Will Gesture Unlocking Spark a New Patent War?
Apple has been awarded a U.S. patent broadly covering a device security feature known as gesture unlocking.
Users of many Android devices, both phones and tablets, have the ability to unlock them by correctly performing a drawing pattern across the screen. Apple devices by comparison have long featured the 4 digit numerical combination to unlock devices.
Now it seems that the patent war between Apple and its competition may heat up yet again. Keep in mind that Apple has already succeeded in barring direct sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in both Germany and Austrailia via an ongoing lawsuit.
This particular patent was filed back in 2009 and with it, Apple is armed to go after multiple manufacturers and quite possibly the Android OS itself. If Steve Jobs’ biography is any indication, the Apple co-founder did not think highly of Android and actually promised to “destroy it“.
As of yet, there has been no official throwdown between operating systems rather, Apple has targeted the device manufacturers like Samsung. This new patent is more software focused, and is more of a stab at the OS rather than the hardware which have been the targets of recent lawsuits.
The patent is particularly interesting because there are no Apple devices that currently use gesture unlock as a security feature but it stands front and center in most Android devices.
The patent wars could spill over into Microsoft territory since there are some Windows Phone 7 devices that use gesture unlock as well. If Apple is able to demonstrate that this feature improves security of the hardware, they may even have a case in Europe.
One thing is sure, if Steve died with more than one unfinished project, dismantling the Android OS and outing it as a copy of his brainchild was one of them. This is only the beginning.
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $US40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong, I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” – Steve Jobs
[via BBC]