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I'm working on a comicbook and want to publish an alternative mobile version of it where the panels are presented one by one and in a linear fashion, similar to how you would browse through images in a folder one by one.

Then I saw that Comixology has a (pending?) patent on a process called "Guided View", which is quite similar to what I'm trying to do. See this related question: Will my comic reader app violate Comixology patent?

The Guided View technology covers navigation across a page consisting of panels, and involves zoom changes, masking adjacent panels, panning from one panel to the next, etc. My approach on the other hand is to simply publish two versions of the comicbook, one in the traditional comicbook format and the other as a series of panel images.

These two approaches aren't the same (and mine is arguably trivial and not patent-worthy), yet I'm worried that I might run into legal trouble by publishing the aforementioned mobile version of my comicbook. So, does anyone know of prior art for presenting comicbook panels sequentially?

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I believe the application cited has been granted as the US patent US9672585B1. The assignee is Amazon Technologies, Inc. Claims are often changed considerably between an application and subsequent patent. You should carefully read the issued patent's claims to determine if you infringe on them. Remember, to infringe on a patent, you must implement every step of at least one claim. Thus, if a claim has steps A, B, and C and you only implement A and C, you should avoid infringement.

I am not a lawyer and this shouldn't be taken as legal advice. As always, I recommend consulting with a patent attorney to discuss matters of freedom-to-operate over existing patents.

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