Apple wins German injunction against Motorola over 'slide-to-unlock'

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neo42 View Post


    Because it's synonymous with turning a door knob? Do you think that "turning a knob to open a door" should be patented?



    Prior to Apple, who used a 'doorknob' for what in computing?



    Add: Other smart people beat me to it..... ;-D
  • Reply 22 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    There weren't always doorknobs.



    When the doorknob was first invented, it was indeed an innovation and if the patent system was around at that time, it likely would have been granted a patent and the inventor would have been wildly rich in his or her day and famous ever after, instead of lost to history as is now the case.



    You said what I was going to say, almost word for word.

    so... +1
  • Reply 23 of 82
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,616member
    As demonstrated by the implementation on the Xoom, it is easy to work around. The question is, why didn't they all work around it instead of copying it. It's not as if the patent is vague, it is very specific in the slide to unlock function.



    The obvious answer is that Motorola and friends wanted to copy the look and feel of the iphone as much as possible to help sell their devices.
  • Reply 24 of 82
    Quote:

    Apple the once great 'innovators', now more like the ruthless 'litigators'.



    These are not mutually exclusive. The engineers innovate, the lawyers protect. Apple employs both. As it should be.
  • Reply 25 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by repentantfan View Post


    See this is what confuses Android idiots. They want to believe Apple patented an action, such as "turning a knob to open a door". Apple uniquely created a mechanism, like the door knob is a mechanism.



    As submission #18 shows that there was a patent "for improvements on a door-closing device". But it seems door knobs existed even back into the 18th century. It is likely that the door knob was invented before 1790, when the first U.S. patent was issued. I would guess it would be likely that had the patent office existed then, a door knob patent would have been granted, considering a patent was granted for an improvement.



    My main point, though, is that Android supporters are so blindly by their bias that, to them, Apple does not innovate. Even though it took 2 years (?) for even Google to respond with what is essentially a copy. Yeah, not in every detail, but one has to be an idiot to deny that Android is significantly influenced by and similar to the iPhone OS aka iOS.



    i use android. had 2.x and now 4.0 and 3.2 (on a tablet). they obviously copied the iphone on 1.x and 2.x. blatant. too bad. the great news is that now they are pushing beyond the somewhat tired icon littered desktop design that apple came out with initially and being forced to rethink some things to avoid lawsuits. its made android a better product than it was.
  • Reply 26 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    These are not mutually exclusive. The engineers innovate, the lawyers protect. Apple employs both. As it should be.



    they are still innovating. they just announced some new feature in 'Mountain Lion' that Ubuntu already had....
  • Reply 27 of 82
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    they are still innovating. they just announced some new feature in 'Mountain Lion' that Ubuntu had for a while now....



    Like what? Ubuntu had iMessage support?
  • Reply 28 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by irnchriz View Post


    As demonstrated by the implementation on the Xoom, it is easy to work around. The question is, why didn't they all work around it instead of copying it. It's not as if the patent is vague, it is very specific in the slide to unlock function.



    The obvious answer is that Motorola and friends wanted to copy the look and feel of the iphone as much as possible to help sell their devices.



    You said what I was going to say, almost word for word.

    so... +1
  • Reply 29 of 82
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,616member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    they are still innovating. they just announced some new feature in 'Mountain Lion' that Ubuntu already had....



    Gah, Linux is fine as a base for Xen or firewalls but as a desktop operating system it's woeful. As someone pointed out once 'its a fine operating system for anyone who has no value for their time'.
  • Reply 30 of 82
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz View Post


    But what does the word "doorknob" really mean?



    The word, or term, 'doorknob' originates from the turn of the century when door men were more commonplace than now. A 'doorknob' was a door man who was also a real sonofabitch - as in 'that door man is a fucking knob'.
  • Reply 31 of 82
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    It's interesting to me how many of Apple's innovations get dismissed as being "obvious", and how often it gets argued that Apple's designs are the only possible solution to a given problem.



    I think it speaks to how Apple builds products that this even comes up. Apple makes things that are simple as possible, and intuitive as possible, and as integrated as possible. When they get it right there's a sense of inevitability about the results, a kind of "Aha!" feeling where once you see it you wonder why no one did it that way before. That's true of all the best design, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's obvious before someone figures it out.



    Slide to unlock is like that. It's spare, intuitive, and takes into account how most people hold a phone and what the most natural one handed gesture would be. It could have been tap twice to unlock, or a hardware button, or a quick swirl, or shake, or an upward flicking gesture. But that sweep of the thumb is the easiest, most natural thing to do, which is why Apple chose it. And patented it, because its one of the things that makes the iPhone experience easier and more natural than the competition.



    But "easy and natural" isn't some kind of natural phenomena, rightfully held by all. It's the result of hard work, of an intense iterative process that tries a million different things to get at that "obvious" solution. People are arguing that once Apple has done the work to identify the best outcome, that we should pretend like there wasn't really any work at all-- that what is "obvious" once it's been finished was "obvious" all along, and Apple just happened on it a little earlier than everyone else.



    Funny how they keep doing that.
  • Reply 32 of 82
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody View Post


    The thing I don't understand is why the Xoom unlock is excluded.



    If you read the tech press, most assume this exclusion is due to the "predetermined path" qualifier in the patent, but if you read the patent this qualifier actually doesn't exist. I've read the thing twice now and it would seem that if it's valid at all, the Xoom method with the circle is pretty much *exactly* the kind of unlock method the patent refers to.



    I've yet to read anything that justifies the exclusion of the Xoom circle opening thingie given that the other methods are supposedly clear violations.



    Agreed, it seems that the patent covers all implementations of slide-to-unlock. However, it doesn't patent the idea of unlocking a locked screen in itself, since it has been around for many years on dumb phones, etc.



    So, I wonder, what method could one use to unlock a locked screen on a device with a touch screen, which doesn't involve performing gestures on the image displayed on said touch screen? Any ideas?
  • Reply 33 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by irnchriz View Post


    Gah, Linux is fine as a base for Xen or firewalls but as a desktop operating system it's woeful. As someone pointed out once 'its a fine operating system for anyone who has no value for their time'.



    what's bad about Ubuntu? i use it at home and at work as my main machine and run windows as a VM.

    its true, linux distros are for people who know what they are doing, aren't afraid to find out how things actually work, and utilize the power inherent in the OS. anyone who says it isn't extremely capable and useful for many, many things is just a moron.

    i am using it now to post this, is that somehow less a 'value' for my time than you posting on this forum with OS X or ipad or whatever you are using? of course not.
  • Reply 34 of 82
    Does anybody see what happens?



    Why the hell Germans do not tell: "get the f... out of here with your lawsuits 'cause we are paying taxes for those courts and they are not for corporate business to make law-trading-market!"
  • Reply 35 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    they are still innovating. they just announced some new feature in 'Mountain Lion' that Ubuntu already had....



    It's fine if you like Ubuntu. In reality, Ubuntu now is in transition from poor man Windows to poor man OSX.
  • Reply 36 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by fuwafuwa View Post


    It's fine if you like Ubuntu. In reality, Ubuntu now is in transition from poor man Windows to poor man OSX.



    rather a poor man than an rich idiot.
  • Reply 37 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrDoppio View Post


    So, I wonder, what method could one use to unlock a locked screen on a device with a touch screen, which doesn't involve performing gestures on the image displayed on said touch screen? Any ideas?



    Double tapping? 4 finger taps? One finger in the upper left corner, one in the lower right corner? Holding a finger (or fingers) on the screen for 3 seconds? Shaking the phone a certain way? Turning it upside-down then right-side up? Swiping anywhere (no image)?

    There's 7 different ways I took all of 2 minutes to write, and I'm not a highly paid software designer.

    Not that any of these are as easy and intuitive as swiping an image to unlock...
  • Reply 38 of 82
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    It's interesting to me how many of Apple's innovations get dismissed as being "obvious", and how often it gets argued that Apple's designs are the only possible solution to a given problem.



    I think it speaks to how Apple builds products that this even comes up. Apple makes things that are simple as possible, and intuitive as possible, and as integrated as possible. When they get it right there's a sense of inevitability about the results, a kind of "Aha!" feeling where once you see it you wonder why no one did it that way before. That's true of all the best design, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's obvious before someone figures it out.



    Slide to unlock is like that. It's spare, intuitive, and takes into account how most people hold a phone and what the most natural one handed gesture would be. It could have been tap twice to unlock, or a hardware button, or a quick swirl, or shake, or an upward flicking gesture.



    Exactly. Perhaps the only other patent that might interfere with these different unlocking strategies is the multi-touch patent where a user might possibly use more than 1 digit to engage a certain unlock feature (e.g. 2 fingers rotating counter-clockwise, like opening a jar or bottle), but as you noted, there were other options available from the get-go. The fact that nothing else was really even considered just speaks to the outright copying here as well as Apple's attention to detail around design and usability. With that said, I'm guessing Apple may yet improve upon what we have already come to know as the ubiquitous unlocking feature. perhaps one of the words that has stuck with me in light of Jobs' passing and having seen all of the various interviews with him was the use of the term "metaphor" for discussing the Mac OS as well as Windows in terms of how the graphics are used to create and interpret a computing space. These concepts and metaphors do not spring into the world of their own accord like a plant might from the ground. People and minds develop them and refine them, hence the very concept of intellectual property. The slide to unlock feature of the iDevices is just one metaphor for activating a handheld or multimedia device. Any number of alternatives could have been used or developed, but they weren't, they were copied. Even the Motorola option is a variation of the initial concept and could have been much more unique and likely as usable with a little more creativity. I'll take Motorola's designs for my cable modems, but never for a smartphone.
  • Reply 39 of 82
    I went out and saved a little money by buying a cheap, plasticish, Android phone with all the junky buttons and ugly logos all over it.



    I think I will now hang out at AI and try to convince the Apple guys that my phone really isn't a shameless Apple rip off by some guys stabbing their mentor in the back because they had run out of their own ideas.
  • Reply 40 of 82
    Ruling in favor of this patent should be a no-brainer. Did anyone have "slide to unlock" on a phone or tablet before Apple? No. Did this feature show up in all kinds of phones after Apple introduced it? Yes. Case closed.
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