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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."

26 of 622 comments (clear)

  1. Oh ffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Go away apple!

    1. Re:Oh ffs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seconded. Everybody who buys Apple products is supporting this abuse of the patent system and the market in general.

    2. Re:Oh ffs by sosume · · Score: 4, Insightful

      AFAIK, this is the first device I've ever seen doing this.

      I have a door in my bathroom which works exactly like the described 'invention'.
      If you read the Jobs biography, it becomes clear just how delusional the man was. He claims to have invented not only the GUI, menu's, and the modern mouse but also the concept of a PC, the internet, the rectangle, fonts, and what more. If he had not existed, noone would have invented it. Looks like he dropped acid too many times.

    3. Re:Oh ffs by somersault · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The point is to limit what people with no morals can do, yes. It doesn't mean that everything they do within the rules is still respectable. People should be allowed to complain if they think that someone is not acting within the spirit of the law, or even if they're well within the law, but still damaging society. Patent and Copyright laws were put in place to encourage innovation, but companies such as Apple like to patent things and not even license them out to anyone that they see as a competitor. Both MS and Apple seem to revel in "destroying" their competitors, rather than competing with them.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    4. Re:Oh ffs by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

      SO you don't buy Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Sony, Panasonic, Kenwood, Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Harley Davidson, or LG products then?

      Or are you just some idiot that like to parrot what others say without actually thinking.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:Oh ffs by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 4, Informative

      >> Android completely rocks for techie people, but it sucks for the typical drooling moron user.

      55% of marketshare against your superior (meh) Apple's 28% would like to disagree. But don't let facts spoil your fantasy.

    6. Re:Oh ffs by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure I'll get modded down for criticising apple on slashdot- but - quite frankly- I'm the type of consumer Apple should be courting.

      I don't have a tablet- I'm considering a tablet. I am open minded to my options- I have no preference or alliegence at this point.

      I know everyone in the industry sues and takes rediculous patents- but Apple just goes over-the-top. They're involved in more law-suits than just about all the others combined.

      Statements from Jobs (RIP) about wanting to destroy Android even if it cost Apple all their wealth- shows the mentality within that company to stifle innovation of others.

      Apple goes beyond trying to get the best for their stockholders- the corporate policy seems damn-well belligerent.

      This is the tipping point for me- I'm no longer brand-neutral in the tablet sphere.

      From now on, I know, when I do get a tablet it won't be Apple. I cannot spend money on a product with a company who will misappropriate it.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  2. The US will just cripple its own tech by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

    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?

    3. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a non-American myself it is incredibly disheartening to see so many innovations created by American companies being denied to large segments of the American populace itself thanks to it's own utterly absurd patent system. Whatever people think about US...foreign policy, popular culture, overt consumerism or whatever..the one thing you cannot deny is that quality of life has been drastically improved for so many thanks to technological advances made by US companies. To then go and deny their own population the benefits of those advances because of bizarre and outdated patent laws just seems morally and ethically wrong on so many levels.

    4. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We're already in that situation. Unfortunately, rather than just cross-licensing the patents they're all suing each other and using temporary injunctions to gain first-mover advantage.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Given that these sorts of features are increasingly implemented in pure software, or in hardware where every unit has all the features(because spinning a new mask is crazy expensive), but only some features are firmware-enabled, for price-discrimination or IP reasons, it will be interesting to see whether the "cheap DVD player" phenomenon crops up...

      In the US, at least, back when DVD players were something people cared about, there arose a curious little wrinkle in the market:
      The pricier hardware, with the traditionally respectable brand badges(Sony, etc.) had nicer build quality, and was more likely to include features that were genuinely expensive in hardware(DACs that didn't suck, absurd numbers of outputs); but also enforced the various region locking, macrovision, and other user-hostile features of the DVD spec to the letter.
      The cheap seats tended to have the usual downsides(somewhat... functional... build quality, dadaist user interfaces, a bit of scrimping and saving on BOM); but tended to enforce user-hostile requirements rather tepidly. There would either be some trivial 'debug code' that you could tap into the remote, or a 'test firmware' would 'leak' about 10 seconds after release that would remove all DRM features. The cheapies also tended to have the cheap-because-it's-software pirate-friendly features, like support for assorted audio and video codecs in files just burned to data DVDs and the like.

      If the patent wars become too hot, a similar phenomenon could theoretically crop up in other electronics markets. The "US Firmware" version would be oh-so-bare-and-legally-compliant; but the hardware would be identical because SKU proliferation is expensive, and there would be a strong incentive for players, particularly the weaker players, to 'accidentally' suffer from a 'bootloader verification bug' that allows the least-crippled English-language firmware, *cough*easily available for download from our Hong Kong TLD's support page, 'only for our customers in the region'*cough* to be flashed to US devices...

    6. Re:The US will just cripple its own tech by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure the workaround is to put a slight curve into the slider, or some movement other than just sliding, or to emulate a sweeping motion instead of a slide etc. etc. I think the solution in Android 3 / 4 is novel enough not to qualify either - you drag a circle onto another circle. You're not "sliding" the circle because you can drag it up, down, left or right.

      The problem is that this is a gesture patent. By definition, anything you do on a touchscreen is a gesture - sliding your finger in a certain pattern. Apple gets a patent for sliding in a straight line to unlock. Google gets one for sliding in a circle to unlock. Microsoft is forced to use a square or triangle to unlock. HP decides to patent the WebOS motion of flicking up to close an app. Google patents flicking down to expand the notification bar. Someone else patents sliding in a straight line to scroll. Another patents sliding across a word to select it. etc.

      There are only a limited number of simple gestures, all obvious, but apparently the USPTO has never seen anything like them before. Using workaround gestures is not the solution, no more than other newspapers printing their text in different colors would be a solution to the New York Times getting a patent on printing in black ink. This patent is so mind-bogglingly stupid that if it's not overturned it will absolutely cripple the industry.

  3. some background info on the Dutch ruling by TESTNOK · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:some background info on the Dutch ruling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's less amazing when you recognise America's history of protectionism when it comes to this type of thing.

      I guarantee if someone like HTC or Samsung had gone for the same patent they would not have been granted it.

      "Great American Companies" (tm) have a massive advantage of widespread patriotic bias on their home turf in the courts and at the patent office.

  4. Prior art? by mykos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think someone already beat them to it.

    1. Re:Prior art? by am+2k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But it's on a phone, so it's something completely new and nonobvious! "On the Internet" patents are soo 2000.

    2. Re:Prior art? by Myopic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Agreed. Here's more. Did the patent office not look very hard for prior art? I only had to look for about two seconds:

      http://www.toolzone.com/acatalog/info_DW1363.html

      There it is: a slide-to-unlock mechanism, already implemented, on a handheld device even, available for many decades.

      The problem with the patent system is not the theory but rather the implementation we have in this country. Patents are theoretically okay, but they are actually bad. Apparently prior art like I have quoted here, and which is widely available, I'm sure, in many other products, doesn't count -- and that's a problem. It SHOULD count.

  5. Neonode N1M - prior art by __Paul__ · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. Re:Slide to...? by IAmGarethAdams · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, the first claim of the patent is for a gesture dragging a graphic along a "predefined, displayed path". So if the unlock gesture isn't a fixed path (like the Samsung S2, which can unlock in any direction; or the path isn't displayed, like a puzzle piece which moves along a fixed path to its destination but that path isn't visible, then it's not covered by the patent.

  7. Don't blame Henry Ford by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."
  8. Well what about this ? by giorgist · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Well what about this ? by nonicknameavailable · · Score: 5, Informative

      Neonode N1m was released in 2005

      --
      Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
  9. Re:its the time frame which matters by FTWinston · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We would still have phones with thousand of buttons and switches if apple would not have shown an other way.

    Guess you never used a Palm Pilot?

  10. It infringes on my patent.... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.