Posts tagged slide-to-unlock

Samsung-vs-Apple

Everyone knows that the Apple vs. Samsung patent war has been raging for what seems like forever, but would you be any the wiser to hear that Samsung is invoking “Alice” to try and beat two Apple patents?

The patents in question are Apple’s “slide-to-unlock” patent, which describes swiping your smartphone’s home screen to unlock it — and “universal search,” which refers to a universal interface for retrieving information in a computer system.

In May, a jury found Samsung to be guilty of infringing on the first patent, but let it off the hook for the second.

But while Apple was only awarded an underwhelming $119.6 million (compared to the $1 billion it was awarded from Samsung in 2012) Samsung lawyers think they’ve come up with a way to invalidate the whole lawsuit: by taking advantage of a recent legal precedent called Alice v. CLS Bank.

We’ve already determined that Apple is just a jealous little child, but I’m getting quite tired of the whole “Slide To Unlock” patent crap. It’s a ridiculous patent, and one that only gets worse with each new version granted. Rather than sit here and argue why Android should be able to use similar methods, I ask: “Why the hell do we even need it?”

Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.


There was an earlier report of Apple going after the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for violating its slide to unlock patent, which left most Android users scratching their heads. It was obvious that the new unlock feature in Ice Cream Sandwich was vastly different than the traditional slide to unlock, leaving many to chalk this up to another Apple patent trolling. Now we know this isn’t the case, thanks to a report in the Korean Herald, in which an unnamed Samsung official says: