Someone may remember the scene that Jobs compared his Apple TV remote to other triditional ones and laughed at their big sizes and crowded buttons. Someone may argue that too few buttons are not convenient at all since you cannot directly access some functions such as you cannot dial a channel number directly. So my invention comes. It further reduces the buttons to zero by adding a touch board (see pictures below), yet you can access every function directly. (See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEOHD3IQ9w&context=C486d83dADvjVQa1PpcFMu BUbl2JEKI9JdP-ewgOn9UgxH4oQS-90= or http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzYyNDc5NDQw.html ) What's more, you don't need to observe your hand at all. YOUR EYES ARE FIXED ON TV SCREEN. I hope either Apple or his compititors see this. Can I hear some comments?
I applied a national patent in China. But there's no restriction outside China so I hope the device would become a reality in recent few years. It would have the same level user experience as iPhone or iPad.
It's cool but it'd be a shame for people outside of China to see this post and steal it, can you patent it everywhere?
As far as I know, I can apply an international patent right after the Chinese one, provided it's within one year's period. But that period has already expired, so the device/method will be freely used anywhere outside China. (I'm not familiar with international patent applying, and I think the fee would be quite high.) However there would be no stealing, since you cannot apply a patent for known or public things, unless you can prove it is you who published them. (Also, there are deadlines.)
well this idea in itself is not new. there are hundres of different touch based remotes with different input methodes. using simple gestures is not an invention. and if one invents technology like gesture based touch technology ot certainly nit only applies for a remote but for every kind of tech gadget. i would assume the hole touch based tech is already more than covered with patents that cover "your" idea there.
As far as I know, there's no such touch based remote yet. There are remotes using touch screens, or remotes using touchpad to deliever simple gestures, but there's no such devices work like the video shows. Patent docs are well defined. Maybe you can define a specific gesture that is not currently used as your patent, but you cannot say all gesture based ideas are yours even if you are the first one who comes to the idea of gesture control. And in my case, if you finished watching the video, you'll know it's not gesture control indeed. I named it 'anchor touch' and the definition is well described in several items as the patent guidelines required. Now I need not to care the problem of whether they are enough for a patent any more since after so long time, the patent is officially made public. That is, it's officially agreed as a patent And as a matter of fact, why so far there is no such device on shelf that can access all TV functions SO DIRECTLY yet WITHOUT A GLIMPSE OF YOUR HAND? If this still can be described as already "covered" by existing ideas, that would be strange.
And by the way, I don't think it is a patent problem if a developer makes an app that works like the way the remote works. Parents are generally said for concrete products rather than pure methods. Hopefully, however, every new TV set needs a standard remote accessory even if users can use their smartphones for the job and throw the orginal ones away.
Believe it or not, smart TV is the next wave innovation no less than smartphone. I just mark my prediction here
