Apple Granted Patent For Slide To Unlock 622
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the slide-to-unlock-a-can-of-worms dept.
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."
Re:The US will just cripple its own tech (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.
Re:The US will just cripple its own tech (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?
Nokia physical slider (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean that Nokia's physical slider for unlocking phones is patentable? I wonder if Nokia has a patent for that and if not, whether USPTO would grant one?
Re:Oh ffs (Score:0, Interesting)
On a ring, the rules are you're allowed to hit someone on the face. So by doing it, you play by the rules and are not "guilty". If you did the same in the street, you'd be arrested (assuming a cop gets by). How is this different?
They may be morally wrong or anything, but so was Eric Schmitt when he was on the Apple board, got plenty of inside information on mobile operating systems from Apple, told nothing to no one and got the best of it in his own mobile OS. So, which is wronger?
And I'm not asking which is doing the more damage, but which is morally worse than the other?
Childish (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't blame Henry Ford (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this only SW patent problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't we see a drugs manufacturers killing themselves with an 'oval shaped pills' (or as they would put it 'an anatomically efficient vessel for introduction of effective chemicals into the gastro-intestinal system') patent?
What the hell is the department of the Patent Office responsible for SW doing?!
Re:some background info on the Dutch ruling (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.
Re:Oh ffs (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, maybe now that Steve's gone again they won't be so bad, who knows.
Actually, I'd be more worried it'll get much worse without Steve Jobs around. As much as people around here don't like to admit it, Steve Jobs was a geek. Not in the über-programmer kind of way or anything like that; but he had a passion for technology and sincerely loved "cool toys" in the same way as most of us. He put the products and user experience first (whether you agree or disagree with HOW he did it; it definitely appeared he was doing so). While Apple seem to have been going further and further down the road of becoming evil incarnate, I don't put all of that blame on Mr Jobs - I'd even say some of his efforts to improve the products and user experience would have hindered the evil at times.
In short, if Apple's overall vision changes and they stop concentrating so much on making stellar products (* again, as defined by what the masses seem to want rather than we as tinkerers and geeks), I can only see their future level of evil making their current level look like rainbows and ponies.
Re:It really is time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, 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 [toolzone.com]
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.