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Micron Lands Broad "Slide To Unlock" Patent
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."
The USPTO is holding roundtables with software developers to ask for suggestions. If anyone can add to what's there already, I've some suggestions on this wiki:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Suggestions_for_the_USPTO_in_2013
(But remember, the patent office has only a small role in patent policy. Most substantial changes will have to come from Congress or the Supreme Court.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
once my twist to open patent is approved.
The claim still requires a 'processing circuit coupled to the touchscreen.' The disclosure also talks about a 'compare circuit.' I would think that a software implementation would not be covered by at least claim 1 of this patent. They may be able to argue software implementations are covered under doctrine of equivalents, but personally, I would think that dedicated hardware does not function in 'essentially the same way.'
I'm not a patent expert, although I did once watch a very informative video about how patents work. This makes me eminently qualified on the subject by slashdot standards.
Looking at the independent claims, it looks like at least the lock screen as implemented by Samsung (starting at the unlock button, drag a certain distance in any direction to unlock) and possibly other Android phones out there is safe from this patent.
Since the system on Samsung phones works no matter which direction you drag, it looks like the "slide to unlock" implementation in Samsung phones is clear.
However, I think this patent may very well be applicable to the "pattern lock" of android phones.
Actually yes, it does. You can patent the *specific* hardware implementation of a task. Someone else could then do the exact same task with a different implementation and bypass your patent.
Honestly I'd have no problem with software patents if they just followed the same rules as hardware - you patent the implementation, not the effect. Of course the versatility of software means that would render almost all software patents trivially easy to bypass, but I don't see a problem with that. Let's take real world "slide to unlock" functionality - I can think of a half-dozen different deadbolt and related designs offhand, and I bet all of the modern implementations are/were patented, and none of them violated the patents of the others.
Would that mean you can't meaningfully patent your brilliant software idea? Almost certainly, but then ideas are *explicitly* denied patent protection to begin with.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The problem with the software patents (or the current interpretation) is that it's not the code that gets patented, but rather the problem. In the old days, when the inventors had to submit the prototypes, there were hundreds of mouse trap patents issued. In the current "patent the problem" world we would see the wording for a mouse trap to be something close to "a device that stops a creature from free movement by using physical, mechanical, electromagnetic force in a restrain device".
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Actually yes, it does. You can patent the *specific* hardware implementation of a task. Someone else could then do the exact same task with a different implementation and bypass your patent.
For example, Setuid was patented by Dennis Ritchie in 1972/1979 (applied/granted) based on the hardware implementation, as shown in the patent abstract.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The patent has no informative properties at all. It does not explain any process or algorithms used to ie detect that a finger is moving on the screen, which direction its moving in, what shape it draws, whether the shape is "close enough" to the shape in memory etc (though to be fair claim #1 doesn't even check the shape, only that a shape was drawn, claim #2 is to check the shape and deny access if it's wrong). If all of the above is obvious to someone of regular skill in the art, then the claims should be invalid as obvious. If it is not obvious to someone of regular skill in the art, then the patent fails to live up to the Constitutional mandate to advance the sciences and arts by not disclosing how these claims are to be achieved, and if current patent law does not make the patent invalid on this basis, then patent law should be changed to comply with the Consitution.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
First to invent vs. file conflicts could be used to raise the bar on obviousness.
Obviousness is surprisingly difficult to determine because some of the best and most brilliant ideas are also very simple ideas that seem obvious only in retrospect. So the patent office is deliberately reluctant to interpret the obviousness constraint too rigorously.
Recently, the US has switched from awarding priority of similar patents to the first one to be filed instead of the first to be invented. Since there is often a very long delay from filing to patent award, during which filers must not publicly disclose their idea, priority becomes an issue more frequently than one might expect.
It seems obvious to me that instead of struggling with who has priority, the patent office should simply look at two similar patents being filed at about the same time as a failure of the obviousness test because, clearly, two different practitioners of the art came up with similar solutions to a problem. So both patents and any similar future filings should be rejected as obvious.
This doctrine would have disallowed a lot of patents in the past including the light bulb and telephone, which, while revolutionary were being investigated by several inventors who came up with similar solutions and even filed within hours of each other!
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)