Apple Awarded Patent For Slide-To-Unlock

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Apple has been awarded a design patent for its slide-to-unlock feature. Now if you get caught using it, you will get a first hand look at Apple's "click-to-sue" patent.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple patent numbers D675,639 and D675,612, respectively covering the much-disputed slide-to-unlock user interface asset and design for the original iPhone.
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I have a Garmin heart rate monitor/GPS touch screen watch that has a slide to unlock feature. Looks like everyone is gonna pay dearly for "copying" Apples "original" "ideas".
 
Absolutely rediculous... Go Go Gadget Patents, designed to stop innovation and small businesses!
 
Does every one who made a sliding bolt lock for the last ten thousand years have to pay Apple?
 
Well it's already prior art, we will have to wait five years before they get paid by Samsung/Google to dig through the system and find out that it already existed.
 
Max Mike said:
Does every one who made a sliding bolt lock for the last ten thousand years have to pay Apple?
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Like this?

2778623586_1ae71e07ed_z.jpg
 
Since we moved to first to file expect that prior art is really going to be ignored most of the time.
 
"Slide to unlock"

Basically just a patent for the retards who cannot figure how to open a phone 0_O
 
This isn't actually a patent on the "slide to unlock" feature - it's a patent on the ornamental design of their slide to unlock interface.

That being said - it's still basically a patent on some rounded rectangles, an arrow, and a sans serif font arranged in the most "obvious" way imaginable. There's going to be a point we're going to come to where Apple will own the patent on anything you could possibly make out of rounded rectangles. The future will have many sharp edges as a result.
 
GaryJohnson said:
There's going to be a point we're going to come to where Apple will own the patent on anything you could possibly make out of rounded rectangles.
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Seems they're the only ones smart enough to take advantage of the broken USPTO.
 
Will this ever get fixed or are we doomed to forever live with such a stupid system?
 
GaryJohnson said:
This isn't actually a patent on the "slide to unlock" feature - it's a patent on the ornamental design of their slide to unlock interface.
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Nice to see someone's paying attention to the difference between utility and design patents.
 
What is Apple's issue? Whenever they aren't busy re-branding someone else's idea, they are patenting basic gestures . . . but not the one I'm thinking of giving apple right now, at least not yet ;).
 
Nicterys said:
Good luck with that; the history of major companies patenting in order to stifle competition in the United States is as American as apple pie.
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That's true, but apple pie wasn't invented in America, we just got the patent office to OK that phrase.
 
Purpose of patents: To encourage innovation.

Result of bullshit US patent system: Completely stiffles innovation by allowing patents of extremely basic key designs... including rectangular shapes and common sense gestures as if that required massive R&D. *facepalm*
 
Like others have already posted, Apple's patent has ZERO to do with the actual functionality of the slide-to-unlock feature.

It only allows Apple to prevent others from making a slide-to-unlock feature that looks just like Apple's.


Utility patents are on the functionality of the invention.
Design patents are on the non-functional design elements (ie the looks as long as it is not functional).
 
Maybe we should stop patenting software. I thought that was what copyright was for.
 
Am I having a déjà vu? Thought they already had that.
 
the-one1 said:
I have a Garmin heart rate monitor/GPS touch screen watch that has a slide to unlock feature. Looks like everyone is gonna pay dearly for "copying" Apples "original" "ideas".
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Fixed that for you...
Looks like everyone is gonna pay dearly for Apple "copying" others ideas.
 
Goride said:
Like others have already posted, Apple's patent has ZERO to do with the actual functionality of the slide-to-unlock feature.

It only allows Apple to prevent others from making a slide-to-unlock feature that looks just like Apple's.


Utility patents are on the functionality of the invention.
Design patents are on the non-functional design elements (ie the looks as long as it is not functional).
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Does that mean its possible to come up with every other variation and patent an infinity amount of these design elements? That might tie the court up for infinity time.
 
travanx said:
Does that mean its possible to come up with every other variation and patent an infinity amount of these design elements? That might tie the court up for infinity time.
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Theoretically it is possible, but it is disincentivized and almost impossible to do.


First of all, it would be extremely expensive to try something like this. I do not know what it costs on average to file a design patent application, but I have an idea of utility patent applications. An aquaintance of mine is an in-house patent attorney for a fortune 500 company. She budgets roughly $20,000 for every patent application filed. Please note, that this is what she budgets per application, not what it costs for an application that becomes a patent (that can cost more). To file with the USPTO costs a certain amount of money initially, but it also costs extra for certain filings during the prosecution. Furthermore, it costs the company/inventor money to have the patent attorney/agent draw up the application, deal with the office actions from the USPTO, etc. Again that is for a utility patent not a design patent. I imagine design patents are cheaper than utility patents, but you get the idea of an estimated cost per application.

Take that cost estimation per application, then multiply it by your "infinity amount of design elements". I am not the best at math but I imagine $20,000 times infinity to be a very large number.

Also keep in mind that, as you said, there are almost an infinite amount of design choices just for that slide-to-lock feature. Now think of all the other design features that are on the iPhone. Now think of all the other devices apple sells, and all the design features on each of those devices. You are WELL into the thousands just considering all their design features alone. And each of those thousands of design features each have an almost infinite amount of ways they can be designed. $$$$

There is no way a company can even try to file for all of that. (This was in the context of Apple, but the same goes for any company. Also, other companies get design patents just like this too. Apple is just a favorite to pick on currently. Whatever your favorite brand is, I am sure they have patents just like this.)



Also, this was said before, but it is absolutely crucial to keep in mind: A design patent ONLY covers the non functional portions of the design. Very very very important.

A quick example. Here is a picture of the design patent:
Slide-to-Unlock-130205.jpg

I got it from the OP's link, but apparently it came from the USPTO.


Do you see the "slide to unlock" text and the arrow on the slider? Those are arguably functional elements of the design and arguably not protected. Think about it. If you were to hand an iPhone, as currently is, to your grandmother, she would probably figure out how to unlock it by sliding it. If you removed the "slide to unlock" text and that arrow, then handed the phone to her, she might not be able to figure out what to do. Thus, arguably those design elements are functional and thus not protected under a design patent.

With that said, as you said before, there is a near infinite amount of ways one could design an arrow and text to put on a slide bar like that, to help inform a user what to do. So basically, you can have a slide-to-unlock feature, and it can still have squares, and rectangles, and arrows, and text, etc. It just cannot look almost exactly like Apple's though.

And that makes sense if you really think about it. If you pick up a phone, and see nothing but that bar in the pic above, you pretty much automatically recognize it as an iPhone. If pick up a different phone and recognize a certain distinct feature, you might recognize it as a Samsung, HTC, whatever. Every company has little unique design elements like this they want to protect. Sometimes they protect them with a design patent others they go down the trademark route (each can protect designs and marks, but they have different laws regulating them, and different reasons why to go down each path).

Simply put, this is not even close to as ridiculous as everyone is making it out to be. Every company/device out there can have slide to unlock features, and can even look and function similar. But it cannot be so similar that when you picked it up, you would think it was a phone running iOS when it is not an Apple. Think about the start/task bar on windows. You can have task bars that function and look similar in Linux, OSX, etc. But you cannot put a windows logo on it, or design it such that one would think they were on windows when they were not (I don't know if microsoft has a design patent on their task/start bar, but the concept/analogy is the same).
 
The above is a long post, but it will clear up a lot of misconceptions about design patents and what Apple's patent here actually is.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
The patent system needs to be tossed out and kicked on the way out.
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Yes because we want all innovation to grind to a halt.

The patent system needs to be reformed, not thrown out. The first step would be to no longer have it be an over-sized trough for the judges and lawyers to feed at. They get paid by the system and they put money back into politicians to protect and grow their industry.
 
Nicterys said:
Good luck with that; the history of major companies patenting in order to stifle competition in the United States is as American as apple pie.
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There was a difference between getting a patent when there's justification to get one and getting one when their isn't.

And patent manipulation is far from a uniquely American trait. In fact the US based patents off the first person to invent. The rest of the world based if off first person to file. The reason for that is that the US was a wellspring of innovation when patent systems were becoming important. And a local could steal an American or another country's idea and have it patented in their country before the original inventor could muster the resources to file. The anti-Americanism bullshit is just getting old.
 
jpm100 said:
Yes because we want all innovation to grind to a halt.
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I think the opposite would happen. Businesses would be forced to constantly innovate to stay ahead of the competition, rather than resting on their laurels while they wait for the profit from their existing protected product to die off before releasing their next big thing that supersedes it.
 
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