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Micron Lands Broad "Slide To Unlock" Patent

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 31, 2013 @05:02AM from the is-it-malice-blindness-or-incompetence dept.

Zordak writes "Micron has recently landed U.S. Patent 8,352,745, which claims priority back to a February 2000 application---well before Apple's 2004 slide-to-unlock application. While claim construction is a highly technical art, the claims here are (for once) almost as broad as they sound, and may cover the bulk of touch screen smart phones on the market today. Dennis Crouch's Patently-O has a discussion."

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Re:The USPTO is holding roundtables by h4rr4r · 2013-01-31 05:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Here is a simple suggestion.
MATH IS NOT FUCKING PATENTABLE YOU IDIOTS! STOP ALLOWING SOFTWARE PATENTS SINCE THEY ARE JUST MATH.
This should be pretty simple, but they would never accept that.
Slashdot admins; The caps are supposed to be yelling, that is why I used them. Sometimes yelling is needed.
Re:The USPTO is holding roundtables by Dr_Barnowl · 2013-01-31 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

The very first test should be - ask a bunch of software guys - "If you had to do X in software, how would you do it?"
If ANY of them gets even close the patent should be thrown out.
That said, there shouldn't be any software patents. Asking how to improve the process of patenting software is like asking how to improve the process of circumcision. Just because you do it now, and lots of tribal elders say it's a great idea, doesn't mean it's true.