5 ms·

Because "slide-to-unlock" is an innovation.

Bud 12y ago
Uh, it is an innovation. You can tell, because even though it seemed obvious and self-evident AFTER the fact, nobody managed to think of it beforehand. That's what fucking innovation looks like.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Yeah, so "obvious after the fact". here's some prior art: http://watermarked.cutcaster.com/cutcaster-photo-100329053-Old-medieval-lock-on-wooden-castle-door.jpg http://watermarked.cutcaster.com/cutcaster-photo-100329053-O... http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wooden-castle-gate-24387358.jpg http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wooden-castle-gate-24387358.j... http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/gothic-castle-gate-lock-lusoimages.jpg http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/gothi... http://www.artfactory.com/images/Medieval-Door-2219CDJ.jpg http://www.artfactory.com/images/Medieval-Door-2219CDJ.jpg Slide to unlock is as old as doors. The only other obvious alternative to someone skilled in the art of doormaking is rotate to unlock. Honestly only reasonable definition of obvious to use is: "based on the presence/awareness of innovation A, B, C, etc, how likely is it that two or more people are likely to come up with the same innovation simultaneously. The greater the likelihood of two or more people simultaneously arriving at the same solution, the less likely something should be patented.
  - sbuk 12y ago
    None of those are 'prior art'. You are confusing the mechanism with the application. RTFP.
    - malandrew 12y ago
      I have read the patent. Several times 1-2 years ago. It's the most obvious thing. Do you consider the slide to unlock on a floppy disk or SD card to be an innovation? Literally, humanity has been using the slide to unlock metaphor everywhere imaginable for years. It's very common metaphor. What's next? Patenting waving your hand in front of a electronic star trek door to unlock and option it? Quick someone go out and patent this obvious idea. Heck even the historical phenomena of signing X on a line in a contract when you're illiterate and don't know how to write/spell your own name is rooted in the same idea as slide to unlock on the iPhone. What's the simplest shape you can make with a writing utensil that demonstrates clear intent to someone who did not observe the act and cannot infer is something was intentional or accidental? Basically a circle or an X. A simple X is sufficient to communicate intent to a person that did not observe the action of signing the contract. This is essentially a "two phase commit". A slide to unlock mechanism is both performed and confirmed by the same person and doesn't require the second stroke requirement. With this in mind, the obvious design choice is only require one single stroke since it's sufficient to demonstrate clear intent and is cancellable (e.g. a half stroke doesn't count). Since the requirements are more lax a single phase commit is sufficient (i.e. a single swipe). Or how about those old TV remotes that used a sliding cover to hide the lesser used or configuration/setup controls? Or how about those phones that hid a phone keyboard behind the screen. There are three obvious choices, slide open, swivel open and flip open. What if I took the phone and slid my finger to the right but instead of sliding a skeuomorphic button the animation was instead a page or book cover flipping over? Or what if I did a arced swipe and "threw the lock screen" away the same way you force quit an app in iOS 7. What if I hold my finger down and the screen animates to a certain color over a short duration (maybe like when Mega Man powers up his special charged blaster cannon shot? These are all obvious since this are so incredibly analogous to other use cases. Take every new invention in the future where something needs to be unlock. I'll bet you the value of this settlement that almost every single future human invention that fits the narrative of unlocking or enabling is going to have some interface that either is literally slide to unlock or maps very clearly to that metaphor. Even opening your eyelids is slide to unlock.
      - sbuk 12y ago
        >"It's the most obvious thing" Why wasn't it implemented before if it is indeed as obvious as you are making out? Not one of the the modern things that you describe are examples of prior art. >"These are all obvious since this are so incredibly analogous to other use cases." Analogous to what? You are confusing mechanism with method. What you describe is a textbook example of creeping determinism (hindsight bias).
        malandrew 12y ago
        Show me a commercially viable, available, highly-sensitive touch screen (that responds to fingers) small enough to fit in your pocket (an environment with erroneous input) that is as responsive as the one of the first iPhone and that existed before the iPhone was revealed? The only example, I've ever seen of a screen that could reliably do touch sliding with fingers (not just tapping or special stylus) is the Star7 demo device shown off by James Gosling in the 90s. That device was huge and never would fit in a pocket, and therefore had no issues with erroneous input when locked. A tap would have worked. Apple literally invented the viable hardware tech that made sliding touch input a possibility, and for that they deserve a patent. There is some serious hardware innovation necessary to bring responsive capacitive to market. However, had such hardware been available at the time to all phone market participants, you would have seen more people arrive at the same obvious conclusion as slide to unlock. Apple only got the patent because they had a monopoly on the solution of the necessary hardware tech and kept it secret long enough to milk it for as many obvious interface/interaction patents as possible. No one else had even had a device like the iPhone to even encounter and try to solve the obvious problem of how to distinguish between erroneous input when the phone is in your pocket. Please enlighten me on the distinction you're using for "mechanism" and "method". It's very easy to claim hindsight bias, but you didn't even make an attempt to address any of my points explaining why this method is obvious across multitude of settings, including analogous ones that have yet to be invented, like my star trek door example. Maybe Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures has already filed a slide to unlock patent on those doors for whenever they are invented. Every lock in history is a state machine with position locked and unlocked. Almost everyone of those locks (because its preferred that locks generally are meant to stay locked and not accidentally unlocked) involve some method of moving from the state of locked to unlocked in a continuous motion, and almost all of them only respond to unlocking at the end of the range of that continuous motion. With that in mind, twisting/arcing and sliding are the obvious solutions to anyone with knowledge of locks, digital, physical or otherwise.

Bud 12y ago

Uh, it is an innovation. You can tell, because even though it seemed obvious and self-evident AFTER the fact, nobody managed to think of it beforehand. That's what fucking innovation looks like.

malandrew 12y ago
Yeah, so "obvious after the fact". here's some prior art: http://watermarked.cutcaster.com/cutcaster-photo-100329053-Old-medieval-lock-on-wooden-castle-door.jpg http://watermarked.cutcaster.com/cutcaster-photo-100329053-O... http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wooden-castle-gate-24387358.jpg http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/wooden-castle-gate-24387358.j... http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/gothic-castle-gate-lock-lusoimages.jpg http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/gothi... http://www.artfactory.com/images/Medieval-Door-2219CDJ.jpg http://www.artfactory.com/images/Medieval-Door-2219CDJ.jpg Slide to unlock is as old as doors. The only other obvious alternative to someone skilled in the art of doormaking is rotate to unlock. Honestly only reasonable definition of obvious to use is: "based on the presence/awareness of innovation A, B, C, etc, how likely is it that two or more people are likely to come up with the same innovation simultaneously. The greater the likelihood of two or more people simultaneously arriving at the same solution, the less likely something should be patented.
- sbuk 12y ago
  None of those are 'prior art'. You are confusing the mechanism with the application. RTFP.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    I have read the patent. Several times 1-2 years ago. It's the most obvious thing. Do you consider the slide to unlock on a floppy disk or SD card to be an innovation? Literally, humanity has been using the slide to unlock metaphor everywhere imaginable for years. It's very common metaphor. What's next? Patenting waving your hand in front of a electronic star trek door to unlock and option it? Quick someone go out and patent this obvious idea. Heck even the historical phenomena of signing X on a line in a contract when you're illiterate and don't know how to write/spell your own name is rooted in the same idea as slide to unlock on the iPhone. What's the simplest shape you can make with a writing utensil that demonstrates clear intent to someone who did not observe the act and cannot infer is something was intentional or accidental? Basically a circle or an X. A simple X is sufficient to communicate intent to a person that did not observe the action of signing the contract. This is essentially a "two phase commit". A slide to unlock mechanism is both performed and confirmed by the same person and doesn't require the second stroke requirement. With this in mind, the obvious design choice is only require one single stroke since it's sufficient to demonstrate clear intent and is cancellable (e.g. a half stroke doesn't count). Since the requirements are more lax a single phase commit is sufficient (i.e. a single swipe). Or how about those old TV remotes that used a sliding cover to hide the lesser used or configuration/setup controls? Or how about those phones that hid a phone keyboard behind the screen. There are three obvious choices, slide open, swivel open and flip open. What if I took the phone and slid my finger to the right but instead of sliding a skeuomorphic button the animation was instead a page or book cover flipping over? Or what if I did a arced swipe and "threw the lock screen" away the same way you force quit an app in iOS 7. What if I hold my finger down and the screen animates to a certain color over a short duration (maybe like when Mega Man powers up his special charged blaster cannon shot? These are all obvious since this are so incredibly analogous to other use cases. Take every new invention in the future where something needs to be unlock. I'll bet you the value of this settlement that almost every single future human invention that fits the narrative of unlocking or enabling is going to have some interface that either is literally slide to unlock or maps very clearly to that metaphor. Even opening your eyelids is slide to unlock.
    - sbuk 12y ago
      >"It's the most obvious thing" Why wasn't it implemented before if it is indeed as obvious as you are making out? Not one of the the modern things that you describe are examples of prior art. >"These are all obvious since this are so incredibly analogous to other use cases." Analogous to what? You are confusing mechanism with method. What you describe is a textbook example of creeping determinism (hindsight bias).
      - malandrew 12y ago
        Show me a commercially viable, available, highly-sensitive touch screen (that responds to fingers) small enough to fit in your pocket (an environment with erroneous input) that is as responsive as the one of the first iPhone and that existed before the iPhone was revealed? The only example, I've ever seen of a screen that could reliably do touch sliding with fingers (not just tapping or special stylus) is the Star7 demo device shown off by James Gosling in the 90s. That device was huge and never would fit in a pocket, and therefore had no issues with erroneous input when locked. A tap would have worked. Apple literally invented the viable hardware tech that made sliding touch input a possibility, and for that they deserve a patent. There is some serious hardware innovation necessary to bring responsive capacitive to market. However, had such hardware been available at the time to all phone market participants, you would have seen more people arrive at the same obvious conclusion as slide to unlock. Apple only got the patent because they had a monopoly on the solution of the necessary hardware tech and kept it secret long enough to milk it for as many obvious interface/interaction patents as possible. No one else had even had a device like the iPhone to even encounter and try to solve the obvious problem of how to distinguish between erroneous input when the phone is in your pocket. Please enlighten me on the distinction you're using for "mechanism" and "method". It's very easy to claim hindsight bias, but you didn't even make an attempt to address any of my points explaining why this method is obvious across multitude of settings, including analogous ones that have yet to be invented, like my star trek door example. Maybe Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures has already filed a slide to unlock patent on those doors for whenever they are invented. Every lock in history is a state machine with position locked and unlocked. Almost everyone of those locks (because its preferred that locks generally are meant to stay locked and not accidentally unlocked) involve some method of moving from the state of locked to unlocked in a continuous motion, and almost all of them only respond to unlocking at the end of the range of that continuous motion. With that in mind, twisting/arcing and sliding are the obvious solutions to anyone with knowledge of locks, digital, physical or otherwise.