[CamperBob2]

One reason why we award patents is so that inventors won't have an incentive to keep trade secrets locked away forever. Touchscreen gestures are trivial to implement, with no conceivable trade secrets that wouldn't become obvious to anyone skilled in the art after a few minutes' thought. So that's not a good reason in this case.

Another reason is to incentivize innovation by awarding a temporary monopoly. Apple will continue to make more money from the iPhone and iPad than many entire countries' GDP, patents or no patents. They don't need any additional artificial "incentives."

Another reason is to reward those who finance expensive long-term R&D efforts. No lengthy R&D efforts are involved in touchscreen gesture processing. Again, the market is doing just fine at rewarding Apple on its own.

So what exactly do we gain, as a society, by awarding patents on things like slide-to-unlock? Exactly how is the "progress of science and the useful arts" being promoted?

[jakobegger]

I strongly disagree with the statement that there is no lengthy R&D involved with gesture processing. If it was so trivial, why did Apple have to acquire a company working in that field? Getting UX right is fucking hard and takes a lot of effort -- just look at the touchscreens of an average camera... If it was so easy, why do most companies get it so wrong?

Of course, that doesn't mean that Apple should be able to patent it. Good UX is composed of many small things, each too small too patent.

[drzaiusapelord]

> If it was so trivial, why did Apple have to acquire a company working in that field?

Why do big companies get outfoxed regularly by 10 man startups? The reality is that most large corporate entities are inefficient and acquisitions aren't usually for talent, but for other purposes: buying before a competitor does, buying the patents and firing the talent, burning through a cash reserve that, if left alone, will be given up as dividends,etc.

[com2kid]

> Touchscreen gestures are trivial to implement

You have never worked at the raw level of getting a touch screen controller (especially the older ones, todays once are much nicer) working.

The work Apple did to get first generation capacitive touch screens working is impressive, I say this with no more experience than having had to get later generation cap touch solutions working.

The amount of clean up you have to do on the signal, the sheer garbage you get through, and then to figure out what gestures actually work reliably?

I won't comment of if it is patentable or not, but it sure as hell is not trivial. Getting cap touch working involves close collaboration between the EE, ME, Firmware, Software, and UX teams.

The nice little world of touch points software developers get access to at the highest layer is supported by a massive effort beneath.

[CamperBob2]

None of that has anything to do with a patent covering the concept of slide to unlock.

[com2kid]

True, I just objected to the idea that gestures are trivial. :)

[paulojreis]

I ask you kindly that, if you want to answer, please do so to myself and my words, and not to a straw man. You'll gain nothing from discussions if you assume other people's participation instead of actually reading it.

I said, as explicitly as I could, that I don't agree with strong protection through IP to slide to unlock.

[bostonpete]

I don't think paulojreis was defending patenting things like slide to unlock.

[avar]

I think most patents are silly, but isn't the system working exactly as it should here? The patent was awarded, then it was challenged in court and overturned for many of the reasons you cite.

If we were a lot more thorough about awarding patents wouldn't that increase the overall cost to society to exhaustively audit patents from the outset, instead of auditing only the small subset that's troublesome enough to be challenged in court?

[MichaelGG]

Isn't that sorta like saying we should just prosecute everyone regardless of evidence, and let courts sift out the real problems? I doubt that's "exactly as it should" be.

[belorn]

The patent office is made out of experts which should have a much higher expertise in judging if an patent is valid than a judge. It make no sense to give the patent office the vast majority of "easy" patents, and then give the non-experts judges the issue of all the troublesome "hard" patents which has been challenged.

[collyw]

How many smaller companies will have had extra workarounds because of this? They know they aren't going to have the money to deal with Apple in court.