I’m glad the IVR market is too small to worry about patent wars, because I don’t know if I could deal. If another IVR company patented “the blog” or “the phone call” or “the lunch break,” we’d be in real trouble.
Apple just patented “touchscreen unlock gestures,” according to the BBC. You know, swiping, pattern entry, et cetera.
U.S. Patent Number 7657549—
“A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display…The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device.”
Are they flipping serious?
Not Apple, but the U.S. patent office. (Well, Apple too, but they’re just playing the game by the waaaay wonky rules the patent office has set.) But are they serious issuing a patent for this?
There are two things wrong with this picture. Well, there are a lot of things wrong with this picture, but two really stick in my craw (just for the record on that one, a craw is a bird’s throat, in case you didn’t know—I always wondered).
The first thing is, Apple applied for this patent in June 2009. It’s now two and a half years (and several iterations of smartphones from every company out there) later.
It’s too late. It’s like issuing a patent for the wheel. I think once a technology is around for long enough, no one should get a patent for it. This isn’t about protecting the little guy, it’s about providing weapons for big business—we’re getting too far away from the “intent of the law” type thing here.
And that’s the other thing. Sadly, it takes the U.S. patent office that long to issue a patent. Why? It’s kind of a moot point now that everybody is using the technology. The government can’t take that long to issue a patent because technologies are moving way too fast.
By now, all of Apple’s competitors have latched onto touchscreen security technology. They have them working in millions of phones already out in the marketplace.
It’s too late. You can’t retroactively punish everyone now. You can’t take phones off the shelves. You can’t hurt Motorola and Samsung and Nokia at this point.
But now Apple has more ammunition for what I think are frivolous lawsuits. That’s the only real result from this patent—more lawsuits.
Again, I’m glad the IVR industry is small enough that we’re not fighting each other in court all the time. And that no one has patented “the cup of coffee” yet.
