Apple is pretty much playing the game you play as a hardware manufacture. You pay for a lot of patents just to do business. A lot of Apple, Samsung, IBM, etc. patents are not these business process style patents. I'm not too happy about the business process-style stuff Apple or Amazon have, but I understand the rest.
This patent is about as business / software process as you get. It is just a consequence of solving a problem that would be solved the same way by anyone of with skills as a product of normal training in the field. Like "One Click" or "IsNot", it is really hard to understand why the rules were changed to allow this type of thing.
If there's prior art then indeed the patent should be invalidated.
Whether their customers want it is irrelevant. Sadly there is no good criteria for what is 'trivial' or not, and that is a big problem with the current system. I don't think slide-to-unlock is any more trivial than the crank, but it's not my opinion that matters.
My point is that if its just a 'gimmick' i.e. not important, then HTC should be easily able to work around it.
The fact they haven't suggests that either it's hard to come up with a good alternative, or they are intentionally copying Apple.
It's worth noting that Apple suing over superficial things is more about preventing direct imitation. They aren't trying to kill their competitors by claiming fundamental technologies. I think this is actually evidence of a moderate approach.
> If there's prior art then indeed the patent should be invalidated.
Yes, but we know that doesn't always happen (and demonstrably isn't happening in some of Apple's lawsuits).
> It's worth noting that Apple suing over superficial things is more about preventing direct imitation. They aren't trying to kill their competitors by claiming fundamental technologies. I think this is actually evidence of a moderate approach.
That's not true. Apple is suing over plenty of fundamental, ridiculously broad patents as well, but (with the exception of the "clickable-actions-in-text" patent) we happen to not be talking about them here (in part because Apple lost on some of the more fundamental patents they've asserted).
- "one on layering an object oriented application on top of a procedural operating system (i.e. Mac OS X on top of UNIX)"
- "a method for dynamic object message passing translation"
- "automatically recognizing certain data structures and offering actions for that data (i.e. "Data Detectors")" (what I've described as "clickable-actions-in-text")
- "a method for performing realtime signal processing within a non-realtime OS"
Apple happened to lose at the ITC on 3 of these 4 (the only one still standing is "Data Detectors"/"clickable-actions-in-text"), but this is clear evidence that Apple is suing over fundamental technologies (I'd say fundamental ideas, which is even worse) as well as superficial ones. Given that "Data Detectors" dates back to the Power Macintosh help system, I suspect Apple is using every bit of patent ammunition they have. I certainly don't see any evidence here that Apple is showing restraint.
I'll emphasize again that "Data Detectors" is something that virtually every email client since the mid-to-late 90s does when they make URLs and email addresses clickable, specifically because the idea is so obvious and obviously useful. Should they all have to stop because Apple took an obvious idea to the patent office first? Even when Netscape did it months before Apple in Netscape Navigator 2.0b1?
Oh, I almost forgot. HN just infringed on Apple's "Data Detectors" patent here. Should they stop?
Fair enough, these broad patents indicate that they aren't showing restraint.
However my point was that 'swipe-to-unlock' seeming to be about something 'trivial' doesn't in itself make Apple look bad, and that still stands. It's not an example of Apple abusing the patent system whereas the others are.
If they've lost on the broad patents, then that's a sign that the system isn't as broken as we think. Arguably the fact that they've been tested and found wanting actually improves things.
Also, I'd point out that your concern seems to be primarily about the criteria for obviousness, which I agree is severely problematic, and is only going to get worse if we switch to first-to-file.
This patent is about as business / software process as you get. It is just a consequence of solving a problem that would be solved the same way by anyone of with skills as a product of normal training in the field. Like "One Click" or "IsNot", it is really hard to understand why the rules were changed to allow this type of thing.