USPTO invalidates key Apple patent used against Samsung

It's nice to see the USPTO strike down trivial patents, but it would be a whole lot nicer if it were done before millions of dollars in court costs were wasted.

It should have been invalidated in the course of the trial, but we have a wonderful notion of presumed validity.<p>Instead we just went through both an expensive lawsuit and a re-exam procedure for a patent that never should have been filed and hence never should have issued.<p>It begs the question: How often are damages paid for "infringement" of invalid claims?<p>Lawyers made money. The USPTO made money.<p>Businesses lost money, not to mention time.<p>Anyone who is paying licensing fees for Apple's bogus pinch to zoom patent, you can stop paying now. Thanks for playing.

USPTO hasn't officially invalidate any patents. They've filed a non-final office action. It's now up to Apple to prove they're valid.<p>USPTO almost always do this when it comes to reexaminations, they'll reject all claims, forcing the patent owners to fight harder to prove they should have those patents.<p>On USPTO site, they mention that it is very rarely that the reexamination would reject in all patents being invalided after the first office action, 70%+ of the times, a small part is rejected while the rest are re-validated as real.

USPTO trying damage limitation exercises against their awful prior art screening. Pretty pathetic, really.<p>Software patents should not exist, period.