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Apple Granted Patent For Slide To Unlock
generalhavok writes "The United States Patent & Trademark Office has approved Apple's patent on the slide to unlock gesture used on iOS devices. Interestingly, this patent was earlier dismissed in Europe due to prior art. With many Android phones using a similar slide gesture, it will be interesting to see how this new patent will affect the patent wars between Apple and Android vendors."
Go away apple!
I'd agree with Europe, sorry Apple, that boat sailed, slide unlock is now "just the way its done" ... perhaps Henry Ford should have sued anyone who dared put black paint on their cars?
Manufacturers will simply ignore US patents everywhere else in the world and provide a crippled product with various functions disabled for the US market if this sort of nonsense continues. It strikes me the US patent office still thinks its 1950 with the US deciding the direction of technological advances. Someone should throw some strong coffee in their faces and wake them up to the reality of the 21st century before they fuck up US industry for good.
(And I'm not a US citizen).
Why do they manage to get patents like this.
Google has it with their home screen....a logo, a text box and 2 buttons.
Thought we were intelligent species.
fuckers, americans with their USPTO are fuckers. Apple bought them, that's clear now that they ignored EU findings.
This just in: Apple patents the element with an atomic number of 8, also known as oxygen. You are now required to pay $1.99 for every litre of oxygen you consume. iOxygen is currently only available in the US and UK via the iTunes store. Citizens of other countries are kindly requested to stop breathing.
Doest it cover all slide gestures, like slide to answer, decline?
If not, then can't we just say that from now on nobody lock's their phones. They just use the sliding gesture to get to their home page?
Is that still free to use, or do I owe money to some "innovative" patent troll?
To The US Patent Office
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Uh yeah, can you say prior art?
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-briefcase-lock-image16422460
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWeZOS8ta04
that everyone's patent laws were brought sharply up to date by restricting the term to TWO YEARS instead of the hugely anachronistic 20.
Here is an article from the FOSS Patents Blog with some details on the case ruled on in last August in the Netherlands, which is what I guess is being referred to as "earlier dismissed in Europe". It's certainly amazing how one judge can say "this clearly existed before" and another can say "no it didn't" based on the same info.
I think someone already beat them to it.
Nothing to see here. Except perhaps the crazy types who occasionally show up to try and defend this insanity.
I admit to only a quick scan through of the patent doc - but if they're 'predefined' paths, whether or not this is dismissed as prior art, does it count as a predefined path if you nominate your end points to swipe, or just have a swipe in some general direction e.g. left right, or up/down anywhere on the screen... then there was the Android style of sensing a swipe pattern. Would these fall foul? or only an iOS style "here is the predefined one way to unlock" built in to the OS?
...now I have to get rid of chain lock on my house door.
How is it possible for the USPTO to grant the patent when there is prior art (which doesn't matter where it was done first)? This seems like a big 'here you have some cash boy and grant us the patent'. So no matter what, they should fire a lot of people at USPTO as they are NOT doing their work as it should (or because they got a bribe or they just didn't search enough).. So on the otherhand it won't be difficult to get the patent invalidated again as it has prior art..
Does this mean that Nokia's physical slider for unlocking phones is patentable? I wonder if Nokia has a patent for that and if not, whether USPTO would grant one?
patent a way you move your hands? is it jsut me or is it getting a lil silly. im gonna patent heavy breathing.....
All I see is "wahh, waah, we want to be a monopoly!" I hear that doesn't get people attention from the government at all.
Move sig!
Given that the Neonode N1M is likely to be considered prior art, how would one go about getting the patent ruled invalid?
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
that everyone's patent laws were brought sharply up to date by restricting the term to TWO YEARS instead of the hugely anachronistic 20. http://xn--21-9kcepstre5j7bf.xn--p1ai/
I know what you mean but you have it backward. Ford was trolled by the Apples of his day (the low volume high cost carmakers) who claimed to have patented everything from the wheel up. He had to spend years and a lot of money fighting them. He won, and the car was democratised. Whatever his faults, Henry Ford ought to have some special place as a Slashdot hero, because in a sense he "open sourced" the motor car.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Announced 1Q, 2005
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-KS2kfIr0
Go to 4:00 to see the slide to unlock in action
Now Apple requested the patent on December 2005, I am guessing some form of prior art should kill that.
This only makes my determination to never buy anything Apple related stronger. Yes, other corps are "evil" too, sometimes patenting stuff which is too obvious, but this is one shining example of ignorance and greed (USPO also continues to "amaze" me). Apple which I known for openness and will of providing amazing tech has grown into controlling monster of greed. It seems that most IT business success stories in US ends up like that.
I won't even bother to comment about obviousness of this patent. Maybe there was a reason why Jobs died from cancer.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
While a lot of patents are nonsense and software patents in general, it still amazes me how fast things are now adapted in the case of the iphone. We would still have phones with thousand of buttons and switches if apple would not have shown an other way. The sliding idea to unlock the device was new and the engineer who has invented it should has his or her invention protected for a while. Innovation should be rewarded for a couple of years but then freed up. It is the time frame which is a problem. Intellectual property and patent protection should last only a couple of years, but enforced strongly. This gives the artist or inventor a living for a few years. 10 years maximum. After that, the technology or art should go in the public domain. The inventor or artist will be forced to become creative again. I do not know how fast the code for the iphone could have been adapted and copied so fast by others. The only obvious mechanism which comes to mind is that today when we give email and other communication services more and more to external companies, this information is also mined. An apple engineer using an external free email service for example might give away a lot of code just by communicating with others about the projects. In the case of the iphone, the adaption went too fast. When introduced in 2007, the iphone had a lot of innovative features. The interface,including the way how to interact with the device would be unlocked, was new. 2010, three years after, almost identical competitors were already outselling them. Of course this is good for us customers, but the question is, whether in the future, there will be an other boost of innovation from companies. I mean innovation, not just copying or refining what has been done before. If the risk that your innovation is copied in 3 years and outselling yours, there is no point any more for such exploits. For apple it still worked, but who will dare such a thing again? Again: protect intellectual property, new ideas and new art vigorously, go after copy-cats, freeloaders and rip-offs, but then free the technology or art after a decade.
DeathElk, the time has come to reveal our presence to the Earthlings. Our species has been observing humans for some years. While our species should have risen above the threatening sounds you make, I well understand your sentiment. Our time observing humans is now up, we are leaving.
Humans, here is the report we sent to our home system about your species. Your your own sake, humans, I hope you are able to learn your true nature.
nobody is that stupid. the problem is how *can* we do anything about it. the people obviously doesn't mean anything anymore. now it's just business as usual....
we had this gesture already way back when on the Apple ][e.
alas - not graphical but <a target="_blank" href="http://textfiles.com/art/afinger.txt">ascii art</a>.
Are the people who approves this kind of patent considered to have intelligence?
Apple uses slide to unlock. Android uses drag to unlock.
Anyone who isn't a fool can see that...
Though I guess Apple users can't.
Yet people continue to buy Blackberry and use the full keyboard on it. People still buy Android phones with full hard keyboards. I only just retired mine, in favour of an Xperia Play, a phone with around 20 keys mostly dedicated to game play and it's a hell of a lot better than trying to play with touch controls. Apple haven't eliminated phones with 'thousands of keys' because sometimes a lot of keys works better. And that assumes Apple invented touchscreen phones, which the didn't - there were touch screen smartphones on sale before the iPhone was even announced. Apple did touch control well and they patented the life out if it but they didn't actually invent very much. Apple are just as brazen as Microsoft about stealing other peoples research and passing it off as their own.
Why don't we see a drugs manufacturers killing themselves with an 'oval shaped pills' (or as they would put it 'an anatomically efficient vessel for introduction of effective chemicals into the gastro-intestinal system') patent?
What the hell is the department of the Patent Office responsible for SW doing?!
For the last decade, America has been hiring engineers from China and India. Decent people, HOWEVER, the issue is that many of them have not see the developments of physical and virtual entities over their lifetime. As such, they have little to no prior knowledge within the west (note that in another 10 years, they will be of use, but may have left America by then). Yet, they have to rule on it, while being given very little time to judge the patent. Just look at the occurring prior art discussions that we have on this site. Over and over and over, we see that USPTO does not know about FUNDAMENTAL prior art that destroys these patents that are granted on a whim.
in europe should have been trashed from the beginning just because you cannot patent "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers;" :)
I love you europe. the old continent laws are always ahead compared to US
I think the most easy way to get rid of USPTO policy would be to patent "patent acceptation model" in a so subtle way they could not even detect it , or something like "a method to consume air for biological devices" (ie:breathing).
I slide to unlock my wife. Now searching the attic for my Betamax home videos so I can demonstrate prior art.
I work in the biotech industry and I want to patent your genes. To be a winner, simply reply with your gene sequence and contact information.
If something in your genes leads to a multimillion dollar advancement in medicine, you will win an all expense paid trip to the nearest Disneyland for yourself and three others. You'll have the additional reward of knowing that you've saved precious lives and enriched not only me, but a few CEOs and many investors and attorneys.
You don't have to be smart or work hard to initiate a patent, all you need is an unusual gene. You are special and we want to reward you for it.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Look. This is an attempt to take wholesale ownership of other people's code. Plain and simple. They want to do on to others what they do not want to happen to them. Microsoft is doing the same thing. They want to own _all_ useful code in the marketplace. It is their strategy of fighting against the freedom for you to write your own code. A push back against open source and free software and a way to raise the barrier of entry for any small newcomers to the marketplace. They have said over and over again that Open Source "does not respect intellectual property rights" and they will use litigation to drive up the cost of producing anything with open source. Apple and Microsoft have been beating their chest a lot about this. They have said they were going use software patents in this way and guess what they are doing it. The days when you can freely write code without Apple and Microsoft trying to stop you in your tracks are coming to an end.
in patent No-No Land?
> it will be interesting to see how this new patent will affect the patent wars between Apple and Android vendors.
Hopefully by an immediate challenge and re-examination followed swiftly
by it being revoked.
Didn't Google manage to get a lot of Oracle's Java patents revoked? You'd hope the
same process could be applied.
After of course first forcing Microsoft to license it - so that every winpho sold will
pay Apple a royalty - that would just be poetic justice.
don't be a spelling loser
I had a Windows smartphone bought by work in the days before the iPhone. It was all touch screen controlled. Only buttons on it were power, volume, and one that you could assign to the feature of your choice. I didn't particularly care for it on account of it had a pretty poor touchscreen. You tended to use a little stylus that lived in the antenna to control it, though you could use your fingers.
None the less it was a phone without "thousand of buttons and switches."
For that matter, I'm not so sure this has been a positive move. I do like that touch screen phones can get you a bigger display and still be thin, but man I miss physical keyboards. I have an Android phone now and it is cool and works well and all that, but it can't compare to the text entry speed of my former Curve 8330.
Full touch screens are a tradeoff, not an advancement in my book. If you like the tradeoff that's wonderful, but don't pretend like it is the One True Way(tm) just because Apple likes it.
Rub to (un)lock.
Press to (un)lock.
Pull to (un)lock.
Push to (un)lock.
Blow to (un)lock.
Suck to (un)lock.
Is it just me or does it really sound crazy that these are patentable ideas?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Can someone please tell my why this does not count as prior art??
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Patents give advantage to some, and damage everyone. (cit.)
Lick to unlock.
It's not as popular, but I can call their patent a ripoff of mine!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The Vanguard of Idiocracy.
Because I think it's a far cleverer and more useful idea than Apple's slide to unlock idea. Having a unique, customizable unlock pattern gives you a significant degree of security (unless you often have greasy fingers) while at the same time being only slightly harder to execute than Apple's swipe. One of the things I like best about my Nexus S over my old iPhone is the ability to keep it secured while still being able to unlock it without looking at it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'm patenting the following, the pulmonarius.
The patent describes a method of chemical exchange by which carbon based humanoid life may expunge dyoxygen carbonate through a series of two (or one with minimal function) pouches lined with a series of thin-walled air sacs. Since this invention is a complex medical procedure and one with significant market potential, I think patenting this to prevent any unauthorized use is a wise choice.
I created this invention entirely on my own without any outside help from others, and it's taken me a lifetime of work to perfect.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
That is just straight up ignorant. The patent office should laugh them out the door when they submit a stupid patent like that.
Next they will patent hearing a voice through a phone by putting it to your ear.
Shakespeare had one of his characters in the play Henry VI utter "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Of course no one would urge that in real life. But it seems like Shakespeare missed a couple of even bigger evil bastard fuck-ups from hell. Politicians and bureaucrats.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I only barely understand x86 assembler, mostly from poring through source code of bootloader applications.
What does throwing a value of 2 at int 80 over and over again actually do? Make an obnoxious noise?
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
How about I patent the act of patenting, and patent trolling. Everyone who makes a patent is infringing, and anyone making patents for trolling or not intending to implement their stuff etc are as well.
How about having the government use eminent domain to seize the patents covering industry standard practices? If this is not a good use for eminent domain, nothing else is.
Really?! Is that your final answer? Apple fanboys are worse than Nazis? Do you think you may be taking it a bit far? I'm looking for something to indicate this is a joke. . .
If it gives you an idea what kind of idiots work for the USPTO, let me give you an example:
A company I know of applies for a copyright to a word (not common everyday word, but the name of a famous person from old times). There are hundreds upon HUNDREDS of other patents that were granted the copyright because each one of them fits into a different category. Let me repeat, it's a one-word name, and hundreds of copyrights WERE granted. The copyright that this particular company applied for was not only under a different category than all of the above, but it even had another acronym attached to the name, so it was TRULY unique.
USPTO denied it because they said (and I can't recall the phrasing exactly) already granted to someone else. There is no one else that applied for it!!!!!! *bang head*
So moral of the story is, you can have prior art all you want. You can LACK prior art all you want. The ones who make the decision at the USPTO are individuals, and the whole process doesn't have a voting system. It's just a "so-and-so decides that you are the first; you're clear to go."
The USPTO needs a damned voting panel system. Public voting would be the best, but hell, that ain't happening in this lifetime. At least an internal voting panel would be nice.
By making quality stuff.
Apple could start making crap and coast on brand for a while before people got wise, but that obviously hasn't happened yet.
I thought the two main criteria for a patent are: It hasn't been done before (prior art) and it's non-trivial. Like as in holy crap! What you just made there is awesome!! Please patent how you did this so society at large benefits from this and it is never lost!!
I don't think a swipe to start using a touch interface qualifies...
Along the same veins, it would have also been possible to, say (were such a thing practiced when the english language was evolving), patent putting the letter 'e' being at the end of a word to change the sound of the vowel inside the word.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'd like to see touch screen devices that use a sequence of taps as the "unlock" gesture, and the default password should be the good old "shave and a haircut, two bits" knock.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The real problem is not that anyone cares how stupidly lawyered up google and apple and the like have to be int their day to day operations. The real problem is that we're creating an intellectual oligarchy that prevents normal, actual human beings from participating either in innovation or the market place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWeZOS8ta04&feature=player_embedded
Absolutely ridiculous that a gesture can be patented.
And this sort of BS ties into their solving the Innovators Dilemma how exactly? Is Apple's left hand communicating with it's right?
Good. At least now we can see a button.
USA is also trying to push its IP bullshit onto other countries and make them enforce it as well. This is just a sign of trying to remain relevant while really having nothing at all to offer.
Twinstiq, game news
Your first thought is to criticize Apple? Seriously?
That's like criticizing dog fighting by blaming the dogs.
I'd really really really like to see Apple challenge HP's list of mobile OS patents. That would be so much fun!
Within reasonable limits, the greater the number of customizable control options there are in a device, the better for power users. It's useful to be able to press or hold a button and pop up a calculator while using some other app. It's handy to be able to do a gesture and pop up a notepad. It's efficient and pleasant to be able to pick up a turned off device, directly press a calendar or email button, optionally press an unlock button (or do an unlock gesture--I think it's best to have both options), and then have the device both turned on and showing the calendar or email.
It's often useful to have multiple ways of doing something. Say, I'm on a PC and typing something in a textbox, like this comment. I want to change the second-last word I typed. The fastest thing for me to do is probably to press ctrl-left, ctrl-backspace, retype (with space, alas), ctrl-right (or ctrl-end). I want to change a word further back. The fastest thing to do is to reach for a mouse, move the cursor there, double click, retype, and then press ctrl-end. I don't want to be limited to one of the two ways of doing things, because each one is optimal in its own context, and what works better in which context differs from user to user, making flexibility important (while it's a good idea to make commonly used functions more easily available, what functions are more often used differs from user to user). And as one uses a device a lot over the years, a power user will develop a lot of optimized patterns of usage that use different control/input modalities to accomplish the same task depending on the context.
We do that outside of technological contexts. Sometimes I nod, sometimes I say "Yes" or "Yeah" or "OK", sometimes I grunt "Uhu", and there is a time and place for each. Sometimes to pick up an object from the ground, I stoop down and sometimes I pick it up with my foot. Flexibility (in multiples senses of the word) is worth having.
For any portable computing device I own, if a magician were to offer me an additional fully customizable hardware button for it, without reducing the size of any of the existing buttons or the screen, and without making the device noticeably harder to hold or keep in my pocket, I'd go for it. Of course, this wouldn't go on to infinity, which is why in the first paragraph I said "within reasonable limits". My Treo 700P is closest to reasonable limits, though not quite there yet. (There is unexploited space for hardware number and punctuation buttons.)
It's good to have both lots of hardware buttons and a touch screen.
Of course, it's different for non-power users who are intimidated by lots of buttons or icons. It might also be different for users who change their device regularly, since it takes a while to develop the optimized usage patterns and customization, and may not be efficient if one switches devices--or, worse, platforms--every two years or so.
Any device without a keyboard you're going to swipe something to do everything include unlock function. I used to be fairly pro-patient (I just thought they lasted too long), but BS like this is moving me anti-patient.
So does this mean that bathroom stalls, with a sliding lock, have to remove the lock? Not that a sliding lock on a door is the same as that on an iphone. The iPhone screen has more fecal matter on it.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
The iPhone was a huge achievement in industrial design, miniaturized UI (including the slide lock), supply chain, distribution, and negotiations with a major carrier. I do not think any other company than Apple could have pulled off the iPhone in 2007 and successfully shipped millions of them. It's amazing how quickly Apple's achievements are taken for granted. They are so successful in simplifying technology that the simplification quickly turns into "obvious" for people. But before Apple did it, none of this was obvious. I distinctly remember that when Steve Jobs said that the pointing device for the iPhone would be the finger, it was a novel idea and I was full of doubt whether it could really be pulled off. I distinctly remember thinking that the slid lock was a unique, elegant solution to a problem, and yes, I think it deserves patent protection if no one else had it before or at the same time Apple had it. I mean "This is how you turn it on" was part of their commercials. Those commercials wouldn't have worked unless "how you turn it on" truly was a novel and unique idea.
if a dog acquires patent for the way it marks its territory?
I have a one finger gesture to Apple I'd like to patent.
If anyone actually read the patent, one could see that infringing on the patent can easily be resolved (say on an Android device) by simply not showing the unlocking animation, or implementing it in a very different way. Apple is not patenting the swipe to unlock feature by itself... it seems to me more like a look & feel thing over strictly functionality, so it isn't nearly as serious as people are making it out to be. But still if this was done before in the exact way Apple has done it, then it should be invalidated.
Does the patent cover the way the switch sometimes bounces back to OFF after you've flicked it to ON, in a kind of realistic, inertial, but completely unhelpful manner?
So isn't a chain lock and a dead bolt both technically prior art? :p
You shouldn't call people idiots. Your post shows your pretty ignorant. First the United States Patent and Trademark Office does not grant copyrights.
Second, they applied for Trademark for the name. TRADEMARK TRADEMARK TRADEMARK
Trademark == Name of product for trade purpose. Used so you know who you are buying things from.
Copyright == Exclusive rite to distribute and make copies of a work of art. (Novels, Paintings, Code)
Patent == Exclusive rite to sell or use an invention. (New gadgets)
Patents are not granted copyright!!! People and Corporations are granted copyrights, trademarks, and patents!!
I call first dibs if it is not already taken. I will patent the "pinch to unlock gesture". Most screens will recognize a two figure gesture (Multi-touch) Instead of sliding your finger to the side, bring both fingers together on the screen to unlock. I understand it may be difficult for a user missing fingers, and we may be able to come up with a resolution for that, but this will correct the issue for now. When it is pattented, I will open source the patent and then anyone can use it. Sound like a plan?
i'm going to patent nose picking.
using ones index finger to remove obstruction from nostril, figure 1a.
and then sue people that i catch picking their nose at red lights.
seriously, this ridiculousness that masquerade as USPTO needs to stop.
You are all witnesses to this prior art. I hereby patent the slide unlock with a middle finger to express how I feel about Apple!
I had a Palm Pilot IIIx and to unlock it you had to slide the stylus from left to right at the bottom of the screen. That is proof that Apple is just another patent troll
I just set my Palm TX (ca. 2005) to unlock with a swipe plus a tap using only stock stuff. :-) How did I do it? I set the password to a space, and turned on full-screen graffiti input. Now, to unlock it, I just needed enter a space, and then tap on "OK". And with full-screen graffiti input, you enter a space by swiping right. (OK, you have to make sure you don't swipe too far--the swipe needs to stay in the relevant alphabetic subdivision.
With the TealLock PalmOS app, I could even set a quick password that wouldn't need to tap the "OK" button. I assume Graffiti will still work. So, you wouldn't even need to tap on "OK". You can then use any sequence of gestures that are a part of the Graffiti alphabet to unlock then. So you could unlock with a swipe-right (space), a swipe-down (i), a swipe-up (!), a right-side-up U (u), an upside-down U (a), a backwards alpha (x), etc. TealLock's Quick Lock feature came in before version 5.30, which was released in October, 2004.
I don't know if it counts as animation exactly, but Graffiti will draw a line following the touch contact.
fuck apple
The patent only covers a specific manner of implementing "slide to unlock." The first claim is reproduced below. If you slide to unlock without moving the image with the user's finger, you don't infringe If you slide to unlock without requiring the user start at a "predefined location," e.g., if any left to right movement works, you don't infringe. If you slide to unlock without requiring the user terminate the gesture in a specific region on the display, you don't infringe. Read the claims people. They are the only part of a patent that matters.
1. A method of unlocking a hand-held electronic device, the device including a touch-sensitive display, the method comprising: detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location corresponding to an unlock image; continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact while continuous contact with the touch screen is maintained, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; and unlocking the hand-held electronic device if the moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display results in movement of the unlock image from the first predefined location to a predefined unlock region on the touch-sensitive display.
for student lawyers. Sue to have shitty patents overturned (on behalf of the US public or w/e) where you have no chance of loosing. Big plus on your resume. USPTO should solicit public expertise. Post the patent application on the website and ask for prior art etc. Additionally, if a patent is found to be grossly invalid, the examiner who granted it should be held accountable. Maybe investigated for corruption and/or incompetence.
404: sig not found.
first to file usa
The code is patented, by the way.
Table-ized A.I.
I'll send a "gesture" patent to the Patent Office. You'd have to pay me royalties after a typical commute.
Table-ized A.I.
"Patent for a door with a mechanical handle that may be opened via gestures performed on the handle. The door is opened if contact with the handle corresponds to a predefined gesture for opening the door."
First to File, not First Use. Prior Art doesn't matter anymore. If it's not already patented, it doesn't count.
Honestly Slide to Unlock is the most awful, horrible, annoying, misfeature in the entire iOS system.
Please for the love of god Apple, let me disable this horror.
There is a perfectly good physical switch on the phone which has never, ever, been pushed accidentally. I just want to be able to pick the damn phone up and push a button and have it ON and READY TO USE. I do not want to have to orient it using two hands and perform a careful gesture with no tactile feedback FOR NO EFFING GOOD REASON before I can do anything with the device.
They are welcome to this patent, as I can't imagine ever actually wanting this feature.
Based on how negative of an effect this feature has on iPhone use, I can only assume they have also filed for patents like the one in the subject line, as well as Hit-yourself-in-the-genitals-with-a-baseball-bat-to-unlock, Strangle-a-kitten-to-unlock, and Feed-a-baby-to-a-dingo-to-unlock, all of which could be only marginally worse than the current implementation.
G.
As The Neonode N1m phone had a slide-to-unlock feature that predated the first Apple patent by more than a year. A Dutch court ruled that the slide to unlock patent was invalid because of this very device. Don't expect any Apple lawsuits to be successful.
Incidentally, what tags do people use for stories like this?
I've been using "patentabuse", and also "patenttroll" for more egregious behavior.
Any better suggestions?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Unfortunately its not just the USA that suffers. Here in Australia, thanks to the "free trade agreement" which is anything but that... US Patents are enforceable in Australia, despite our own patent office being pretty good. Im not sure if Apple did sue Samsung in Australia for American patents, but the whole system is not good. So now I guess slide to unlock is enforceable here, despite the fact you couldnt patent it here. Now theres a great system :(
Blame a toad in the US Patent Office. But not Apple. Nooooooooooo.
There's some interesting reading to be done on the earlier February case. I can't link to the actual document, but you can use USPTO PAIR (their public information access system) to read the correspondence. Instructions on how to use the system are here: http://intellogist.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/using-uspto-public-pair-part-1/ If you get past the recaptcha and enter "7,657,849" after choosing the "patent" radial button, you can get to the USPTO record. Click the "Image File Wrapper" tab, and check out, among other things, the "Applicant Arguments/Remarks Made in an Amendment" document filed 6/10/2009. Here, looks like the examiners tried to make a rejection on previous gesture patents, but apple's claims specifically state "moving an unlock image along a pre-defined path."
The screen is 'locked' to prevent errant touching from activating. It would be unlocked by a gesture, something non-random. A slide is the most obvious gesture. Who couldn't figure out that this was 'obvious'
My cell phone does this as a default action (Samsung t456) which was developed about 10 years ago.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You mean Boeing doesn't already have this patent? (Anyone who has ever flown overseas *would know* what I am talking about.)
It seems this patent, in it's generalities, lends itself to prior art. In addition to the Neonode N1 phone in 2002, there was a Palm app in 2001 by company PDABusiness called Gridlock. The app used finger "gestures" on the Palm "touch-sensitive display" to match a "predefined" pattern in a 5x5 grid. This patent describes it may include an "unlock" image. This was an arrow on the first iPhone? Perhaps implementing a padlock icon was also too narrow for Apple? Time will tell, but if nothing else, this ruling definitely opened the doors for some lawyers to profit.
How about suing the guys who approved this travesty? I mean sue him really madly. For billions of dollars. This is not a small mistake.
This is an opportunity. We need to set an example out of this.