Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola Motorola's Android handsets are infringing Apple's slide-to-unlock patent, in Germany at least, though an appeal may be lodged. Apple hasn't said it will enforce the Munich ruling - a permanent injunction - as it would need to post a bond against failure at appeal, but the judge is clear that Motorola needs to find a different …
it has an icon? is that it? do you have to swipe your finger across the screen to drag the icon and so unlock the screen?
because, if you had _read_the_article_ it says that "Motorola's Xoom tablet, as that uses a drag-finger-outside-circle unlocking which is sufficiently different from Apple's approach"
So having an icon to unlock the screen is also not the same thing as the iPhone's "drag to unlock" finger swipe motion.
Of course I've read the article, otherwise I wouldn't have seen the icon at the bottom of the screen that I need to press in order to comment. Hang on - Apple might have a patent for that too, El reg watch out, you'll be banned in Germany. Oh and in case you didn't know, yes, Windows Phone does have an icon you need to drag across the screen to unlock, but there's can go left as well as right.
This, in spades.
The concept of a bolt being thrown/retracted to lock/open something is very old news. Just because a graphical idiom is used to perform the action electornically should not be patentable in any sane work.
Copyright the graphics used? Yes, up to a point (one slidey button thing is going to look pretty similar to other slidey button things)
Trademark it? Hrmm...maybe but doubtful.
Patent? No - sod off.
I have an idea...I am going to patent a "tumbler" graphic that one rotates left/right to enter a code that unlocks the device. No one has ever done that before. There is no prior art. The patent is all mine. ALL MINE!!!!!!!!
I do like that tumbler concept, like a safe dial. Race you to the patent office - no wait I have scruples, silly me. Good luck to you Sir.
But yeah, common sence is something that frankly should not be patentable and is one area that just seems to get worse. I blame the history of XORing to get a mouse on the screen.
"a safe dial"? NAY! This is electronic and thus totally patentable. Hush, you!
In fact....I'll patent an arbitrarily sided polygon.
The sad thing is...some lawyered arsewipe will probably patent my "original" idea and make bazillions, despite the fact it is utterly without merit.
I would, but i have no intention of seeking protection from other uses while I create and sell the product I have patented, as I have no intention of making it.
You know, what the patent system was invented for!
If I chose to patent it, then I would be no better than the myriad companies now just patenting anyoldshite (C) and then waiting to find somebody to sue!
This is just getting silly. Motorola / Apple / Samsung / etc need to stop these pointless patent disputes and just agree that some things are just an industry standard. Goodness knows where we'd be now if some bored patent lawyer in the 80's decided to patent drop down menus or shortcut icons.
Just reading Florian Muller's blurb he suggests that "If MMI wants to play it safe in Germany, it implements embodiment #3 (the slide-to-unlock circle) across its entire product range. That one was cleared by the regional court and is safe at least until the end of the appeals proceeding."
So it seems there's already a solution.
"Google also patents their screen lock mechanisms"
Perhaps its out of necessity, given Apple seem more interested in putting money into their legal team than their development team at the moment, otherwise Apple will just patent every possible lock screen type to block Google from having a lock screen at all...
The bolt on my back gate.
I hope google's face unlock patent (assuming they have one) prevents Apple ever doing it cos you know they wish they'd 'invented' that one.
Slide to unlock is also bloody obvious on a touchscreen if you ask me, hardly an 'innovation'. They may as well claim to have patented drag-and-drop
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Patents refer to something new, novel and non-obvious.
For a patent to be worth a grain of salt there must be a market for the device/component described within the patent.
The most marketable devices are those which people "wonder how did I survive without that?"
An example might be.. digital cameras - they revolutionised the way we take photographs. No need to spend a fortune at the developers (that put my cousin out of business), you can take as many pictures as you want (thousands on a 16gig card), see the results on a computer and print your own selected images.
That process seems obvious NOW, but at the time the hardware/software was developed it was revolutionary.
When people say an invention is obvious it always makes me ask... "Why didn't you do it first then?"
Note in 3.x+ that there is no slide lock mechanism. You have to pick up a ball and drop it onto an action. The ball moves up and down but it just so happens the action is to the right or left of the ball so it's effectively still a slide lock. I don't know if patent worries prompted how the screen unlocks but it is distinctly different. Doubtless Google patented this.
<p>
The whole concept of a patent on a slide lock is repugnant. It is an obvious solution given the constraints of a device which works off taps and swipes.
If you knew how to read patents instead of just Android fansites you'd see Apple's patent includes a moving widget (the square sliding thing), the Neonode doesn't it just has some arrows pointing in the direction to slide the finger. Boom instant difference, patent averted.
Your examples reek of desperation.
Sliding a button to unlock things is probably hundreds of years old. Why exactly is doing this with pictures in some way worthly of the protection of the law and therefore the armed forces? This is as brain dead as the Amazon one-click patent.
I assume some folding stuff in an envelope was involved.
> Just google 'lock mechansims' then do a quick sketch showing the 'virtual' representation, patent please :-)
You have the wrong idea about what a utility (not design) patent is. Try reading one some day.
Bit more complicated than that.
> Only large organisations can afford it.
Not really, it costs about £10K. Put your savings into it. Hey if it's truly a genius idea you'll make millions. Boom, instant retirement.
Good luck my fellow geniuses, seize that Eureka moment.
I was under the impression you can't patent an idea, only a novel way of implementing it. Since the implementation of said idea is (in my opinion, of course) both obvious and trivial to someone having ordinary skill in the art, it would seem to me that the patent should not have been granted.
Let's face it, most people can come up with great ideas, it's only if the actual implementation of them requires an inventive step that patents should come in to play. I'm generally against software patents due to ongoing farce around them, however I would probably concede (if pushed), that certain very limited software patents could be reasonable. One example would be font hinting and anti-aliasing. It's all very well saying "I've had this idea of making fonts look good on a screen", but actually it took some effort to invent an algorithm to do the job.
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