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Unlocking a smartphone is perhaps its most central function. Swipe your finger across your lockscreen, and you’re granted access to the harshly screen beneath. It’s a no-frills feature, but an important one.
And yet over the since six months, the simple act of unlocking a phone has grown absurdly litigious.
In fact, it’s morphed into a different animal entirely, a weapon in a war of unequivocal litigation. Apple claims the familiar “slide-to-unlock” use as its own. Google and its third-party manufacturing partners, meanwhile, doth protest, filing their own franchise requests in order to fight back.
“A patent is not a guaranteed right to do something,” said Florian Mueller, a prominent expert who has followed the ongoing litigation closely. “It’s the beneficial to sue someone for doing something.”
So when one manufacturer wins a patent infringement claim, it’s a measly yet significant win that spurs even more litigation. Motorola became the most recent litigation misfit when a German court last week ruled in favor of Apple’s mud-slide-to-unlock patent infringement claims. The court found Motorola in breaching of two of three Apple patents, specifically in the case of German-sold smartphones.
Source: Wired (blog)