<br /><a href='http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Slide-to-Unlock-Apple-Patent-Android-unlock-Patent-infringement,news-12998.html' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>http://www.tomsguide...news-12998.html</a><br /><br />Im suprised graphics techniques have not been patented yet. I mean after this, then what other hope do we have. The progress of man kind is going to hell.<br />

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Wow, just one more reason why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in this country.
I'm sure one can blame a bloated patent system with killing the economy at some point.
The rich and powerful have nothing better to do except stifle and hinder advancements in technology

Someone file a patent, and lets it sit and collect dust in some file cabinet for 20 years. They have no intention of
improving their so-called invention. It's just leverage to make the strong stronger, and the weak weaker.

Whatever happened to the day when people filed patents, they did it so they could have the time needed to market a real invention?

The slide to unlock thing is close to where I think software patents should be.

The magic of software is that many things are very difficult to create, but very easy to clone. Software patents should be there to prevent people from cloning things that are non-obvious solutions that are novel and unique, in order to support companies that create non-obvious and unique ideas.

Of course, the patent office allows gibberish software patents that no one can decipher which pretty much cover anything and everything, which is why the patent system is so broken. It's going to be an interesting time in a few years when these gibberish patents are allowed to expire, and companies will have an expired patent war chest that has been legally recognized and defended.

heh, I do love Apple.

"wah! everyone steals our ideas!"
... releases iOS5....
"Look at our new shine notification system you can get to with a down swipe! Isn't it new and cool!"
Every Android phone user; "wait... wut? you mean the thing we've had for ages?"

*face desk*

Indeed... I suppose we should be glad they've progressed to catching up with the likes of Android and Nokia smartphones. I remember the early years on the IPhones, when the amazing new features were things even my dirt cheap 2005-era bog standard feature phone had. Yet I still remember walking around in London and seeing "IPhone gets 3G" making the headlines on the billboards(!), years after every other phone had it.

The slide to unlock thing is close to where I think software patents should be.

The magic of software is that many things are very difficult to create, but very easy to clone. Software patents should be there to prevent people from cloning things that are non-obvious solutions that are novel and unique, in order to support companies that create non-obvious and unique ideas. [/quote]
aye? so you think slide to unlock is a valid patent!

looks like apple is applying for another similar obvious patent
link
Its not really apples to blame, it the patent office thats broken

heres a gesture someone should patent, finger druming (like a person does on a desk) you could have it two way left -> right & right to left

The slide to unlock thing is close to where I think software patents should be.

The magic of software is that many things are very difficult to create, but very easy to clone. Software patents should be there to prevent people from cloning things that are non-obvious solutions that are novel and unique, in order to support companies that create non-obvious and unique ideas.

aye? so you think slide to unlock is a valid patent! [/quote]Pretty much every phone before the iPhone used a recessed button for unlock or sequential button presses. Now, I do believe this patent is a little too obvious and keeping people to use a slide to unlock for 14 years is ridiculous, but I do believe it was somewhat novel at the time.

It's like how Doom made it so obvious to make a bunch of Doom-clones and WoW made it so obvious to make a bunch of Wow clones. It wasn't obvious until someone did it. That is the nature of software. Hard to create, easy to duplicate.

It's like how Doom made it so obvious to make a bunch of Doom-clones and WoW made it so obvious to make a bunch of Wow clones. It wasn't obvious until someone did it. That is the nature of software. Hard to create, easy to duplicate.

Neither Doom nor WoW was the first of it's kind. They were just, at least arguably, the best of their kind.

Pretty much every phone before the iPhone used a recessed button for unlock or sequential button presses. Now, I do believe this patent is a little too obvious and keeping people to use a slide to unlock for 14 years is ridiculous, but I do believe it was somewhat novel at the time. [/quote]
but it wasnt mate
here is another tocuhscreen phone out a couple of years before the iphone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonode#N1m

it used slide to unlock the touchscreen phone as well

Pretty much every phone before the iPhone used a recessed button for unlock or sequential button presses. Now, I do believe this patent is a little too obvious and keeping people to use a slide to unlock for 14 years is ridiculous, but I do believe it was somewhat novel at the time.

Why do you think it was novel?

As pointed out, it wasn't first anyway. But even if it was - the point is that for _any_ given feature, there will always be a first product it appears in. This therefore doesn't imply being first is novel, unless you're claiming that everything ever is "novel". And if everything ever got patented by whoever happened to make it first, the industry would grind to a halt.

But this isn't anything first - it's something already done (sliding to unlock), but now on a touchscreen. Should anyone who is first to do something on a touchscreen get a patent? What about a click? Or double click? Is this magically novel because it's a touchscreen?

It's like how Doom made it so obvious to make a bunch of Doom-clones and WoW made it so obvious to make a bunch of Wow clones.[/quote]There is nothing "obvious" here.

Maybe you're like the "idea guys" people who frequent the Help Wanted forums, who think the hardest thing about writing an MMO is simply coming up with the idea. But as the rest of us know, ideas are the easy part.

Now, in Doom there were specific technology problems that needed to be solved, and perhaps the same applies to WOW. Yes, if all you want to do is do something done before, it's easier if someone's figured out these problems and published the results. But this applies to all kinds of new games that come out, all the time. It's natural in technology for products to get better. A patent means that that stops - because suddenly no one else can use it. The problem is that even new technology still needs to build on the existing ideas and technology. Imagine if Doom or WOW couldn't have been written, because of all the previously existing game elements they used were also patented?

Not that the technology problems in Doom and WOW are anything like the joke of "innovation" that is under discussion here regarding Apple.

Doom 3 itself is an example against software patents - it turned out that the shadowing algorithm had already been patented by someone else, even though Carmack had independently derived the algorithm. ID managed to license it - had Apple have owned the patent, we wouldn't have Doom 3 (or at least, it wouldn't have had shadows).

Carmack is a vocal opponent of software patents, so it's a bit rich to use Doom as an example in favour of them!

It wasn't obvious until someone did it. That is the nature of software. Hard to create, easy to duplicate.[/quote]Duplication is covered by copyright law. Software patents mean it's illegal, even if you create it yourself, just because someone else patented it first.

There is the problem as well of techniques, can I patent cascaded shadow mapping? Deferred rendering? If not why? I came up with, well the end user doesn't know what you used, so you won't get more sales for something you cant see. But then I realized mp3 needs licensing and users don't know if you use Ogg, Mp3, or other. So how can any software ideas be patented? It's very confusing. So theoretically I think deferred rendering could be patented. So if it did, we SHOULD blame whoever patents it. To say don't blame Apple blame the system is dumb. They are using the system and doing something so disrespectful. So I blame Apple 100%. Laws ARE confusing. Should Apple apply for this patent? No. That's not confusing. Apple sucks. Pure greed in this case.

There is the problem as well of techniques, can I patent cascaded shadow mapping? Deferred rendering? If not why? I came up with, well the end user doesn't know what you used, so you won't get more sales for something you cant see. But then I realized mp3 needs licensing and users don't know if you use Ogg, Mp3, or other. So how can any software ideas be patented? It's very confusing. So theoretically I think deferred rendering could be patented. So if it did, we SHOULD blame whoever patents it. To say don't blame Apple blame the system is dumb. They are using the system and doing something so disrespectful. So I blame Apple 100%. Laws ARE confusing. Should Apple apply for this patent? No. That's not confusing. Apple sucks. Pure greed in this case.

I disagree that we should blame people for taking full advantage of the system rather than the system. If the system worked Apple would never get this patent in the first place. I don't know where this expectation that corporations shouldn't do their best to increase their profits and protect those profits came from. You can only count on a corporation to do that; it's their nature. If the system is set up in such a way that corporations can take advantage of it to hurt the economy just by doing what is in their nature, it is a problem with the system.