Apple Loses German Top Court Case on Swipe-to-Unlock Patent
Karin Matussek (via Hacker News):
Judges on Tuesday said that the iPhone maker’s method didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection -- backing an earlier patent tribunal ruling in favor of Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.
“This user-friendly display was already suggested by the state of the art,” the Karlsruhe-based court wrote. “The contested patent thus isn’t based on an invention.”
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.
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.
