Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 89 posts

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#61

Post by Zak »

idspispopd wrote: post #58
azakai wrote: post #3

> The judge said that HTC's "arc unlock" feature - which also involves a predefined gesture along a path shown on-screen - would have infringed Apple's technology had it not been for a device released in 2004. No, no, no. It is clearly obvious , the fact that there happens to also be prior art just adds insult to injury. If there had not been prior art, it would still be a frivolous, trivial patent. This is exactly w…

I agree a patent on simple gestures is simply not logical, but working within the constrains of the existing (and in my view, broken) system, I'd like to explore the idea of swipe to unlock, really how obvious is it? This is a legitimate question, and I'm looking for real answers because these can be useful later on. What is natural about swiping to unlock? The closest historical analogy I can think of is moving a bo…

really how obvious is it?

I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#62

Post by beedogs »

novalis wrote: post #20

"Apple declined to comment on the specifics of the case. Instead it re-issued an earlier statement, saying: "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."" This reaks of disastrous lazy damage control PR.

Is Baghdad Bob running their PR department now? Jesus.

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#63

Post by idspispopd »

Zak wrote: post #61
idspispopd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree a patent on simple gestures is simply not logical, but working within the constrains of the existing (and in my view, broken) system, I'd like to explore the idea of swipe to unlock, really how obvious is it? This is a legitimate question, and I'm looking for real answers because these can be useful later on. What is natural about swiping to unlock? The closest historical analogy I can think of is moving a bo…

really how obvious is it? I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?

I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here.

The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#65

Post by saket123 »

fpgeek wrote: post #55
da_n wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fucking slide to unlock gesture is not innovation. Come on, yes the patent system needs reform but inventions do need to be protected/nurtured. Disregard the details here, and when I hear people having little rants it sounds like they advocate a kind of anarchist cookbook approach to innovation saying 'fuck it, you just make it better than them, who cares if the ting you worked on for 5 years was copied in 5 minu…

Patents aren't like copying someone's homework - that's copyright. It's important to remember, there's no suggestion in any of these cases that anyone stole Apple's source code. There isn't even an allegation that they did any nontrivial reverse-engineering of an iPhone (it clearly wasn't necessary). Instead, at most, people saw a behavior and independently re-implemented it (and often might not have even seen the be…

This is one of the better explanations I have seen for this patent game. I remember the same thing came up with Google vs. Oracle. In that Google did a near clean implementation (albeit those 9 lines and few test files) of JAVA. I think clean implementations should be made part of Patent proceeding. This won't be applicable to this case but still would go a long long way in stupid idea patents like these.

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#66

Post by Zak »

idspispopd wrote: post #63
Zak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really how obvious is it? I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?

I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here. The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?

Given that the Neonode N1 had it first, I suspect that we would.

I think it probably would have come about not long after capacitive touchscreens became the standard input device for phones no matter what. It's the easiest gesture to make that is fairly unlikely to happen by accident when the phone is in a pocket.

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#68

Post by ebf »

idspispopd wrote: post #63
Zak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really how obvious is it? I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?

I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here. The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?

The slide to unlock feature is a skeuomorphic design. The sliding lock is a very common lock on doors. I would consider it obvious for that reason alone.

Re: HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple

#70

Post by idspispopd »

ebf wrote: post #68
idspispopd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here. The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?

The slide to unlock feature is a skeuomorphic design. The sliding lock is a very common lock on doors. I would consider it obvious for that reason alone.

I noted this above, but what is analogous between doors of a bygone era and accessing a touch-based device. Swiping a portion of the screen is the obvious component, but the skeuomorph isn't, I'm yet to see a good rationale for why this is more obvious than the many other opening simple-gesture skeuomorphs that could have been chosen.

I can think over many other more logical/closer skeuomorphs, which forms the basis of my question: was apple's choice a naturally occurring one, or their design choice. This isn't about patents, it's just a mind experiment as to understand if this is as straight forward as it seems in retrospect. (Because good design always appears obvious in retrospect.)

I'm yet to be presented with an answer to this, this is the crux of originality.

Post reply on HN