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It's pattern matching plus a built-in action link. That's basically it.

Recognizing common data such as phone numbers was a popular thing to do in DB programs from at least the 80s.

Again, recognition of a pattern + the actions that you can do with it. You can't do that with green screen stuff because there was no way to specify an action...unless the hilited it somehow and what, launched another DOS app, killing your current app?

If you think the courts are wrong, become an expert witness...because Samsung wasn't able to find you or any effective prior art.
 
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SLIDE TO UNLOCK
18ix7oq39drm6png.png
Then Apple infringes the copyright of ALL lock manufacturers. How many apple should pay for them? /s
 
I know "anecdotes" aren't evidence, but having worked in cellular sales from 2011-2015, I can tell you that literally DOZENS AND DOZENS of times I've had some sweet old lady (or man... or middle aged of either, actually) come in; drop a cheap-ass Galaxy Tab on the counter & ask: "how do I do that FaceTime thingy with my grandkids, here on my iPad??" or when I'm describing a cool new iPhone feature to them they say "Oooh, I've owned my iPhone for a while- I don't think it does that though!"... I ask them what model they have & they take out an old Galaxy S.
So.... I couldn't possibly extrapolate that out with a degree of accuracy, but an incredibly modest guess would put many tens of thousands of consumers believing they own an iPhone or iPad when they do not.

that sounds so convenient. why is that every iPhone user on Apple forums has cousins or sisters whose Android smartphones are possessed by vicious malwares and other deadly viruses? I have been here at MR and AI long enough that your anecdote has been recycled over and over again.

Now, do you want to hear about my rMacBook Pro (mid 2012) that exploded in one cold night in 2013?
 
that sounds so convenient. why is that every iPhone user on Apple forums has cousins or sisters whose Android smartphones are possessed by vicious malwares and other deadly viruses? I have been here at MR and AI long enough that your anecdote has been recycled over and over again.

Now, do you want to hear about my rMacBook Pro (mid 2012) that exploded in one cold night in 2013?

Not really.
Nor did I want to be called a liar... but I guess it's too late for that. =/
You can check my post history if you want... I don't sit around making up stories, & even prefaced w/ "I know anecdotes don't equal evidence", so I don't really get the attitude.
Without putting numbers on it; it is factual that at least SOME consumers correlate the terms "smartphone" & "iPhone", and assume that if their phone does maps, internet, and email... then it must be an iPhone!
I would NOT want to be the judge trying to figure out why, or if that's simply due to Apple's popularity, or because of Samsung's liberal use iPhone's trade dress, and if the latter, should Samsung pay Apple, etc.
But, I definitely would feel foolish asserting the notion that literally no consumer has ever purchased a Samsung phone or tablet, believing that they were getting an iPhone or iPad.
 
People will say that it's unfair to patent this and that and i agree when it's a patent troll who doesn't make a phone or competing product. But samsung copied apple and then reaped the benefits of their designs. There should be something in place patents or not that prevent you from novel ideas like slide to unlock being stolen. Sure after a bit they should be allowed across the board. I feel like patents are the wrong system to be enforcing these ideas.
 
People will say that it's unfair to patent this and that and i agree when it's a patent troll who doesn't make a phone or competing product. But samsung copied apple and then reaped the benefits of their designs. There should be something in place patents or not that prevent you from novel ideas like slide to unlock being stolen.

The problem is, many of the things that Apple claimed Samsung copied, Apple was not the first to invent. They had simply managed to get a utility patent and/or convince the jury that their design was special.

That's why in many countries around the world, Apple's utility and design patents were invalidated.

But, I definitely would feel foolish asserting the notion that literally no consumer has ever purchased a Samsung phone or tablet, believing that they were getting an iPhone or iPad.

I don't think any consumer has ever mistakenly purchased a Samsung device while actually believing that it was an Apple device. Phones and tablets are kept behind the counter, and when the box is finally brought out, they have huge SAMSUNG or Apple labels on them.

So what I do believe is that many people may have gone in thinking of buying, say, an iPhone, and had the salesperson talk them into something else, while claiming it's very similar. Probably something that made that salesperson more money ;)

I understand what you're saying; that to some people the brand names are all interchangeable. However, the law does not protect people who buy a Hyundai just because part of it looks like a Mercedes. It doesn't even protect people who buy Tylenol PM instead of Excedrin PM, and they look very much alike on purpose.

Again, recognition of a pattern + the actions that you can do with it. You can't do that with green screen stuff because there was no way to specify an action...unless the hilited it somehow and what, launched another DOS app, killing your current app?

Many of us were using Amigas, or Atari STs, or OS-9 on Tandy CoCo's, and multitasking while Apple still was into single tasking. So nope, no need to kill the current app at all.

As for launching another Windows/DOS app, well yeah, that's what TSRs were used for.

In fact, besides the other two examples I gave previously that predate Apple's 1996 patent, your comment reminded me that Borland Sidekick also could find phone numbers on the screen. Here's some excerpts from their 1988 manual:

"Like SideKick, the Phonebook can search the display for a phone number.
...
"SideKick Plus also has a Quick-Dial feature. Here's how it works: Type
the telephone number into the underlying program. Press the Quick-Dial
shortcut and SideKick Plus will search the screen for a number.
When it finds the number, you press F1 and it dials automatically."

Borland did a version for Apple at the same time, IIRC. Between all that prior art, and web links becoming popular in the 1990s, Apple's patent was just bogus. Come to think of it, many of us had hot links on our Palm or WinMo phones later on, and I don't recall Apple complaining.
 
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Slide to unlock is so basic and intuitive, Apple shouldn't have been given a patent. You have a touch screen. There are only two ways to interact with it, tap or slide. Of course slide would be the choice to go to to avoid accidentally unlocking the phone. Imagine a game being able to patent swiping as part of the control and no other game can use it. That would be ridiculous.
 
Slide to unlock is so basic and intuitive, Apple shouldn't have been given a patent. You have a touch screen. There are only two ways to interact with it, tap or slide. Of course slide would be the choice to go to to avoid accidentally unlocking the phone. Imagine a game being able to patent swiping as part of the control and no other game can use it. That would be ridiculous.

It's actually not intuitive at all. There were plenty of touchscreens before the iPhone that didn't do slide-to-unlock. It seems obvious now because it was the best solution.

It's just like Samsung apologists saying that Samsung didn't copy the iPhone's icons. There is a universe of colors and shapes that Samsung could choose from, and they happened to choose the exact green and phone shape that Apple did? Right.
 
It's actually not intuitive at all. There were plenty of touchscreens before the iPhone that didn't do slide-to-unlock. It seems obvious now because it was the best solution.

Best solution? Well, no. Even Apple doesn't use it any more.

Interestingly, touch unlock gestures were quite popular around the turn of the century on PDAs, as a security feature. Many companies sprung up selling different style unlockers. There were connect-the-dot ones, and ones where you set your own line to follow.

As for obviousness, not only did the 2002 NeoNode have swipe to unlock a half decade before Apple,

2002_neonode.png


many industrial touchscreen UIs of course had virtual switches that you slid to turn on something.

slide-unlock-1992-prior-art.png


Not to mention that the entire design is a computer emulation of a spring loaded slide door lock. In many countries you cannot patent something that's just a computer copying a real life method.

slide_to_unlock_real.png


For those reasons, that patent was invalidated in every other country where Apple attempted to use it in court.

It's just like Samsung apologists saying that Samsung didn't copy the iPhone's icons. There is a universe of colors and shapes that Samsung could choose from, and they happened to choose the exact green and phone shape that Apple did? Right.

The question is not why Samsung used that phone shape and colors. The question is why did Apple?

Answer: cell phones had used them since the very first one. The whole point of such an icon is to be universal.

iso_phone.png


That's why Apple abandoned their own dialer icon and copied the shape and two colors already used by others:

after_skype.png


As for its final form, that's what a rounded icon looks like. Can't trademark something that common. White on green also makes sense and is even a standard, as we can already see. Left leaning was also not unique. So when Apple went to trademark the phone icon they had used in the original Jobs demo.. which is the one you're referring to... they had to add stripes and a different color to get it approved.

phone_icons_trademark.png


The final Apple trademark thus is very specific: "The mark consists of a rectangle with rounded corners depicting a stylized white telephone receiver against a striped green and dark green background. A shade of light green covers the upper half of the rectangle design."

Samsung did not violate that trademark. If anything the Apple icon looks a lot more akin to the Windows Mobile and Skype ones, than the Samsung one did to Apple's.

While we're here, I'll add that the iPhone was also not the first device to use orientation sensors, an icon grid, finger friendly UI, flick scrolling, microphone images for a recorder, double click / pinch zoom or any of that other UI stuff that some tend to bring up. Also, the chargers don't look the same in person, and Apple got their box style from LG... not that anyone buys based on that stuff, anyway.
 
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I didn't start using Touch ID until not too long before iOS 10 came out. So it's almost like I'm getting used to the combo together with no middle transition.

That said, you don't click multiple times? Huh. I believe you that there must be some proper way to do it that I just haven't figured out yet. Swipe was really easy and intuitive. Both my children figured out swipe-to-unlock before they were 2 years old. Sometimes it's as easy as click-and-hold. But other times that doesn't work, and I end up clicking and holding and clicking to finally get it to go.
I'll admit I was really worried when iOS 10 came out that my 3yo was going to have issues. He'd gotten used to slide-to-unlock on the iPad. But after I sat down and showed him that you just press the home button twice instead (once to wake, once to unlock), he picked up on it almost immediately.

Then there's me over here, having such a hard time getting used to the combination of raise-to-wake and press-to-unlock that I turned off press-to-unlock on my phone. Kids are remarkable.
 
As far as these patent law suits and fines go... sometimes it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
 
As far as these patent law suits and fines go... sometimes it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

well, the problem is, there is nothing to forgive. Having followed the lawsuit for the past 4 years, it quite clear that it's Apple bullying their competitors, using all their political and legal means. This is not a question of forgiveness -- and there would be none. And it's certainly not about the technical merits of Apple's "innovation," either, though it's discussed a lot, as if they really matter.

Losing these lawsuits at this point, however, would further enforce the view that Apple has been just trolling their competitors. Apple is probably going to lose their design case by the SCOTUS this month and while they just salvaged the appeal had lost in its entirety, it's more about their saving face at this point, IMO.
 
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well, the problem is, there is nothing to forgive. Having followed the lawsuit for the past 4 years, it quite clear that it's Apple bullying their competitors, using all their political and legal means. This is not a question of forgiveness -- and there would be none. And it's certainly not about the technical merits of Apple's "innovation," either, though it's discussed a lot, as if they really matter.

Losing these lawsuits at this point, however, would further enforce the view that Apple has been just trolling their competitors. Apple is probably going to lose their design case by the SCOTUS this month and while they just salvaged the appeal had lost in its entirety, it's more about their saving face at this point, IMO.

I agree.
 
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