Apple VS Motorola – Apple Wins slide-to-unlock Patent against Motorola

Friday, February 17th, 2012 at 10:40 am , filed under Tech News by Libni John

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"Apple VS Motorola – Apple Wins slide-to-unlock Patent against Motorola" Apple VS Motorola slide-to-unlock patent lawsuit has finally turned out to be in the Favor of Apple. According to the FOSS Patent’s Florian Mueller, the German Court Judge has deemed that Motorola’s implementation of a screen unlocking feature used across its smartphone line is imitator that infringes on Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent image, which has made Apple to enforce a German injunction against a bond.

In October 2010, Apple’s European patent – EP1964022 was awarded and is titled as Unlocking a Device by Performing Gestures on an Unlock Image. On the other hand, Apple was as well granted an identical patent a year later by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Motorola’s gesture-based device unlocking has been looked at 3 different implementations by the German and found that 2 infringed on Apple’s patent, i.e. those used by the RAZR maker’s Android smartphones.

The third instance, used by Motorola’s in its Xoom tablet, illustrates sufficient difference from Apple’s patent to flee injunction. Mueller says that particular implementation is alike to that of the Galaxy Note and needs a user to swipe their finger from inside a circle to outside.

Apple’s initial win against Motorola may possibly result in an entire re-working of how Motorola handle screen unlocking, although it appears that the judgment would merely force a firmware modification and not the ban of device sales.

If Apple chooses to enforce the injunction, it would have to put up a compulsory bond that would cover legal fees and damages incurred by Motorola if a future appeal finds that the first ruling was incorrect.

In February, Apple’s win follows an earlier outcome where in the Mannheim Regional Court has dismissed a proposed 3G-related Motorola suit.

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