one-click patent is one of the most stupid patents
As for the one-click payment system that helped build both their online stores, the US patent to that expired in September 2017.
I could understand allowing a months-long patent of this kind, but 18 years seems about an order of magnitude too long.
edit: The more I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if someday in the not distant enough future this is the way 90% of all commerce happens.
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.
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.
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?
“Oh competitors who copy everything we do, even sometimes in cargo cult fashion... we didn’t patent this. Please don’t copy it.”
If they don’t not only will they get ripped off (losing the benefit of their good/unique design) the competitor may patent the feature and then Apple would have to spend millions of dollars and years to overturn the patent and hopefully get attorneys fees.
It sucks, but it’s a perfectly sane business decision. They open themselves to liability if they don’t.
(Also it's a joke)