[guelo]

I don't see the hole being that big. For example Apple's slide-to-unlock patent, no one would be allowed to move that functionality into a dedicated chip but that would never happen anyways.

[prostoalex]

If Stallman's modification of "implementations using special-purpose hardware" was in place and Apple was filing that application today, I could see how they would reduce the slide-to-unlock to "slide-to-unlock on a multitouch surface".

[reitzensteinm]

There might be holes in Stallman's plan, but this isn't one of them.

Apple might be able to patent multi touch if they hypothetically invented it, since that's a hardware thing.

But once that touch data makes it to the CPU, what is done with it afterwards would be unpatentable.

Even if Apple themselves somehow did slide to unlock in hardware, competitors could still implement a software version.

[guelo]

I don't think that's right. The regular meaning of special-purpose computer is an appliance like a TV or an iPod, it can't do anything that it wasn't designed to do. The opposite is a general-purpose computer which is pretty much anything that can be programmed such as a PC or a smartphone. Of course it would depend on the legal definitions to know what the exact loopholes would be.