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posted by takyon on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the patent-unlocked dept.

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).


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by penguinoid on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:01PM

    by penguinoid (5331) on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:01PM (#228644)

    You know what would be really funny? If attempting to patent something were considered a statement that the thing they were attempting to patent is worthy of intellectual property rights protections. Then if the patent is rejected for prior art, instead of getting a patent they have to pay licensing fees to whoever owns the prior art (or to the general public).

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  • (Score: 1) by ese002 on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:39PM

    by ese002 (5306) on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:39PM (#228732)

    That would give another advantage to patent trolls. Since they don't make anything they would not have to pay licensing fees if they lose.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:28AM (#228793)
      Since patent trolls would be the plaintiffs in any such effort, they would still generally have to pay attorney's fees at least for whoever it was they sued.
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 28 2015, @03:26AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday August 28 2015, @03:26AM (#228833) Journal

    1. Invent and patent a time machine.
    2. Take all patents into the past, long before you built the time machine.
    3. Refile all the patents and license them freely.

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