There may be prior art as another poster claims, I haven't studied it but it doesn't look too broad to me.
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.
Pretty darn obvious I would say.
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.
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:
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.
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...
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.
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.
So nobody should add visual feedback during the unlock operation, because someone did it first and patented it?
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).
Its right up there with someone trying to patent the ESC key.
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.
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.