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Comment by capo | Hacker News Reader

The four new patents Apple is leveraging against Samsung include the '647 "Data Detectors" patent, the '721 "Slide-to-unlock" property, the '172 "Word completion" invention and the '604 "Universal search" patent.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/08/31/apple_adds_sam...

Just broad nonsensical software patents that shouldn't have been granted in the first place.

I hope Samsung fights this as I think they have a much better chance in winning even a jury trial against these, I mean why hasn't anyone invalidated these patents yet?!

P.S.

I'm not clear as to when Apple is hoping to ban these devices, at the December hearing? earlier? next year? I would appreciate a clarification.

Edit: trial date is set for March 2014 according to this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044361860457762...

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It's hard to imagine Samsung winning a jury trial in California against Apple. Trying patents before a local jury should be against WTO rules. It's a form of protectionism in my view.

If their lawyers learned their lesson and in future will screen the jury for those with an agenda and don't give a damn about prior art, I believe they'll do better.

How do you screen a Californian jury for people who may have a bias in favor of a Californian company?

I don't know, but seeing as they don't have a choice about the venue (maybe they do, I'm not a lawyer) they ought to focus on other factors and biases.

Apple created something new. Samsung had it blocked from South Korea for two years so that they could clone it and try to corner the domestic (South Korean) market.

I'm not a huge fan of patents either but what can we do when countries like South Korea break every free trade agreement they make? Our politicians are only looking at the short-term election horizon and don't bother to call South Korea out on their BS.

Slide to unlock doesn't seem broad to me. It seems easy to workaround by requiring a swipe but not moving the image until the end of the swipe or requiring a pattern of taps.

There may be prior art as another poster claims, I haven't studied it but it doesn't look too broad to me.

Samsung doesn't implement the slide to unlock action on a predetermined path. On 2012 phones, it's just swipe anywhere along any direction for a certain distance. IIRC, onn the 2011 phones it was slide the lockscreen wallpaper in any direction.

In that case from my quick glance at the patent it already may not be infringing. If the wallpaper moves with the drag I would need to look at the claims carefully again.

I was not trying to give a total judgement on the case but argue against the claim that all the patents were ridiculously broad (admittedly the data detectors one looks very broad to me although if read in the broad way MUST have prior art).

The important point is that Apple should be able to patent slide to unlock - it's preposterous. In fact, noone should be able to paint such trivialities.

Maybe it wasn't so "trivial" when they patented it.

No, no it was.

Its right up there with someone trying to patent the ESC key.

May grandmother had "slide to unlock" on her 100-years old toilet room door.

No, she didn't. She had a bolt. The mechanism and implementation is significantly different, unless she had a 100 year old capacitive screen attached to the door in order to operate the bolt.

He isn't saying the bolt is prior art. He is saying that the existence of the bold implies that the concept is obvious.

I don't see the problem with patenting trivialities (compared to many things) as they are easy to avoid/workaround. They still have to be novel but they don't cause such a massive problem as broad patents, standard essential patents or defacto standard essential patents (e.g. Microsoft's FAT patents).

It is clear that at least at the time of grant that it wasn't the only obvious way to unlock a touchscreen - it wasn't used by MS/Palm/Ericsson. Prior art from others may apply but the fact that many weren't doing this indicates that it wasn't completely obvious.

That's like arguing there is no problem with pot holes on road as long as they are easy to step over.

There are many problems with patents but these sort of patents come about 10th on the list of problem areas if they are a problem area at all. I just can't get worked up at all about it. There are many better examples illustrating need for patent reform.

The scope is highly limited and no one needs to practice them at all. There are still issues of accidental infringement and the high costs of defending actions particularly in the US. However you could just wait until challenged on issues of this type and then workaround removing the incentive to prosecute an action against SME's.

To take your analagy it is more like the rough surface of a newly paved road than potholes.

It may not be broad but it's trivial and obvious. It's like dismissing a dialog box by pressing the enter key.

I'm not sure it is obvious.

There is quite a bit of detail specified (e.g. continuous movement of the image along the path) and it wasn't the approach taken by Ericsson, Palm or Microsoft in their previous touch devices so it isn't clear to me that it is obvious (at least in the detail).

To me it is better to have narrow specific patents even if they aren't completely revolutionary than massively broad ones claiming whole areas of technology.

Again - I haven't studied the prior art either listed in the patent or suggested by others so that may rule it out but as a concept and as patents go it seems like quite a reasonable one.

That isn't to say I don't think the patent system needs major reform and may generally be doing more harm than good but this specific patent seems to me to be the wrong example to pick as an example of what is wrong with the system.

Desktop computers have had the concept of moving your mouse to "wake up" a sleeping computer for years. How much of a leap is it translate that to moving your finger to unlock a phone?

Pretty darn obvious I would say.

Does the mouse have to move over a specific part of the screen? Does it move an image as it moves to wake it up? From a quick glance at the patent these seem to be essential parts and are the non-trivial parts of the patent that make it easier to work around and a more reasonable patent than is suggested by many commentators.

Again I'm not saying that slide to unlock is definitely valid as there may be prior art but I really find the arguments based on a straw man of what the patent is to be really unhelpful to the discussion.

Well here is a video of the Neonode prior art:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

It's unlocked with a left to right swipe. Contrary to the iPhone there is no image moving with the finger. I don't think that difference is worth a patent. Moving things (i.e. images) around with the finger is a pretty obvious concept for a purely touch-based device. See for example the Microsoft Surface (now renamed to PixelSense) from 2008:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Looked at the first video and for me it wouldn't count as prior art because it doesn't include the image showing the path or an object being dragged along. If I was on a jury I would say that the Neonode wasn't prior art for this patent.

To be clear though this is based on an understanding of the patent covering only swipe to unlock with an image and a dragged object.

Haven't looked at the MS video but are you sure 2008 is early enough for prior art for this patent in the US where the first to invent rather than first to file priority was in place at that time?

There may also be other prior art but this alone doesn't convince me that this should be invalidated.

Thanks for having a look! I guess I was not clear... The point of the first video was to show that the moving image is the only thing missing from the Neonode prior art.

The point of the second video was to show that moving an image on a touch screen with a finger was known to the industry before the iPhone was introduced[1].

This means that Apple's slide to unlock is nothing more than the combination of two known concepts: swipe to unlock and moving an image with the finger. Certainly not worthy of a patent in my opinion.

[1] Linking to the MS video was a mistake of mine, since the device was actually introduced after the iPhone. But please, do have a look at this wonderful summary of the history of multi-touch technology (especially the list of devices in the second half of the page): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wetIwsR...

There's also an impressive TED video from early 2006: http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...

Have you seen the Galaxy S3 lockscreen? There is not an image that moves. They had to remove the visual feedback which is an obvious addition to Nenode's slide to unlock. But apparently it is still not enough for Apple.

No, I haven't seen it and in that case (based on your description and my very quick reading of the claims) I would hope and expect it to be found not to infringe. That is a separate issue from whether it is valid (except that both should be judged under the same understanding of the claims - narrow or broad).

Can we stop downvoting because we disagree please. It's not there to show disagreement, it's for individuals that are behaving badly.

Your trust in humanity is admirable if you think that everyone is emotionally capable of telling the two apart ;-)

Also, the problem is that upvoting is accepted as an expression of agreement. So it's a bit counter intuitive to reject downvoting as a form of disagreement.

I for one have decided to never downvote under any circumstances. Downvoting can be unnecessarily humiliating, even thuggish when posts become almost invisible. Using words should do the trick, even in cases of really bad behavior.

> I'm not sure it is obvious.

Swipe-image-of-a-knob-to-unlock repicates exactly on a display what has long been a moderately common physical widget on mobile phones, mp3 players, portable consoles etc.: a sliding `Lock' or `Hold' button. User sled a finger over a dedicated area of chassis -- where the physical button is located; the button followed the finger; upon reaching end of travel it unlocked or locked the device.

It's a stellar example of `the same as before, but on a mobile device' type of patent, that doesn't really cover innovation.

There is an invention waiting happen here: doing away with the image following finger and replacing it with some other kind of feedback. After all, on a display we are no longer constrained -- neither by costs nor by technology -- to a simple sliding button.

"It seems easy to workaround by requiring a swipe but not moving the image until the end of the swipe or requiring a pattern of taps."

So nobody should add visual feedback during the unlock operation, because someone did it first and patented it?

Several European courts threw out the slide to unlock patent, as there was prior art with a Neonode phone. Judge Posner, with whom Apple tried to argue that a tap is a zero length swipe, and Judge Koh were skeptical of the validity of the slide to unlock patent.

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