Fumesucker's Journal - Jobs and Apple Seek Patent on Operating System Advertising

Pretty soon your OS is going to be trying to sell you shit, just like a lot of websites do now.

Yet another reason not to upgrade, or to go with something like a flavor of Linux.

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/10/22/jobs-... /

Written by Gene Quinn
Patent Attorney & IPWatchdog Founder
Posted: October 22, 2009 @ 7:42 pm

Earlier today a pending non-provisional utility patent application assigned to Apple Computer published. This application, US Patent Application 20090265214, is titled Advertisement in Operating System, and covers exactly what the title implies; namely an operating system that is capable of displaying a variety of advertisements to users. You are likely to have heard of the first listed inventor, Steven Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. While it is difficult to know the purpose and strategy behind a patent application, the attorneys at Fish & Richardson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who drafted and filed the patent application certainly did a very good job describing just about every conceivable feature and alternative that could coincide with the displaying of advertisements to users of an operating system. It almost sounds funny to call the displaying of advertisements within an operating system “a feature,” particularly given the annoying, ubiquitous and ever more intrusive nature of advertising these days. In any event, the patent application is well written, albeit it written in pre-Bilski style at least with respect to the claims. If Apple does want to pursue this all the way to a patent I suspect there will be plenty of opportunity to do so, and there will certainly be allowable claims that fall within this disclosure.

The patent application explains the basics of the invention as follows (with reference numerals removed throughout when the patent application is quoted to facilitate reading):

The operating system is configured to present one or more of the advertisements to users of the computer device. In some implementations, the operating system can disable one or more functions during the presentation of the advertisements and then enable the function(s) in response to the advertisements ending. That is, the operating system can disable some aspect of its operation to prompt the operator to pay attention to the advertisement.

Egads! Using an operating system is going to become like attending an online CLE, requiring you to pay attention enough to click to continue at the appropriate time? Even worse, in the version where the operating system disables functionality not only will you need to click to continue, but you are going to have to stop doing whatever it is that you are doing and pay attention to the advertisement! In all reality, I have a hard time believing that makers of computer devices would be able to get away with totally disabling the device and forcing active attention to the advertisement, at least not without the natives picking up pitch-forks and marching on Silicon Valley. But disabling some features, perhaps like the ability to turn the advertisement off, seem just plausible enough to make me take a deep hard breath followed by a gulping swallow.

With respect to the version of the invention where you will not be able to turn off and otherwise escape the advertisement, and will need to actively do something to verify that you are listening and watching, the patent application explains:

In an attempt to ensure that the user is actually watching and/or listening to the advertisement content, the method can include a step for verifying user presence and giving proper credit (e.g., time for using the operating system, time for using the application program, time extension credit). In some implementations, the advertisement presentation module can prompt the user to confirm that he or she is reviewing the content (e.g., paying attention to the advertisement) being presented (e.g., the user is prompted to click a certain button, click a certain object or area on the screen, press a particular key or keys). In some implementations where the computer device is a cell phone or music player, the user may be prompted to press a certain button or keypad key in order to confirm that they are paying attention. In one implementation, the approaches for verifying user presence can be made progressively more aggressive if the user has failed a previous test. For example, after the user fails the test the first time, the subsequent tests can be made to appear more frequently or at varying times. As another example, the test(s) can be made more subtle so as to render them more difficult to perceive, such as by reducing the size of a message box on the screen, or by making an audio prompt more similar to the advertisement in which it is inserted. If the user fails the test in step the method can perform step over again; that is, the entire advertisement can be played again while the operating system maintains the function(s) in a disabled state. As another example, the user’s failure can first result in any available extension(s) being consumed (compare step), and only thereafter is an advertisement played in its entirety.

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More at the link..

Edited for emphasis..