Because it's obvious. No person skilled in the art would ever have to refer to the teachings of the patent in order to implement a bouncing scrollable list.
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but Jonathan Ive said it best: great design makes the solution seem obvious in hindsight. This is why so many people (wrongly) take issue with Apple's patents: they seem obvious. But the fact is that if they were so obvious, then how come Apple was (in many cases) the first to successfully implement them?
But the fact is that if they were so obvious, then how come Apple was (in many cases) the first to successfully implement them?
Take your pick:
1) Because somebody had to be first.
2) Because no other major consumer electronics executives had the Jedi-level reality distortion skills needed to negotiate with the cellular carriers.
3) Because bouncing menus need a convergence of two technologies in order to make sense: a very fast CPU or GPU, and a fast, responsive touchscreen that can detect swipes. Resistive touchscreens were never going to work well for the purpose; only Apple had the foresight to move aggressively the second that capacitive multitouch tech became feasible.
As the other poster mentioned, ideas are worth jack shit. Implementation is all that matters. If Apple hadn't done it, someone else would have. Their reward for acting quickly is self-evident, isn't it? They sold 100,000,000+ iOS devices before they ever set foot in a courtroom.
Artificial market distortion in the form of patents on trivial "innovations" is demonstrably unnecessary for Apple's success.
I'd refute that Apple are the first to invent most things. They rehash someone else's ideas (shoulders of giants stuff). Your attitude is that first to market has a monopoly, which hurts society and offends me. Algorithms can be justified being protected, but not trivialities (eg. Beveled edges, scrolling lists).
I posted earlier about knight Ridder v/s iPad (VERY similar looking devices, where Apple copied). I'm ok with that because the elements copied were simple, and frankly the best for their application at this time given technology.
You've either taken Ives out of context or he was wrong.
The idea often isn't obvious (except in hindsight) ... but ideas aren't patentable.
The implementation (that which might be patentable), on the other hand is typically something any bozo could code up in half an hour without referencing anything, and thus "obvious."
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but Jonathan Ive said it best: great design makes the solution seem obvious in hindsight. This is why so many people (wrongly) take issue with Apple's patents: they seem obvious. But the fact is that if they were so obvious, then how come Apple was (in many cases) the first to successfully implement them?