Apple Wins $120 Million From Samsung In Slide-To-Unlock Patent Battle (theverge.com)

Apple has finally claimed victory over Samsung to the count of $120 million. "The Supreme Court said today that it wouldn't hear an appeal of the patent infringement case, first decided in 2014, which has been bouncing through appeals courts in the years since," reports The Verge. From the report: The case revolved around Apple's famous slide-to-unlock patent and, among others, its less-famous quick links patent, which covered software that automatically turned information like a phone number into a tappable link. Samsung was found to have infringed both patents. The ruling was overturned almost two years later, and then reinstated once again less than a year after that. From there, Samsung appealed to the Supreme Court, which is where the case met its end today. Naturally, Samsung isn't pleased with the outcome. "Our argument was supported by many who believed that the Court should hear the case to reinstate fair standards that promote innovation and prevent abuse of the patent system," a Samsung representative said in a statement. The company also said the ruling would let Apple "unjustly profit" from an invalid patent.

Comments

wasn't there's to start with

[arbiter1]

Apple wasn't first to come up with slide to unlock, there was a Microsoft product that had it years before apple stole and it patented it as their own. Hence in some countries the patent is been voided.

Re:wasn't there's to start with

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's slide-to-lock application was rejected many, many times until it was re-written so that the "innovation" claim was "continuously holding your finger down while sliding". Its a bad joke in a broken system.

Re:wasn't there's to start with

[dreamchaser]

It's just like 'you're holding it wrong' only it's 'you're sliding it wrong'.

Re:wasn't there's to start with

[Misagon]

The oldest product that I have heard of was the Neonode phone, first exhibited in 2002. It had vertical slide-to-unlock, albeit with three different sliders (left, centre, right) that activated three different functions.

The Neonode wasn't from Microsoft but it ran Windows CE underneath its own GUI.

Re:wasn't there's to start with

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Apple's slide-to-unlock is an adaptation of a physical door bolt that been around for thousands of years.

https://images.homedepot-stati...

Apple just took the door bolt and adapted it "for the computer." If that is a valid patent, I know a lot of real life things that could be adapted for computer use (patents, cha-ching).

Re:wasn't there's to start with

[AmiMoJo]

I visited an ancient Roman amphitheatre in Italy once, and although obviously the original wooden doors were long gone the reproduction ones claimed to be historically accurate and had slide to unlock.

Re:Well

[omnichad]

It's absurd because physical slides to unlock already exist - you know, like a deadbolt. X but on the Internet or X but on a touch screen are not that innovative. It's about as genius as putting skeuomorphic buttons in a UI.

120 million is peanuts to these companies

[presidenteloco]

Apple's cash reserve is $250 billion or so.

And it probably cost both companies the same amount as the award to litigate this.

Re:120 million is peanuts to these companies

[SlaveToTheGrind]

No precedents were harmed in the making of this lawsuit.

Re:Time to give credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple invented many of the features in smartphones that we take for granted.

Like Cut & Paste. Oh wait, the first iPhone lacked cut & paste which was present on Windows Mobile, PalmOS, and other phones that predate the iPhone.

Ok. Well Apple surly invented having apps on your phone. Because the first iPhone had the App Store. Oh wait, the initial iPhone did not allow native apps to be installed on the phone, only browser-based apps that required the phone to be online were permitted. Yet feature phones from Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Nokia, RIM and others had carrier-oriented app stores for ring tones and in some cases applications. And of course there were several third party PalmOS markets for Treo phones.

Apple's key innovation is branding of the industrial design. This is an old play by Apple, they did this with the both trademark and copyright litigation against other GUI vendors for copying their Macintosh GUI in the 80's. That Apple is using the patent system is hardly a different tack than the use of other legal loopholes to squelch competitors.

Re:Time to give credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between inventing and designing. A patent is supposed to be a bargain between an inventor and society: society will protect the inventor with exclusive rights for many years, and in return the inventor publishes inner workings of an innovation that advances the known state-of-art (but it has to be a true innovation whose workings are not obvious). Just producing something new that can easily be replicated is design, not invention. A true invention can't be replicated unless the inventor explains the inner workings (that eliminates about 99.9% of the junk that is patented today). The obscene system today exists because the examiners are paid a bonus for everything they grant but paid nothing extra for rejecting junk, so they are incentivized all wrong.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

[alexo]

Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation.

It is a system of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers; and it is working as designed.

Re:It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Theaetetus]

Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation.

It is a system of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers; and it is working as designed.

That's not what the rule says, though. The AC grandparent is confusing two different things, and even has one of them backwards. Yes, anything that's obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art is invalid. But a patent is invalid if it can't be replicated by someone skilled in the art. Specifically, to be valid under 35 USC 112, a patent must contain a clear description that is "sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention." In other words, the patented invention has to be able to be replicated to be valid.

And that something can be replicated isn't proof that it's obvious. The actual rules are crafted to avoid hindsight, because everything looks obvious in hindsight. And given that the patent has to describe how to make and use the invention per the above, simply reading the patent opens you up to finding it obvious in hindsight. So instead, to show that the patent is obvious, the patent office has to show that each and every element in the claims can be found in one or more prior art references, and that it wouldn't require undue experimentation to combine them for one of skill in the art. Like, peanut butter exists, jelly exists, they're easy to combine on bread, so therefore peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are obvious.

Now, I haven't looked into this patent or what's in the prior art, so I can't say whether it's obvious or not. It sure seems like a simple idea, but if it was obvious, why wasn't Samsung using it before Apple? And why did they copy it afterwards? It must have been commercially valuable for them to copy it, since they wouldn't have done so otherwise; and if it was commercially valuable and obvious, they would have done it earlier, since hey, free money. So maybe it wasn't obvious until Apple did it.

replace your door slider locks!

[kiviQr]

now I have to replace all my door slider locks.

Re:Well

[CanadianMacFan]

I would think the real idiots are Samsung's lawyers if they lost 2 out of 3 cases so that it had to try to get to the Supreme Court in the first place.

The real problem is the patent system that allows things like "slide to unlock", "rounded corners", and "1-click purchasing" to become patents in the first place. To get a patent it should not be obvious, not part of the natural world (using the widest definition of natural which includes mathematics), be non-trivial, be new, and have a working prototype. There could be some more refinement as to the qualifications but off the top of my head that would make a better system than the current one.

FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

For the dumb fucks defending Apple and their glorious victory, please realise that this is just yet another win for the corpocracy.
$120 million dollars for slide to unlock???
$120 MILLION dollars? For one shitty shitty little miscellaneous "feature" that provides ZERO innovation?
If you contain even a snifter of intelligence you'll realise that this outcome just cements the absolute power these big, shitty corporations have over us small time developers.
Just try to develop an app that doesn't fall foul of the hundreds of thousands of bullshit software and design patents that these corporations pump out. It's absolutely impossible.
Fucking depressing.

Re:Well

[Trogre]

Except that by putting it "on a computer" makes it a software patent, and therefore NOT FUCKING VALID.

What about the rest of the world?

[fred6666]

Apple won on that case against Samsung in one (albeit rich and populous) country out of almost 200. Does it mean Samsung is right in the others? Why isn't Apple suing everywhere?

The real question is why is the USA patent system so broken that a case like this can be won by Apple.

Patent law is stupid and evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Apple took another company to court because it put a SLIDE TO UNLOCK feature on a phone.

Intellectual property is a farce. Patents destroy innovation and consumers suffer the most by all the lost competition.

Re:Well

[Khyber]

" It just patents a method of presenting it in software, and only covers one specific implementation. Go read the claims: https://patents.google.com/pat... ...and then find something the same that predates the patent application"

Okay, four pieces of software I used back in the Windows 9X days utilized a 'slide this cursor to unlock your computer' (for CTRL-ALT-DEL challenged/disabled people.)

Well before Apple even thought of the iPhone.

You must've been born after 2000.