Amazon Kindle dual-screen e-reader patent granted, Barnes & Noble Nook potentially in trouble
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 6th 2010 3:04PM
posted July 6th 2010 3:04PM
That's pretty sweeping -- it doesn't take much to look at the Nook and see that it has both an electronic ink display and a smaller LCD located next to it. Now, we don't know if Amazon has any plans to actually sue anyone over this patent yet, but we're guessing there's a flurry of legal activity happening at all the major e-reader manufacturers right now, and we're definitely curious to see what the fallout looks like -- remember, Barnes & Noble is already involved in a trade secret dispute over the Nook with Spring Design, which claims that B&N saw its Alex reader under NDA and then copied it for the Nook. That case isn't scheduled to wrap up before November, so there's a chance B&N and Spring Design could end up simultaneously fighting each other in one case while taking on Amazon as allies in another, which would be... messy. We'll see what happens -- while we've no doubt Barnes & Noble will put up a serious fight if it comes to that, we're curious to see if the shift away from e-reader development to general-use tablets hastens as the market contracts, margins shrink, and the cost of litigation becomes prohibitive. The ball's very definitely in Amazon's court now -- stay tuned.A handheld electronic device comprising: a housing; an electronic paper display disposed in the housing and having a first surface area; and a liquid crystal display (LCD) disposed in the housing proximate the electronic paper display, the LCD having a second surface area that is smaller than the first surface area of the electronic paper display.
[Thanks, Anand]
I bet if I walked into a B&N right now one of the nook sales people would tell me that they already had a dual screen one, just not out on display.
@admlshake The nook is dual screened. E-ink and the bottom LCD screen. Is that not "dual" screen?
@shibbybypass
I'm not interested in a touch screen, I'm interested in a dual screens for reading. And I would call the nook a one and a quarter screen.
@admlshake haha fair enough.
@admlshake
little people are still people!
It sounds like they were describing the Nook in the patent.
Well will people start realizing that eBooks don't have to have limitations of paper books? Why do you need two screens, page turning, and other redundant cr@p? I wonder how much that thing is gonna weight...
The USPTO needs legislative reform more than any other agency except for the IRS. Stay classy US Gov.
right
@sharkync What "reform" to the Patent Code do you suggest, then?
What happened to patents for real innovations?! That's it; I'm patenting a handheld triple-screen display and one of those could be 3D.
Um...obvious. I am going to go ahead and guess that there is prior art in someone's research lab. This is ridiculous, but hey, it's not "1-Click", right?
These types of patents should not be allowed. It's ridiculous that anyone can patent anything these days. Well, I'm off to patent air. That way, everyone has to pay me for breathing.
@ResidentEVO That would only work if you had the idea to patent air BEFORE it came out and everyone else started breathing it :)
but seriously, Amazon probably patented this when they were concepting the e-ink reader. I'm sure they hold a dozen other patents that they were considering at the time.
companies also do this when they start thinking of brand names, they trademark the name prior to ever releasing the product to protect their idea so they don't have to deal with people who come up with the same name idea later.
on a smaller level, people reserve domain names for company/brand names before they launch the product, and sometimes those products get killed but they retain the name. Yes, some people are squatting, but some companies never get around to launching a product, but still own the trademark/website/name/patent.
Case in point: Would you be upset that Microsoft Patented a dual screen tablet/notepad and trademarked the name Courier? They scrapped the project...but they were going to launch it. I'm guessing they still own the patents/trademarks/copyrights on all that even though they scrapped the project.
I swear the whole US government needs to be fired.
@Anatidae Yeah, that'd solve everything.
idiot.
@Anatidae
Woah, I didn't say anarchy. I said fired. Just like any failing business - you fire the management and hire competent people.
Just about every agency in the upper US government is either incompetent or corrupt. The US is run by people who have almost no accountability on their job performance.
Democracy over anarchy any day, however the government needs some sort of overhauling where accountability becomes something of a force.
Correction: the ball is in Apple's court.
Lets hope it has something to do with MS and Amazon cross-licensing deal for each other's patents.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/02/22/microsoft.deal.may.hint.at.courier.plans/
Why would they file that patent if they don't intend to use it? Anyway, beer and popcorn is ready...
Someone needs to beat the living **** out of the idiots at the PO. Seriously. No really. This is getting insane. How the hell do you get that patent. You don't have to be freaking Einstein working as a patent clerk to know that this complete BS.
***quickly files patent for an electronic ink display landing next to an Super/AM/OLED display***
@Slyk
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/kindlepatent.pdf
Read the last claim.
@frotal
those bastards...
if its digital why need two screens. why not be different. Doesnt need to copy real books
if its digital why need two screens. why not be different. Doesnt need to copy real books
Sure was looking forward to Courier as a great form-factor for e-books.
Guess those days have been over for a while, now.
Nothing to see here.
From the actual patent claims:
"What is claimed is...an elongated narrow display positioned alongside the electronic paper display, wherein the elongated narrow display includes a cursor that is movable within a plurality of positions alongside the vertical column; and a thumbwheel for moving the cursor alongside one of the graphic elements to place the corresponding element in the rectangular display in focus"
It's not a patent on any e-reader with two screens. It's a patent on an e-reader with a second 'screen' which is really just a control mechanism for switching what's displayed on the first screen. It's basically the same as the bar of buttons on Sony's non-touch readers, except instead of physical buttons, Amazon is patenting the use of an LCD display combined with a thumb wheel, to add flexibility to the controls.
So unless your e-reader's LCD display is used in conjunction with a thumb wheel to decide what will be displayed on the main screen, you really don't need to worry.
Engadget, why didn't you have Nilay look at this before rushing to print it?
@AdamWill Oh. Nilay wrote it. Holy crap, Nilay, re-take your patent law class and read the specific claims, not the abstract.
@AdamWill oh wow, I suck. They do in fact claim about fifty completely different two screen reader configurations. In one patent. None of which particularly resembles each other. I guess they decided to start with a very specific claim and work their way up to 'anything with two screens in it, bitches', so that if the general claims are struck down in a lawsuit they can fall back on the more specific ones...
@AdamWill It's okay, man! I looked at that first claim and pretty much dismissed it as well -- it wasn't until Paul asked if it could cover the Nook that I took a closer look and realized how broad those last few claims were.
Crazy, right?
@Nilay Patel yeah, it's pretty weird. Second theory: they're relying on the patent examiners making the same mistake we started out with =)
Intellectual "Property" is a corporatist sham. No one who values innovation or the true free market should support it.
@FatDrunkAndStupid How do you propose to have a market without scarcity?
@FatDrunkAndStupid Yeah, when I was in college I had friends who tried to rationalize their music/video/software piracy by denying the legitimacy of IP, too...
It will be interesting to see how Amazon decides to use this patent against Barnes and Noble. Seems highly likely they will take some type of action, at the very least imposing licensing rights fees. It seems very much like the Nook falls under the scope of this patent. In fact, while reading the patent text, I was imagining that if someone was trying to describe the Nook to me in the most technical manner possible, this is what it would sound like. And yes, I would find it darn funny if Nook and Alex are forced to license the design from Amazon. ; ) More of my thoughts about this on my blog: http://ebookreader-ben.com/amazons-4-yr-old-patent-could-mean-huge-lawsuit-for-barnes-and-noble/
I really don't understand how patents like this get through... obvious, inevitable evolution of products. Maybe I should stop investing in stocks and just start dumping money on patents. Scummy, maybe, but this is the game they've created.
@Darkroom
Exactly. Imagine being an upstart company developing a new product. Years of hard work and all of your life's savings invested. You're close to going prime time, then suddenly you get the news... the core technology, which is fairly basic, has just been patented by another company. Now what? Congratulations, that's a nice chunk of your life completely wasted.
Seriously, for a long time now patents have not been about promoting innovation. Companies simply use them to keep the competition out. A major corporation employed a friend of mine to develop new technologies that could potentially compete with their existing infrastructure. The only place where his work ever saw the light of day was at the patent office. There are absolutely no plans of ever implementing his innovative technologies.
Why is nothing being done about this? Nilay, if you happen to read this, do you see any light at the end of this tunnel? USPTO is ridiculously antiquated and needs a reform.
Nilay, did you check the prosecution history and/or take a look at the spec? It's likely that they substantially limited themselves on "electronic paper display."
@Law Jolla Nope, I checked. The prosecution history is pretty remarkable, actually -- a patent attorney friend characterized it as Amazon's attorneys "really earning their money." They had a different set of claims rejected for three years, convinced the examiner that having two different types of displays was sufficiently novel, and then went to town adding additional claims based that -- including the ones that cover the Nook -- just before it issued. Clever work.
Current patent law is a bunch of bullshit.
LCD was invented long time ago, E-ink has already invented in the past. Now Amazon patented placing LCD and E-ink next to each other.
What???
Can I patent placing a frank in direct proximity of a bun thus effectively patenting a hot dog?
What a joke...
monopoly
That's going to be bullshit if Amazon decides to sue B&N for having an eReader with an LCD display. They file the patent application in such a way that they were able to keep it a secret, and B&N could be in trouble for having the same idea and actually doing something about it?
@Nilay
That's why I really like your articles... Very through. (And I just found out that one of my good friends is your relative-- small world!)
As a former patent attorney (I too fled the business of law), the history sounds interesting and I'll go read it. It's pretty common practice to pile on the directed dependent claims once the independent is in allowable form.
@thepatentsystemboobirds
I hate to sound elitist, but almost all of the "patent system is broken" posts stem from gross ignorance of the system. By necessity, the patent world is horribly complex. (it made such a mockery of the federal judiciary that Congress had to give 35 USC it's own appellate court!)
There are areas of patent law that need reform... The problem is in almost every case, the solution is worse than the problem. There are many competing objectives here and I wish this wasn't a comment board where we could give this "debate" it's proper depth.
@Law Jolla I don't think this is elitist at all; it's exactly right.