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Court Sides with Apple: Motorola's Slide-to-Unlock Copycat in Trouble?

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Suspicious-Teach8788

Lifer
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-granted-injunction-in-germany-patent-suit-motorola-phones/

Apple scored a huge victory today in Munich's Regional Court where Judge Dr. Peter Guntz found Motorola's implementation of slide-to-unlock on smartphones to be in breach of Cupertino's patent holdings. The ruling has resulted in a permanent injunction that Apple could execute at will, forcing Moto to alter the UX it employs across its device portfolio in Deutschland. The case originally focused on three separate applications of this gesture tech -- two for phones, alone -- but for now, the one used on the Xoom has been deemed outside of Apple's purview. Naturally, both parties are expected to appeal this decision, with Apple gunning for a total victory on every derivation of patent EP1964022 and Motorola seeking to overturn the win. Nonetheless, this particular legal triumph could help to set a precedent for the company as it continues to rage an IP war against fellow mobile industry rivals.
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German court seems to hand everyone victories. It's a crazy back and forth war!
 
DLeRium said:
German court seems to hand everyone victories. It's a crazy back and forth war!
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Would probably explain why lawsuits are so popular there then.

Doesn't really matter though since the Xoom is in the clear and Motorola can just push out an update to change their other devices to use that instead. Not a big problem.
 
my samsung uses something different, the lock screen behaves as a panel that can be moved aside in any direction.
 
The Xoom being clear means Android is in the clear as the Xoom is basically the Nexus tablet.

It would be funny if Apple's lawsuits never hurt Android but killed skins like Blur. I wouldn't know what to think then.
 
I get the impression a not insignificant number of these patents are easily circumvented and the lawsuits are just legal harrassment in an attempt to slow down the competition.
I recall apple also sued samsung over another trivial patent, something regarding drag to scroll in picture gallery viewing, which samsung later worked around.
 
Err, stop me if I'm wrong, but the unlock mechanism in the Xoom is standard Honeycomb, which is standard ICS. Which was implemented in Froyo/Gingerbread before the launch of HoneyComb. Doesn't really seem like much of a problem, and an entire waste of corporate resources.
 
the bigger question is , why is one particular way of unlocking a phone even patentable.

its like saying if apple had a gray lock screen and motorolas was also gray, then it would be infringing.

i mean its not like its some revolutionary difference if you move a lock in a circle, or in a curve or in a straight line.
 
Bateluer said:
Doesn't really seem like much of a problem, and an entire waste of corporate resources.
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Pretty much what I've been saying for a while now. I'm not even sure why anyone bothers changing it when they've known for a while now that it's just going to give Apple some low hanging fruit.

hans007 said:
the bigger question is , why is one particular way of unlocking a phone even patentable.

its like saying if apple had a gray lock screen and motorolas was also gray, then it would be infringing.
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It's an invention. You might as well ask why a particular type of anything can be patented. Even though unlocking phones, or anything else for that matter, isn't anything new, slide-to-unlock is a new way of doing it. It only seems common and obvious in hindsight, but at one point it didn't exist.

Also, that's a pretty bad example. Using a gray lock screen might be one aspect of an entire design patent, but as the color of a lock screen is ornamental it's not eligible for a patent.

i mean its not like its some revolutionary difference if you move a lock in a circle, or in a curve or in a straight line.
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Which is why the Xoom wasn't found to violate Apple's patent, which is fairly specific about how it works, and the Xoom doesn't do. It may not seem different, but it's sufficient to get around Apple's patent.
 
Mopetar said:
It's an invention. You might as well ask why a particular type of anything can be patented. Even though unlocking phones, or anything else for that matter, isn't anything new, slide-to-unlock is a new way of doing it. It only seems common and obvious in hindsight, but at one point it didn't exist.
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Really? How many different ways are there to accomplish any given task on a touchscreen device? Everything is swiping in some form or another. Apple has essentially been given a patent on the absolute simplest form of a gesture. A single uni-directional swipe, which is the building block of all further gestures. Ridiculous.
 
BoberFett said:
Really? How many different ways are there to accomplish any given task on a touchscreen device? Everything is swiping in some form or another. Apple has essentially been given a patent on the absolute simplest form of a gesture. A single uni-directional swipe, which is the building block of all further gestures. Ridiculous.
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I suggest you read their patent again and see exactly what it is that they've patented. If your assertion were true, the Xoom would have also been found to infringe.
 
Reading the patent, it says "moving unlock image along a predefined displayed path," which is why the Xoom was ruled in the clear, because there is no predefined path, you just need to move the image out of a circle by any path you want 😀
I think what got them in trouble are those little arrows which display the predefined path:
Slide-t-Unlock-Motorola-650x432.jpg

They could just get rid of those and that should get them in the clear, even without using the Xoom method, IMO.
 
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senseamp said:
Reading the patent, it says "moving unlock image along a predefined displayed path," which is why the Xoom was ruled in the clear, because there is no predefined path, you just need to move the image out of a circle by any path you want 😀
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Da fuck!? Waits for someone to patent controlling the volume of a device by moving a slider back and forth along a predefined path....
 
senseamp said:
Reading the patent, it says "moving unlock image along a predefined displayed path," which is why the Xoom was ruled in the clear, because there is no predefined path, you just need to move the image out of a circle by any path you want 😀
I think what got them in trouble are those little arrows which display the predefined path:
Slide-t-Unlock-Motorola-650x432.jpg

They could just get rid of those and that should get them in the clear, even without using the Xoom method, IMO.
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I believe they have a second patent that covers moving an object in an direction.
 
Mopetar said:
Pretty much what I've been saying for a while now. I'm not even sure why anyone bothers changing it when they've known for a while now that it's just going to give Apple some low hanging fruit.



It's an invention. You might as well ask why a particular type of anything can be patented. Even though unlocking phones, or anything else for that matter, isn't anything new, slide-to-unlock is a new way of doing it. It only seems common and obvious in hindsight, but at one point it didn't exist.

Also, that's a pretty bad example. Using a gray lock screen might be one aspect of an entire design patent, but as the color of a lock screen is ornamental it's not eligible for a patent.



Which is why the Xoom wasn't found to violate Apple's patent, which is fairly specific about how it works, and the Xoom doesn't do. It may not seem different, but it's sufficient to get around Apple's patent.
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slide to unlock existed on a phone prior to the iphone, apple didnt invent it, all they did was put a graphic on it and make it more popular
 
Pliablemoose said:
And patent it.
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Exactly. I think that's what everyone gets caught up on.

However simple slide to unlock is or any of other Apple's patents, hindsight is always 20/20. If you watch the original iPhone keynote, Steve Jobs said, "...and we patented the hell out of it." Slide to unlock, gestures, pinch to zoom, etc, I think those were some of the patents he was referring to.

Apple thought they had something special with the iPhone and wanted to protect it. I guess the courts are there to determine if the patents hold any water.
 
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MrX8503 said:
Exactly. I think that's what everyone gets caught up on.

However simple slide to unlock is or any of other Apple's patents, hindsight is always 20/20. If you watch the original iPhone keynote, Steve Jobs said, "...and we patented the hell out of it." Slide to unlock, gestures, pinch to zoom, etc, I think those were some of the patents he was referring to.

Apple thought they had something special with the iPhone and wanted to protect it. I guess the courts are there to determine if the patents hold any water.
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What you ignored is that a number of these patents fail to be non-obvious, or have prior art. The standard for patent protection should be very high, and the protection should be strong as well. What is there now is a very low standard for gaining protection, and a nasty, inefficient, litigious mess for enforcement, which naturally favours large companies with deep pockets.

There's a real problem when large companies are able to patent, and send their lawyers in to enforce/obfuscate, over inventions that were demonstrably not theirs in the first place.
 
3chordcharlie said:
What you ignored is that a number of these patents fail to be non-obvious, or have prior art. The standard for patent protection should be very high, and the protection should be strong as well. What is there now is a very low standard for gaining protection, and a nasty, inefficient, litigious mess for enforcement, which naturally favours large companies with deep pockets.

There's a real problem when large companies are able to patent, and send their lawyers in to enforce/obfuscate, over inventions that were demonstrably not theirs in the first place.
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which ones are obvious and have been done on previous devices?

everyone always screams obvious a few years after someone makes something really cool for the first time
 
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