> Your original post said that Neonode is not prior art for
> the claim asserted.
That is not true. The phrase "the claim asserted" was not part of my original post; I only used that wording after you replied to my original post with the court case, from which I quoted. My original point (which I'll quote for convenience) was that "Apple's patent is for a very specific set of claims; items which the Neonode didn't implement". Based on the video in the link elosyt posted, the Neonode does not have an unlock image (claim 1) that must be dragged along a channel (claim 3) with visual cues (claim 4) of text (claim 5) and an arrow showing direction (claim 6), etc. etc. Instead, Neonode appears to have an invisible unlock method with none of the visual elements that Apple claims in its patent.
That I was unaware that Neonode was found to be prior art for a single claim (claim 8) doesn't invalidate my original point that there are many claims in Apple's patent for which Neonode doesn't look to be prior art. Finding one claim to be obvious and have prior art does not invalidate the patent as a whole; the other claims remain. From Wikipedia[0]:
> If the independent claim is determined to be invalid,
> however, a dependent claim may nevertheless survive, and
> may still be broad enough to bar competitors from
> valuable commercial territory.
This is why my original post says:
> ... but in order to discount Apple's patent you need to
> show that there exists prior art for the specific claims
> Apple made in its patent.
You'll note I used "claims" in the plural, which was intentional. What you wrote:
> Neonode makes the claims of the Slide to unlock patent obvious
is untrue as it's only one claim in the court case you linked which was found to be obvious. The court case was silent on the other claims of the patent in question and, as such, the remaining claims stand until someone else comes along and challenges them to demonstrate prior art/obviousness. If my legal understanding is incorrect on this, I welcome any corrections.
> I don't know what are you arguing right now
I hope that clears it up. I'm not trying to argue for software patents. I think most of them are actually obvious and silly and amount to protecting something that took an entire minute to think up. That said, if software patents exist then I don't see any reason to not speak with precision about patents, and speaking precisely about patents means discussing specific
claims not vagaries about the concept as a whole.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_claim#Basic_types_and_c...