Apple patents using apps during calls

Image courtesy of Flickr user Brett Jordan

COMMENTARY Apple (AAPL) is having quite the week when it comes to legally protecting the iPhone from competitors, and it's only Tuesday. First was the victory at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) over HTC. The agency approved a ban of HTC handsets that it ruled infringe on one patent out of the 10 that Apple had originally asserted against its Google (GOOG) Android-fueled competitor.

The ban doesn't start until next April and HTC said that it will remove the infringing feature by then, so its business won't face disruption. As patent blogger Florian Mueller notes, Apple would need a set of such enforceable patents for real "competitive impact." But the company keeps getting broad and fundamental patents on basic smartphone features. And its latest, granted today, is another doozy: the ability to swap to an app while maintaining a phone call.

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Drop that call

Patent number 8,082,523, called Portable electronic device with graphical user interface supporting application switching, has a vital independent claim that is much broader than it looks on first reading:

A method, comprising: at a portable electronic device with a touch screen display: displaying on the touch screen display a first user interface for a phone application during a phone call; detecting activation of a menu icon or menu button during the phone call, in response to detecting activation of the menu icon or menu button, replacing the first user interface for the phone application with a menu of application icons including an icon for the phone application and an icon for a non-telephone application; maintaining the phone call while displaying the menu of application icons on the touch screen display; detecting a finger gesture on an application icon in the menu of application icons other than the phone application icon; in response to detecting the finger gesture on the application icon other than the phone application icon, displaying a corresponding application user interface on the touch screen display while continuing to maintain the phone call and modifying the corresponding application user interface to include a switch application icon that is not displayed in the corresponding application user interface when there is no ongoing phone call; detecting a finger gesture on the touch screen display on the switch application icon; and in response to detecting the finger gesture on the switch application icon, replacing display of the corresponding application user interface with the first user interface for the phone application while continuing to maintain the phone call.

Breaking it down, here's the list of steps the patent actually covers:

1. During a call on a mobile device with a touch screen, with the phone user interface showing, the users touches either a menu button or an icon.

2. The device replaces the phone interface with a menu of application icons, including the phone icon.

3. A user's finger gesture chooses another app.

4. The app's interface comes up, all the while not dropping the call. The interface includes a "switch application icon" only when a phone call is occurring.

5. The user performs a finger gesture on the switch application icon, taking the user back to the phone interface.

There are also dependent claims that extend this concept in various ways. For example, the switch application icon could appear in the menu of application icons only when a phone call is underway. The menu icon or button could also simultaneously activate the speaker function, so the user can watch the screen and still hear the person.

Psychological advantage

You have to admire the craft of the lawyers on this one. Although the main claim is quite specific, it manages to nail down the steps in just broad enough a way to make to clumsy for a competitor to work around. There might be non-infringing ways to do something similar. Displaying a list of app names instead of icons during the phone call might be different enough. Having the switch app icon always there but dimmed when there is no phone call could be another way out.

But the point of such an application isn't to make it impossible for an Android competitor to offer an equivalent vital feature. After all, how often do you find it necessary to use an app in the middle of a phone call? The point is to force other companies to implement the feature in a way that is clumsy, inelegant or cumbersome. Scrolling through a list of names rather than a list of icons looks bad. And looks mean a lot when the subject is marketing consumer electronics.

The more rough edges Apple can force into Android and the more it can make other manufacturers omit functions -- the HTC case is just one example, and Apple has many more lawsuits running -- the more Apple can position the iPhone and iPad as the elegant and desirable consumer choices.

Whether this patent, the recent location services one, or others granted since getting into court with competitors, Apple continues to harvest a collection of legal clubs that can keep other handset manufacturers tripping time after time. It has yet to raise all these clubs in court, but it could -- and probably will in time.

Will that ultimately knock Android off the market? No. But the tactics could further force other vendors to focus on lower margin business, preserving the profit feeding grounds for Apple.

[qwauerndg]

***** apple

[joelschl]

This is as absurd as attempting to patent the process of turning on a light in your home! The patent system is broken and needs to be fixed!

[mnd999]

This is just pre-emptive multi-tasking, AmigaOS is prior-art.

[rdean]

This isn't quite right. According to my reading, this patent covers the introduction of application switching icons. For example, an application that can be used whether or not a phone call is active would have a button "Return to call" that would allow quickly switching back to the phone app.

There are elegant ways of accomplishing the same thing that don't require the patented technology. For example, webOS's card metaphor obviates the need for buttons.

[eriksherman]

It's more that the patent covers swapping between the UIs of the phone and the app, so long as you're using a button or an icon on a menu. In other words, during the call, you press a button or icon, get taken to a menu of app icons, then choose one and swap back and forth.

[jhedlind]

Why is Apple allowed to patent something that Android users have had since Android 2.0? My T-mobile Mytouch 3g always allowed me to return to the home screen and launch any application I wanted while a call was in session. Of course there were always limitations. Applications requiring network access like Google Maps ran slow as dirt. And games would become unplayable while the phone was handling a call. Getting to another application is certainly not a "NEW FEATURE OR IDEA" that Apple can patent.

Putting a button on the phone interface screen is a software feature. The phone application, and the nine button keypad, and anything else on a smartphone is just an application. Since there are about 500 ways to bypass this without putting a button on the screen which Apple suggests is it's own idea, this patent is trivial. Android developers would be smarter to implement this with a motion on the handset, just like the way an Android puts the screen to sleep when you hold the phone to your ear.

Further, since the idea is not new and of Apple's own design the patent application is trivial and unenforceable.

[eriksherman]

The patent goes back through a series of filings to 2007, which is before Android 2 came out.

[toby.fernsler]

I've been doing that with my Treo for forever. It's called multitasking.

[jackobyte]

what a joke!

[venusvegasvada]

I like Apple products, but they were a big lobbyist that pushed for years to change our Patent and Trademark office law from the old system (we had since the beginning) to the European system. A change that Obama signed off on in Sep of 2011. This throws all the small inventors under the bus and REALLY gives the ball to the Corps. That was a sad day for American Inventors.

[tmtoomuch]

Erik, you've missed the obvious. the IPhone and Android are both single page display devices. It's as if neither platform ever heard of windows. Once these two behemoths have windows (oh gee how hard is that?), then most of these UI issues (and their patents) just die. Let's see Apple try to patent two apps on the screen at once - oooh. I'm sure they'll try - much like every other company that uses the USPTO patent system as a license to extort - they have no pride.

[eriksherman]

I would disagree. The UI issues aren't a matter of OS. (iOS, after all, is pretty close to Mac OS.) It's the device configuration - only so much you can see on the screen.

[slobra232v]

How would things be if you could only use your windshield wipers or your headlights at the same time. Apple is just scared that they are going to lose the phone market. If both HTC and Samsung had not surpassed apple in phone market share these arguments would never be brought about.

[eriksherman]

I'll disagree. The patents go back to the first year that the iPhone was available. This is a strategy that is far more than a reaction to Android's growth in popularity.