Apple Wins Slide-To-Unlock Patents
Finally, today is the day! As you probably know, these days there were some discussions regarding the arguable slide-to-unlock user interface asset of Apple`s iPhone. But now, Apple received full merits for this particular design. Yes, you`ve heard well! Apple has now the design patent for this type of interface – original iPhone, as we may say!
As we could find out from the news, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, finally granted Apple`s application No. D675,639. This type of application, as you probably guessed by now, it is used for “ornamental design for a display screen or portion thereof with a graphical user interface”. This particular application comprise the well known pictures of the horizontal bars that you can see along with their circular angles right at the bottom of the locked iOS screens. The application was available from the beginning of iPhone history in 2007, when the original iPhone came up on the market.
Since its apparition along with the first iPhone, the Slide-to-unlock usability attracted the attention of all the handset designers. But guess what? Apple had the patent for this application since 2011, so they could and they did sue and charged the mobile companies which used it on their devices without the approval of Apple. So Motorola and Samsung had to pay for the violation of the patents connected with this functionality.
So as we told you, in January 2012 Apple used its patent rights in the face of Samsung`s Galaxy Nexus. In this way, Apple company discovered that two years earlier, more precisely in 2010, Google handed in a patent application. Google described this application like this: a way for the users to interact with a smartphone device, or a personal computer, by unlocking the device and execute only one command.
Returning to Motorola`s case, we just found out that the lawsuit for the violation of Apple`s patent against this company, started before in Germany, and came again in discussion in March 2012. This lawsuit was somehow postponed because the judge of this case stated that he waited for the German Patent and Trademark Office to study Apple`s situation, before giving a solution in this case.
More than this, during this time Apple was also granted for other design patent too. We refer to the design patent No. D675,612, which refers to the “ornamental design of an electronic device”. This means that Apple has also rights for the circular corners of the iPhone. This particular design patent was the main point in the lawsuits they started against Samsung company.
