer Sadly Doesn't Actually Exist
The Most Popular Mobile OS on Earth Doesn't Exist Anymore
An Apple Slap Bracelet Patent Doesn't Tell Us Much About an iWatch
How worthless are America’s patent lawers? Grant patents for specific ideas. Not generalised bullshit. Any patent laywer who grants something like this should be fired and given a reference that reads, in full, “DO NOT HIRE.”
If someone went into a patent office and said ‘I wish to patent talking into a device and having someone hear you a distance away!’, they would at one time have been kicked out. You needed a method. Electrical transmission down a wire, a couple of ideas for the transducers, specific details that proved you weren’t wasting time and ideas. Now it seems you can patent any sodding thing.
This is the equivalent to a 5 year old drawing a spaceship with an artificial gravity device and saying “See what it does, if you copy me I will sue you!”
I feel this video is suitably apparent in Apple’s situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
Apple is a patent troll, We are luck Apple didn’t get chance to patent FRESH AIR they would be suing us all!
iAir.
im sure they have tried it. they also like getting pentents for things that already exist.
apple: killing innovation for decades
Gesture controlled gaming and some kind of glove attachments? I think Nintendo might be joining the patent wars with their Wii and NES powerglove as prior art.
Shouldnt people have to actually build something before getting a patent? I hate how you can patent an idea.
No, if I’ve come up with an idea but don’t have the skills to build it then I’ll need a patent to protect me from people who I will have to tell my idea to in order to get it made.
I agree that this kind of thing is bullshit and they should, as said above, have a method, but requiring people to be actually able to build their patented devices would kill a lot of ideas.
Not really, as somebody else will actually build the idea then patent it.
I can’t tell if you’re serious or not?
Let’s say I have an idea, it will allow people to charge their phones without being near a power source. Forever charged phones. huzzah.
I can’t build it, which means I have to go to someone who can. Before I do that, knowing the basic methods I can get a patent. I then go to the person who will build it and get it built.
If I can’t get a patent, I’ll say “Fuck it.” because the idea is worthless to me and as soon as I let anyone know what it is it’s gone and I get nothing from it.
If I can’t patent that idea I’m not going to tell anyone and it’s going to die.
Ok, so to counteract that, somebody can patent an idea that they wont even attempt to build, they just thought of it, they dont even know if they can build it.
Somebody else can build it, but cant just because somebody thought of the idea.
If you get somebody else to build it, there are these things called contracts, so you can make them sign something so they cant steal your idea.
Listen, I’m not going to argue the toss with you over whether patents are wrong or not. Unfortunately for you I’ve already won the argument with the fact that my side of it is enshrined by law, and yours only exists in these comments.
I will say however, that yes, if someone comes up with an idea then they should be able to sit on it and not build it. Patents are there to provide protection for ideas.
Also I’d like to say that you can’t just wander round and get people to sign contracts left right and center. Any self respecting industrial designer will tell you to fuck right off if you ask them to sign a non disclosure contract because they may well be working on a similar idea. The patent allows protection for everyone, not just the inventor.
Its not even 5D, which extra dimension is it expanding into to find this fifth dimension, 4D is acceptable (Length, Breadth, Height, Time) but when someone says 5D I want to see some Hypercubes dammit!
It is just a meaningless marketing term..
“Apple Just Got a Patent for a Dimension that Doesn’t Even Exist Yet” – General Zod is not going to be please if they try to sue him for existing in the phantom zone all these years.
What numpty granted that patent? It even fails prior art, since as the article states ‘harnesses gesture-controlled gaming in the style of Kinect or Wii’. Ditto video conferencing. Tactile feedback technology has also existed for some time and has been worked on in a number of universities.