How Patent Battles Threaten the Simple Act of Unlocking a Phone

22.05.12

Unlocking a smartphone is perhaps its most basic function. Swipe your finger across your lockscreen, and you’re granted access to the home screen beneath. It’s a no-frills feature, but an important one.

And yet over the past six months, the simple act of unlocking a phone has grown absurdly controversial.

In fact, it’s morphed into a different animal entirely, a weapon in a war of patent litigation. Apple claims the familiar “slide-to-unlock” function as its own. Google and its third-party manufacturing partners, meanwhile, doth protest, filing their own patent requests in order to fight back.

“A patent is not a guaranteed right to do something,” said Florian Mueller, a patent expert who has followed the ongoing litigation closely. “It’s the right to sue someone for doing something.”

So when one manufacturer wins a patent infringement claim, it’s a small yet significant win that spurs even more litigation. Motorola became the most recent litigation loser when a German court last week ruled in favor of Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent infringement claims. The court found Motorola in violation of two of three Apple patents, specifically in the case of German-sold smartphones.

Source: Wired News