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The German high court has upheld an earlier ruling, that Apple's "Slide to Unlock" Patent (EU Patent 1964022) is a trivial extension of the state of the art embodied by the Swedish Neonode N1 released in 2003 (with Windows CE), and is therefore invalid.
From Reuters:
The Neonode N1 had substantially similar technical features, the patent court had found. It ruled Apple's easier-to-use interface was not in itself patentable. Neonode sold tens of thousands of phones before declaring bankruptcy in 2008. It reorganized itself as an intellectual property firm licensing its patented optical technology for use in phones, tablets, readers and other touchscreen devices.
Motorola Mobility, at the time a unit of Google Inc but now owned by China's Lenovo Group Ltd, filed the original suit in a Munich court against the Apple user interface patent. Apple won that case but the ruling was later overturned by the federal patent court.
Also at Heise (German).
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:58PM
So "Slide to Unlock" boils down to existing collection of technologies and software plus a picture of a lock.
If you get some dough, some meat sauce, and some mozzarella and put it on the counter, would you call that a pizza?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:07PM
The pizza would not be patentable in itself, except for maybe design patent, which would protect the looks. The process and the machines in used in making that pizza would be that patentable part.