Forum > Information > Esato News Articles > Samsung Galaxy Nexus violates Apple's slide-to-unlock utility patent

On 2012-01-24 18:34:26, Miss UK wrote:
if your handsets broke tomorrow and you had to use a actual iPhone cos nothing was available
to you/short of cash etc

I'd like to see what comments you would be posting

all this activity really is a utter bore "WHO CARES WHO CARES"

let APPLE Sue the World if they have to

im sure members have better things to do then moan about phones all day
who give a rats a$$

On 2012-01-24 19:13:25, Miss UK wrote:
lol asada sorry about the asda

On 2012-01-22 04:57:55, yark wrote:
I had slide to unlock on my backyard gate when i was 5 years old.

As I pointed out in an earlier piece, Neonode -- a small Swedish phone manufacturer -- was the first to deploy the technology commercially.  And it also appears to be the first to have patented swipe-to-unlock.

I initially missed this, as it was buried in U.S. Patent No. 8,095,879.

But there it is -- in "User interface for mobile handheld computer unit."  Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 (pg. 5).


And the interface element is covered by Claim 12:

12. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the user interface is characterised in, that an active application, function, service or setting is advanced one step by gliding the object along the touch sensitive area from left to right, and that the active application, function, service or setting is closed or backed one step by gliding the object along the touch sensitive area from right to left.

Now Neonode is perhaps not suing everyone because it kindly limited its own patent, writing

In the case that the patent was deemed non-novel at some point and redundant with existing drag-and-drop IP, Neonode attempts to strengthen it with a secondary claim:

12. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the touch sensitive area is 2-3 inches in diagonal dimension.

What a novel notion -- a company narrowing its own patent to cover only what it actually has designed!  While we'll never know if this narrowing was intentional or inadvertent, either way.

Despite the apparent strength and broad scope of its patent, Neonode declined/missed its opportunity to try to cash in on its user interface innovation at the expense of stalling the mobile market with crippling lawsuits (as Apple is currently doing).

II. Is There a Difference Between These Patents?

Now let us review the matter at hand:
Neonode filed for a patent on swipe to unlock 3 years before Apple did.
Neonode's swipe to unlock gesture is identical to that found on the iPhone -- a fluid left-to-right motion.
Apple is now suing people over the technology it "borrowed" (presumably without permission) from Neonode and applied for two patents -- U.S. Patent No. 7,657,849 and U.S. Patent No. 8,046,721 on.
Let me address a point of contention I received in an email.  Yes, Neonode's display is resistive (diodes-based) touch design, where as Apple's screen is capacitive touch.  But ultimately this does not have any major affect the algorithm, as we see it on the original iPhone.  And bear in mind, Apple is not patenting capacitive multi-touch.  Other people have already done that.  

Indeed Apple's patent doesn't even mention capacitive touch in its claims.  It claims the invention of the gesture on "a touch-sensitive display" (See Claim 1 of first patent) -- a term which encompasses both resistive and capacitive touch displays.

So is there any difference between Apple's claim and Neonode's?  

It would be tempting to state that there is some sort of graphical difference looking at the iPhone versus the Neonode n1, which featured the slide-to-unlock.  But the patents are ambiguous enough they don't confine themselves specific look to the unlock mechanism (that would be more appropriate for a design patent, anyhow).

So if the difference is not graphical, what is it?

Apple's algorithm appears to have two unique claims, compared to Neonode's.  But they're actually not unique at all.  Let's discuss why.

First it claims dragging a graphic.  But let's see -- this has been done for over two decades before the filing via the ubiquitous "drag and drop"(who has this patent Xerox PARC or is it someone else by 2yrs; hmm).

Apple's only other seemingly unique claims is that its algorithm mentions that if the finger is removed during the swipe gesture, before the end point is reached, to cancel the result.  But ultimately, the Neonode patent simply did mention this.  If you swipe halfway across the Neonode phone (reaching the middle diode) and stop, you can't just click the endpoint several seconds later.  Neonode's algorithm was less explicit, but it appears to have the same mechanism as Apple's.  (See videos below.)

On 2012-07-09 07:07:09, Prom1 wrote:
Something interesting that I've found.