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Apple Loses German Top Court Case on Swipe-to-Unlock Patent
- mildrenben 11y agoGlad to hear it, Apple's been going stupid crazy with this patenting lately.
- atirip 11y agoLately? Like 2015?
- mahouse 11y agoLast week of August 2015
- JimmaDaRustla 11y agoLately? Like, as in like, since their inception?
- minthd 11y agoI think this should apply generally to touch screen gestures. Once someone invented a good enough touch screen display(capacitive) , the gestures are not that big of a step. All Apple did was to acquire the inventors of the capacitive touch - and worked a bit on the UI. And while it's valuable to be the first company who recognize the importance of a capacitive touch screen - that isn't a basis for a patent - and Apple did get enough benefits anyway.
- mtgx 11y agoLike the bounce-back effect patent, which is even sillier than the slide-to-unlock one. The main problem by far is still having these patents granted in the first place, and then either having multiple companies getting harassed by others to pay them money for the bogus patents (like what Microsoft does) or spend millions and years in Courts to resolve just a handful of them. Sounds like a terribly inefficient system to me. Not to mention that because the US Patent Office has such low standards for accepting patents, that also means lawyers will file just about any crazy idea they can come up with, backing up the USPTO for 4 years. If the USPTO took a stance to reject 80% of the filed patents while still charging them a few thousand dollars per application, I think the quality of the patents would significantly improve in a few years. so if there are some good patents in there, perhaps from a startup, that startup will have to wait 4 years to get it. That sounds like ages for a small company and it could be long dead by then, especially if it doesn't get funding because of the lack of an approved patent. http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overscroll-bounce-patent-claim-is-valid-us-patent-office-says.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2042023/apples-crucial-overs... http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declared-invalid-in-germany-thanks-to-steve-jobs-video/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-bounce-back-patent-declar...
- AndrewStephens 11y agoI remember watching the original iPhone presentation thinking "this looks OK but touch screens suck" then having the UI-design-oriented part of my brain completely blown by the bounce-back effect. No other touch screen software worked that way and it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that (unlike the swipe-to-open metaphor). I am not a lawyer and I have no opinion on the validity of the bounce-back patent (although the German court rejected it based of publication date rather than merit), but from a business point of view I can see why Apple was so keen to hog bounce-back for itself. I didn't buy a iPhone for a few years but they won a customer that day.
- jasonkester 11y agoIt wasn't novel though. I had personally implemented a drag-to-scroll interface with momentum and bounce-back for a Web 1.0 startup in 1999. Just substitute mouse pointer for finger and it's exactly the interface that mobile devices use today. I can't think it even remotely conceivable that I invented that. It's just one of the first things you think of.
- Retra 11y ago>it is hard to think of something physical that bounces like that Have you never quickly opened a drawer with stuff in it?
- talmand 11y agoI think a better example would be a drawer with rubber stops that causes the drawer to bounce back if you open it too quickly. Or a door with a rubber stop on the wall. Or even a door with a soft spring that prevents it from opening too far. Or a car with good bumpers. Or a chair that springs forward if you rock back too far. Or bungee jumping. Nope, can't see any evidence of that action in the physical world at all.
- AndrewStephens 11y agoGood examples, but I would be willing to bet that at some point all those things have been covered by different patents. The company who patented a chair rocking mechanism would not be affected by the inventor who made a door with soft springs (although I have never seen a door that works exactly that way).
- paulojreis 11y agoMaking UI elements big enough to be minimally tappable wasn't really that big of a step. Yet Windows Mobile was horrible in that regard. While I don't agree with awarding strong protection via IP to UI patterns such as the "slide to unlock", I think we should acknowledge the merits which exist in these "leaps" forward. If everything was that obvious, why all of the other mobile UI alternatives started to look "pre-historic" in a span of a few months?
- CamperBob2 11y agoOne reason why we award patents is so that inventors won't have an incentive to keep trade secrets locked away forever. Touchscreen gestures are trivial to implement, with no conceivable trade secrets that wouldn't become obvious to anyone skilled in the art after a few minutes' thought. So that's not a good reason in this case. Another reason is to incentivize innovation by awarding a temporary monopoly. Apple will continue to make more money from the iPhone and iPad than many entire countries' GDP, patents or no patents. They don't need any additional artificial "incentives." Another reason is to reward those who finance expensive long-term R&D efforts. No lengthy R&D efforts are involved in touchscreen gesture processing. Again, the market is doing just fine at rewarding Apple on its own. So what exactly do we gain, as a society, by awarding patents on things like slide-to-unlock? Exactly how is the "progress of science and the useful arts" being promoted?
- bostonpete 11y agoI don't think paulojreis was defending patenting things like slide to unlock.
- avar 11y agoI think most patents are silly, but isn't the system working exactly as it should here? The patent was awarded, then it was challenged in court and overturned for many of the reasons you cite. If we were a lot more thorough about awarding patents wouldn't that increase the overall cost to society to exhaustively audit patents from the outset, instead of auditing only the small subset that's troublesome enough to be challenged in court?
- amelius 11y agoI'm waiting for a future where we can ask a "blank" AI to come up with trivial solutions to new problems, so that we can just invalidate such stupid patents. If the AI can invent it, it is not worthy of a patent.
- reustle 11y agoUnfortunately someone will own the patent to that UI, and anything it creates
- iopq 11y agoI could bang out an AI that files patent applications right now. All I have to do is use neural networks on existing computer patents and it would probably sound impressive to the patent office.
- nly 11y agoSomeone should totally do this. A Markov chain patent filer.
- icebraining 11y agohttp://www.genetic-programming.com/inventionmachine.html http://www.genetic-programming.com/inventionmachine.html
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoUI stuff is not trivial. Simple != trivial. The art is in designing a high quality experience, not in solving a programming problem. Look and feel is a very real and valuable thing in the marketplace. The big differentiator between Apple and everyone else is that Apple pays attention to - or used to pay attention to, anyway - the user experience, The code behind the experience was always secondary to that. Users don't care about it, and they're completely fine with not caring. I agree that there are limits, especially when there are patents on rounded corners or specific English words. But generally if there's innovation in the user experience on a screen it's potentially patentable, even if the code behind it is trivially simple. AIs have no concept of user experience, so it's unlikely you'd get much of marketable value out of one.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoThis always struck me as an "On the computer" patent. The slide to unlock mechanism has been around since forever (think any bathroom stall or old wood screen door, etc). Just because it's on a computer screen shouldn't make it patentable.
- MichaelApproved 11y agoI think these are different, though I don't necessarily think it deserves a patent. In real life, slide to unlock pushes a bar in place to prevent the door from swinging open. You slide to unlock, so the bar is moved away from blocking the door. "On the computer", it's making sure that you deliberately intended to use the device and it's not an accidental "pocket dialed" motion. These are similar motions addressing different problems. In the physical world, you slide the bar into place to allow the bar to work for you. On the computer, you slide to express a deliberate intention. Anyway, deserving of a patent or not, these seem like different mechanisms.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoWhen I walk up to my grandmothers back screen porch, I have to slide the bar to unlock the door to enter. of course this presupposes that someone before me slid it closed. In the case of the iPhone, the phone itself performs the locking. I don't see it as so different.
- collyw 11y agoI am sure I have seen spring loaded equivalent on gates, that will lock themselves.
- axman6 11y agoThis is all mostly irrelevant though, and all of this discussion involves ex post facto analysis. The test for patentability is would a person skilled in the art come to the same solution without an inventive step - is the claimed invention what someone familiar with the art of human computer interaction do without doing something new. I would argue that the answer is no: there are many well known mechanisms for unlocking an electronic device (a pin, a password, a fingerprint, an identifying card or dongle, and so on) - using an analog of something that exists in the physical world such as a latch is not what someone skilled in the art WOULD do, there is some invention in taking the physical and bring it into the digital.
- tempodox 11y ago“The contested patent thus isn’t based on an invention.” It seems there are more patents that fill this description.
- germanier 11y agoMinor nitpick: The ruling court was not "the German Supreme Court" (which there is no single direct equivalent - often the term is used for the Bundesverfassungsgericht but that's problematic on many levels). The court was the Bundesgerichtshof which is the highest court for civil cases. Best is the avoid the term "Supreme Court" at all when talking about the German court system.
- Tomte 11y agoThe Bundesgerichtshof is also Supreme Court for criminal cases. The phrase "Supreme Court" is indeed problematic, since we have quite a few of them (administrative law, labor law, finance law, social law, plus BGH and BVerfG), but I think it's okay to call the Bundesgerichtshof so. More okay than calling our Federal Constitutional Court "Supreme Court", at least, since generally speaking the Constitutional Court is not "above" the other courts.
- germanier 11y agoI would be happy with calling it "a German supreme court" (which is maybe misleading but technically correct). The phrasing "the German Supreme Court" implies that there is only one and it's somewhat comparable to the US Supreme Court which are both wrong assumptions.
- justin66 11y ago> The phrase "Supreme Court" is indeed problematic, since we have quite a few of them The same thing is true in the United States. It's a term that can mean a few different things on the state level, depending on which state you're talking about.
- manojlds 11y agowhich is the highest court for civil cases As a casual reader, then I am happy that they used Supreme Court. I don't want to know more about the German legal system to know that this could possibly be the highest court for such cases.
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- jchrisa 11y agoHa! I just used a cheapo off the shelf website that featured slide to unlock on web forms for spam prevention. Not posting the link because I don't want Apple breathing down their neck.
- chubs 11y agoI can't imagine tim cook losing any sleep over this. Most users unlock their phones via touch ID (fingerprint) these days.
- tychuz 11y agoStill shows "slide to unlock". Which you can do and enter pin instead of using fingers (or tongue if you were bored like me). Also there's still iPhone 5C(heap) phones in production which don't have fingerprint reader.
- jheriko 11y agodoes the patent say it actually has to work? XD just saying... i'm always in two minds about this but i lean very heavily towards culling people who think this sort of thing should be patentable. i think it would benefit everyone for the entire future mostly...
- DasIch 11y agoInteresting that the article doesn't mention that there is prior art, which was discussed in court, in the form of the Neonode N1m.
- walid 11y agoThe true prior art is the door bolt. Slide to unlock. Bringing the same method and procedure to a phone or car shouldn't warrant patent protection.
- littletimmy 11y agoI don't get how this was a patent to begin with. The door in my room has a "slide-to-unlock" lock that dates back 50 years. Surely Apple did not invent this.
- unfamiliar 11y agoI think it is a mistake to suggest that slide to unlock on a touchscreen and a sliding bolt are the same concepts. The important thing as I see it is a way to change a touchscreen from a state of "unresponsive to input" to a state of "responsive to input" by requiring a very restricted set of inputs to be entered. "Swipe to unlock" is just one (pretty good) definition of this restricted set of inputs. I think this is quite conceptually different from a physical lock unlocking a physical door.
- talmand 11y agoBut they are literally the same concept.
- batrat 11y agoDon't know the technical terms but how is "unresponsive to input" when you can interact with the lock screen. For example swiping/expanding notifications, change songs, etc. For me "unresponsive to input" to a state of "responsive to input" would be the power/home button let's you interact with the screen.
- unfamiliar 11y agoFine. Change "unresponsive to input" to "unresponsive to all but a very restricted subset of all possible inputs".
- thomasrossi 11y agoWell in EU some algorithm is surely patentable if it has a "technical effect", for instance if you can move a robot arms consuming less energy or producing less waste materials, it must have a physical impact on something. Quote: "the method didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection", just this, lol at patenting it in the first place.
- axman6 11y agoI feel it would be easy for Apple to argue that is does have a physical effect - it makes it easier to access a locked phone than having to enter a pin, or one of the many other methods of unlocking electronic devices.
- thomasrossi 11y agoIt is not saving battery, it is not producing less waste.. so no, it has no physical effect. As an algorithm it cannot be patented in the EU, and code-wise in EU it's the only thing you can try to patent.
- axman6 11y agoIt's making life easier for the user... this is one of the primary things that patents are here for, inventions which make life easier. And it's certainly not what would be considered "an algorithm" by any patent office - it has user interaction, in involves hardware, it is clearly not just a mere algorithm.
- astazangasta 11y agoI'd say "good riddance to bad rubbish" but this is just one of a million nonsense patents that are uselessly being applied to transfer wealth upwards. Why, humanity, why? Why do we continue to hang ourselves with these thin fictions? Our property concepts are fundamentally broken. Copyrights, patents and especially real estate are all flawed concepts that privilege their owners far more than they should. But we allow them to persist for centuries; then we wonder why society is fucked and some people have all the wealth.
- brador 11y agoWhat's wrong with real estate?
- astazangasta 11y agoArbitrary titles granted to someone that allows them to control a piece of the Earth in perpetuity? That doesn't strike you as a recipe for disaster and inequality? For a full answer, try: "Progress and Poverty" by Henry George.
- ChrisLTD 11y agoSome titles are arbitrary, but many others were exchanged for goods and services.
- astazangasta 11y agoThe entire notion that land - the fucking Earth - should be the property of a sole party is absurd.
- brador 11y agoWhat do you suggest as an alternative? Shared housing? Higher real estate taxes?
- tinco 11y agoI feel we're mixing too things now. There's control of land, and there's ownership of land. Control of land is mainly obtained by conquest and occupation, that's to say physical dominance. Titles are usually obtained by persons that attained this dominance, so that's hardly arbitrary (nor very perpetual though that may often seem so). This is nature. Ownership is the fun stuff where you pay money/goods to the previous owner (who might very well be (a descendant of) an oppressor). In exchange for rights of exploitation (i.e. living on it). It's not the titles that make real estate unfair, it's nature itself. That's why an egalitarian society can not be like nature but must instead be governed by rules and regulations. This is why democratic socialism is superior to libertarian capitalism (at least when we're talking equality and 'fairness').
- Tloewald 11y agoI don't think "obvious in retrospect" is a fair criterion for invalidating a patent. Those are actually the most valuable patents. The safety pin and the catseye (road reflector) were both patented and made fortunes for their inventors (or in the case of the safety pin the company that bought the patent). Now arguing the whole patent system is fucked up is perfectly fair but we shouldn't celebrate a legitimate, non-abstract patent being incorrectly invalidated.
- mattmanser 11y agoIt doesn't say that in the article, what are you basing it on? It says that it wasn't sophisticated enough. Safety pins and cats eyes both require sophistication in their construction.
- Tloewald 11y agoI should have been clearer. Their definition of "sophistication" is arbitrary and effectively amounts to "obvious in retrospect". Safety pins and catseyes aren't more "sophisticated". The inventor of the safety pin made a working version in a few minutes. Differentiating an intentional slide gesture is actually much more sophisticated than bending a wire or mounting a reflector on a piece of rubber.
- brlewis 11y agoJudges on Tuesday said that the iPhone maker’s method didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection Just so I understand what happened, can someone summarize German patent law? Is it the same 3 tests as in the U.S., i.e. statutory, novel, non-obvious?
- shmerl 11y agoGood. Such stuff should never have been patentable to begin with.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoThis is long overdue. As is invalidation of the bounceback patent. Like so many of "designy" patents, there's quite a bit of prior art. The whole "but on a computer" patent needs to go away. "Sliding a latch from one position to another to open but on a computer" should not be patentable.
- T3RMINATED 11y agothis is why i dont buy Apple products... dont want to feed corporate greed.
- TheMagicHorsey 11y agoEven the so called "good" software patents have a lot of the same elements as this bad patent. The problem is, most people aren't going to bother to read the claims of those patents and try to understand what the concepts claimed really are. I have been involved with several patent suits (on both litigant side and defendant side) and as an engineer, I have to admit that there has never been a time when I haven't read the statement of the problem the patent says its going to solve, and not thought of the solution myself, way before the patent presents the same solution. In other words, every single litigated software patent I've been asked to review has been BLATANTLY obvious. And I'm no genius. I've talked to other engineers and they've all said the same thing. I just explain a problem domain, and they usually give a solution that comes under the claims of the litigated patent. This is not to say that there aren't non-obvious software patents. Its just that those never seem to get litigated, because they aren't some obvious concept sitting at the nexus of a well-trodden path the industry is following. I can't describe or link the specific patents I've been involved with, for obvious reasons, but the stuff I'm talking about sounds like things as follows: "Receiving at a server a data packet, the data packet comprising a user identification number and a merchant identification number retrieving a record in a database referenced by the user identification number determining if the record in the database contains an authorization entry corresponding to the merchant identification number responsive to the record in the database containing an authorization entry corresponding to the merchant identification number, transmitting a second data packet, containing an authorization token, to a server operated by a merchant." I am not lying to you. This is how stupid each of these patents have been. Sometimes even worse. Nobody not involved in these litigations understands how bad it is. And this is coming from someone who has made at least enough money to buy several luxury cars, providing consulting services to this particular legal industry. In other words, I have a financial interest in things remaining this fucked up. And I'm still telling you, its really fucked up.
- ScottBurson 11y agoYes, I think this is the essence of the problem: the PTO and the courts have a very hard time distinguishing a nonobvious invention from an easy problem that merely happens to have been solved for the first time (as far as the PTO can tell). I have occasionally seen a software patent with an idea that was not obvious at least to me, but I haven't seen many of them. Most have been as you describe: once the requirements are understood, there is no difficulty designing a system to satisfy them. It's just that (again, as far as the PTO can tell) nobody has come across that particular set of requirements before. I think that in order to litigate a patent, the patentee should be required to provide evidence that their invention was nonobvious. The PTO is poorly equipped and structured to do a good job filtering out obvious "inventions" (for example, examiners have no incentives to do so); and yet, as things stand, the courts defer to the PTO on this question. I think the rules should be changed so the court has to be persuaded of the nonobviousness of the patent before the suit can proceed. That would be a potentially adversarial proceeding itself, in that the defendant would be allowed to argue that the invention is obvious, but the primary burden of proof would be on the patentee. One could argue that this would put on the court a job that should belong to the PTO, and that argument has some merit, but here's a counterargument. It's often hard to tell, when a patent application is filed, how much the potential patent will be worth. Delaying part of the effort involved in evaluating the patent until such a time that the patentee has actually decided to litigate makes some economic sense. More to the point, it is often easier to show nonobviousness once some time has passed. One of the Graham factors [0] that can be used as evidence of nonobviousness is commercial success of a product based on the invention. Such success can't have occurred yet at the time the patent application is filed. The change I am proposing would constitute a massive shift in the balance of power between patentees and alleged infringers, and a lot of oxen would be gored; I'm well aware of that. A lot of companies would see the putative value of their patent portfolios drop precipitously. Against that, they would have to worry a lot less about being sued. I'd be interested in your take on this, as you've been inside the system a lot more than I have. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._John_Deere_Co.#The_Patent_Act_of_1952 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._John_Deere_Co.#The_P...
- kriro 11y agoPretty obvious this was going to happen. Pretty much the only software that is patentable in Germany is stuff that controls physical machinery of sorts (embedded break controls or something). Control of forces of nature to cause an expected effect is what qualifies. "Technizität" (technical character) is what it's called. It's one of the four criteria. The other being it has to be "new" (no prior publications including your own), marketable (no clear cut criteria) and an invention (an "imaginary expert in the field" can't come up with it, also pretty debatable). So technically not much really qualifies. [IANAL]