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Apple Granted Patent For Slide To Unlock

Posted by Soulskill on from the slide-to-unlock-a-can-of-worms dept.

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."

2 of 622 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by melonman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think a more likely outcome is something like the patent pool that was forced into place by the US government around the 1920s to avoid a situation where, basically, no company could build a plane without infringing another company's patents. Otherwise, sooner or later, Android will be in trouble, but so will Apple and all other US companies.

    --
    Virtually serving coffee
  2. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Speaking as an American who lives abroad and works in Europe... this is how it has been working already for some time. The company I work for sells a software product globally. The version shipped into the US market was up until recently crippled to avoid infringing a ridiculous US patent that was granted in the mid-90's and just recently expired. Now we can finally ship a full featured product to the US.

    It's utterly amazing that the patent system in the US is still this bad. Where is the reform we keep hearing about?