Good point. Sometimes that's true. However, with decades of experience doing touch devices, I think I do understand the nature of these particular beasts.
As someone who coded voice in the early days, I both agree and disagree. It's like with touch. Once you really get into a field, more and more idea paths become clear. Filing patents when you first get into a field is often just making a mockery of others' work before you... unless you make a breakthrough (which did not happen here).
Slide-to-unlock is particularly nowhere near that level. It is trivial, derivative, apes a simple real life action, and Apple's idea that it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars is just silly when compared to the other estimated 250,000 inventions in a phone. Apple argues that Motorola starting rate of 2.4% is too high for critical radio inventions, but wants 5% of a $600 phone for its own, unnecessary patents... which others have already worked around anyway.
I invite you to read a recent Foss Patents article. After years of stubbornly defending Apple's lawsuits, even Mueller has come around to realizing that Apple has an inflated idea of its own patents. He now uses the same descriptive phrases that some of us have used since day one:
Again, there can be inventive software patents, but way too many are vague, general ideas instead of detailed, novel, unique implementations. They use fancy words to hide it, but they boil down to being something even a layman would easily come up with. I'll give an example a little later when I properly wake up.
Cheers!
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