Apple Wins Injunction Against Motorola's Use of Slide-to-Unlock Feature

Apple has won an injunction against Motorola's use of the slide-to-unlock feature on most of its devices, reports FOSS Patents.

The court evaluated three different embodiments. Apple won on the two that Motorola's smartphones implement. It did not prevail on the third one, which the Xoom tablet uses. That implementation is very similar to what I have on my Samsung Galaxy Note: the user has to make a swiping gesture from the inside of a circle to the outside. It requires a relatively large screen to work somewhat well, but even then it's not very intuitive. (I'm a very happy Galaxy Note user, but it has its shortcomings and the slide-to-unlock circle is one of them.)

The ruling was made by judge Dr. Peter Guntz of the Munich Regional Court based on patent EP1964022 - "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image".


FOSS Patents says the ruling is a permanent injunction that Apple could enforce at its own risk (against a bond). Motorola will likely appeal.

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