This always struck me as an "On the computer" patent. The slide to unlock mechanism has been around since forever (think any bathroom stall or old wood screen door, etc). Just because it's on a computer screen shouldn't make it patentable.
Minor nitpick: The ruling court was not "the German Supreme Court" (which there is no single direct equivalent - often the term is used for the Bundesverfassungsgericht but that's problematic on many levels). The court was the Bundesgerichtshof which is the highest court for civil cases. Best is the avoid the term "Supreme Court" at all when talking about the German court system.
Even the so called "good" software patents have a lot of the same elements as this bad patent. The problem is, most people aren't going to bother to read the claims of those patents and try to understand what the concepts claimed really are.<p>I have been involved with several patent suits (on both litigant side and defendant side) and as an engineer, I have to admit that there has never been a time when I haven't read the statement of the problem the patent says its going to solve, and not thought of the solution myself, way before the patent presents the same solution. In other words, every single litigated software patent I've been asked to review has been BLATANTLY obvious. And I'm no genius. I've talked to other engineers and they've all said the same thing. I just explain a problem domain, and they usually give a solution that comes under the claims of the litigated patent.<p>This is not to say that there aren't non-obvious software patents. Its just that those never seem to get litigated, because they aren't some obvious concept sitting at the nexus of a well-trodden path the industry is following.<p>I can't describe or link the specific patents I've been involved with, for obvious reasons, but the stuff I'm talking about sounds like things as follows:<p>"Receiving at a server a data packet, the data packet comprising a user identification number and a merchant identification number<p>retrieving a record in a database referenced by the user identification number<p>determining if the record in the database contains an authorization entry corresponding to the merchant identification number<p>responsive to the record in the database containing an authorization entry corresponding to the merchant identification number, transmitting a second data packet, containing an authorization token, to a server operated by a merchant."<p>I am not lying to you. This is how stupid each of these patents have been. Sometimes even worse.<p>Nobody not involved in these litigations understands how bad it is. And this is coming from someone who has made at least enough money to buy several luxury cars, providing consulting services to this particular legal industry. In other words, I have a financial interest in things remaining this fucked up. And I'm still telling you, its really fucked up.
I think this should apply generally to touch screen gestures. Once someone invented a good enough touch screen display(capacitive) , the gestures are not that big of a step.<p>All Apple did was to acquire the inventors of the capacitive touch - and worked a bit on the UI. And while it's valuable to be the first company who recognize the importance of a capacitive touch screen - that isn't a basis for a patent - and Apple did get enough benefits anyway.
This is long overdue. As is invalidation of the bounceback patent. Like so many of "designy" patents, there's quite a bit of prior art.<p>The whole "but on a computer" patent needs to go away. "Sliding a latch from one position to another to open but on a computer" should not be patentable.
Well in EU some algorithm is surely patentable if it has a "technical effect", for instance if you can move a robot arms consuming less energy or producing less waste materials, it must have a physical impact on something. Quote: "the method didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection", just this, lol at patenting it in the first place.
<i>Judges on Tuesday said that the iPhone maker’s method didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection</i><p>Just so I understand what happened, can someone summarize German patent law? Is it the same 3 tests as in the U.S., i.e. statutory, novel, non-obvious?
I'm waiting for a future where we can ask a "blank" AI to come up with trivial solutions to new problems, so that we can just invalidate such stupid patents. If the AI can invent it, it is not worthy of a patent.
I don't get how this was a patent to begin with. The door in my room has a "slide-to-unlock" lock that dates back 50 years. Surely Apple did not invent this.
Pretty obvious this was going to happen. Pretty much the only software that is patentable in Germany is stuff that controls physical machinery of sorts (embedded break controls or something). Control of forces of nature to cause an expected effect is what qualifies. "Technizität" (technical character) is what it's called. It's one of the four criteria. The other being it has to be "new" (no prior publications including your own), marketable (no clear cut criteria) and an invention (an "imaginary expert in the field" can't come up with it, also pretty debatable).<p>So technically not much really qualifies.
[IANAL]
I don't think "obvious in retrospect" is a fair criterion for invalidating a patent. Those are actually the most valuable patents. The safety pin and the catseye (road reflector) were both patented and made fortunes for their inventors (or in the case of the safety pin the company that bought the patent).<p>Now arguing the whole patent system is fucked up is perfectly fair but we shouldn't celebrate a legitimate, non-abstract patent being incorrectly invalidated.
does the patent say it actually has to work? XD just saying...<p>i'm always in two minds about this but i lean very heavily towards culling people who think this sort of thing should be patentable. i think it would benefit everyone for the entire future mostly...
Ha! I just used a cheapo off the shelf website that featured slide to unlock on web forms for spam prevention. Not posting the link because I don't want Apple breathing down their neck.
I'd say "good riddance to bad rubbish" but this is just one of a million nonsense patents that are uselessly being applied to transfer wealth upwards. Why, humanity, why? Why do we continue to hang ourselves with these thin fictions?<p>Our property concepts are fundamentally broken. Copyrights, patents and especially real estate are all flawed concepts that privilege their owners far more than they should. But we allow them to persist for centuries; then we wonder why society is fucked and some people have all the wealth.