Is Marty McFly prior art?

Is this prior art?


Marty went to the future (namely, 2015). Nike must have realized 2015 was coming up, so they got around to actually inventing this technology, and they want to protect it. On May 2, 2008, Nike filed a patent application for an "Automatic Lacing System."  And the design looks familiar.

Examination of this application has not yet begun.  The first proposed claim reads:

An automatic lacing system for an article of footwear, comprising:

a sole including a cavity;

a motor disposed in the cavity; the motor including a driveshaft; the driveshaft including at least one gear;

at least one belt engaged with the at least one gear at an intermediate portion of the belt;

a yoke member connected to the at least one belt at an attachment portion of the at least one belt;

a plurality of straps attached to the yoke member, the plurality of straps being configured to adjust an upper of the article of footwear; and

wherein the straps can be automatically moved between a closed position and a loosened position by activating the motor. 

Nike has submitted a couple of Information Disclosure Statements to provide background information to the Examiner.  I did not see Back to the Future II as a listed reference.  But that's probably ok, because the video above is likely not enabling.  But I'm glad the self-tying shoe is finally here.  And I'm ready for my flying car.

Don't nod when you can wink

What does that expression have to do with intellectual property? Well, Amazon's Jeff Bezos has invented a method of interacting with a graphical user interface by figuring out how the user's facial features change (smile, nod, etc.) and reacting to that. He filed this patent application in December, 2008, and it published last month (patent applications generally publish 18 months after they've been filed). The application, titled "Movement Recognition as Input Mechanism" has the following steps in its first method claim:

1. obtain a first image of a facial feature
2. obtain a second image of the same facial feature
3. analyze the two images to see how the facial feature has changed
4. alter information on the graphical user interface based, at least in part, on the facial feature

There are some other limitations in the applied-for claim (notably, the computer must be a portable computing device and the graphical user interface doesn't display a representation of either or both of the 2 images of the facial feature). There are also claims directed to a method of typing by essentially displaying a bunch of letters/digits on the screen and detecting a change in orientation of the screen (i.e. the user is tilting the device) to figure out which letters the user wants to enter.

So, no more 1-click -- going forward we'll look at the product we want to buy, smile at it, and 2 days later it'll show up at our front door. Cool stuff.

You can read the application either at the Patent Office or FreePatentsOnline or just skim through the pictures below.