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Apple's problem isn't that the patents are stupid, it's that the inventions or ideas never belonged to them in the first place. In the vast majority of cases th

Apple's problem isn't that the patents are stupid, it's that the inventions or ideas never belonged to them in the first place. In the vast majority of cases the idea or implementation already existed. Like the slide to unlock which was used at least since 2005 in a commercial device. [0][1] They also tried patenting a method to reduce power consumption of a chip by reducing voltage. Something that isn't just a law of nature (thus unpatentable) but was also used decades before ever since ICs were developed (thus "prior art"). One of the most controversial patents is the "rectangle with rounded corners". This was a design patent and these in general are usually not just very hard to enforce but also stupid in most cases. [0] https://www.gsmarena.com/neonode_n1m-1137.php https://www.gsmarena.com/neonode_n1m-1137.php [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-KS2kfIr0&t=240s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-KS2kfIr0&t=240s

alain94040 8y ago
Close, but not quite. The video you show is missing a key element of what Apple patented: the animation that tells you what to do to unlock. Apple didn't patent a swipe to unlock, it patented the version where a visual guide is provided to swipe to unlock: 1. A method of unlocking a hand-held electronic device, the device including a touch-sensitive display, the method comprising: detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location corresponding to an unlock image; continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact while continuous contact with the touch screen is maintained, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; and unlocking the hand-held electronic device if the moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display results in movement of the unlock image from the first predefined location to a predefined unlock region on the touch-sensitive display. As you can see if you watch the video carefully, that older device had no feedback regarding how to unlock, and whether the unlock even worked. It makes it a more confusing, hard to use device. Hence a new patent that fixes those limitations makes sense.
- close04 8y ago
  > continuously moving the unlock image Good find. Wouldn't anyone be able to bypass by simply not having a "continuously moving image", just the suggestion to slide and a button that disappears while sliding?

alain94040 8y ago

Close, but not quite. The video you show is missing a key element of what Apple patented: the animation that tells you what to do to unlock. Apple didn't patent a swipe to unlock, it patented the version where a visual guide is provided to swipe to unlock: 1. A method of unlocking a hand-held electronic device, the device including a touch-sensitive display, the method comprising: detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location corresponding to an unlock image; continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact while continuous contact with the touch screen is maintained, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; and unlocking the hand-held electronic device if the moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display results in movement of the unlock image from the first predefined location to a predefined unlock region on the touch-sensitive display. As you can see if you watch the video carefully, that older device had no feedback regarding how to unlock, and whether the unlock even worked. It makes it a more confusing, hard to use device. Hence a new patent that fixes those limitations makes sense.

close04 8y ago
> continuously moving the unlock image Good find. Wouldn't anyone be able to bypass by simply not having a "continuously moving image", just the suggestion to slide and a button that disappears while sliding?