Apple has once again flexed its technological muscle and it has major implications for the rest of the smartphone market. Last week, Apple’s patent application for its “slide to unlock” feature was approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Simply put, Apple now has exclusive control over the slide to unlock feature, namely the bar that appears on a smartphone that must be physically pushed from left to right to access the phone. The grant of this patent raises a lot of questions about why patents are awarded and how technology companies seek competitive advantages over each other.

Before delving into the implications of the slide to unlock patent, it is important to look at what the patent covers. The USPTO approved Apple’s slide to unlock patent, No. 8046721, which lays out the specifics of the slide to unlock mechanism. The highlights include control over a method of “unlocking a hand-held electronic device,” the method “detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location,” and the method “moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact.” In simpler terms, the patent covers unlock features that have a preset location to initiate the unlocking mechanism, that have a predetermined drag route, and that are part of a hand-held device.

A prominent question stemming from the grant of the slide to unlock patent is whether it should have been granted at all. To qualify for patent protection, a process or machine must pass five requirements: patentable subject matter, novelty, utility, nonobviousness, and disclosure/enablement. The two most interesting requirements, and in this case the only potentially controversial ones, are the novelty and nonobviousness requirements. The novelty requirement involves a determination of whether an ordinary viewer would see the machine as a new machine rather than as a modification of an existing machine (which is commonly referred to as the prior art). Nonobviousness requires that the differences between the machine and the prior art not be obvious at the time the applied-for machine was invented to a person having ordinary skill in the pertinent art.

Applying these rules to the slide to unlock patent, it seems a little curious that this mechanism passed the novelty and nonobviousness requirements. For nonobviousness, the slide to unlock mechanism on Apple’s phones involves a lot of complicated technology. It seems somewhat difficult to believe that developing this process would be obvious to a technology expert. Therefore, there is some merit behind the UPSTO allowing the slide to unlock mechanism to pass the nonobviousness requirement. For the novelty requirement, the slide to unlock mechanism could be seen as entirely new because before the invention of this technique, phones were unlocked by putting in a password or by pressing a button. However, since the days of the Discman, slide to unlock mechanisms have been present in that format. Perhaps the patent examiners viewed the technology involved in changing the slide to unlock mechanism from a physical lever to an electronic motion recognition process as distinct enough to warrant protection. However, there is evidence that the slide to unlock mechanism existed in a cell phone two years before Apple received the patent. In light of this discovery, there are serious questions about the validity of Apple’s slide to unlock mechanism passing the novelty requirement, and subsequently being granted a patent.

The slide to unlock patent is also indicative of how patent system currently works and the effect that it has on innovation. Granting this patent gives Apple the power to sue every Android phone on the market for infringement because they all currently use a similar slide to unlock mechanism. The validity of the patent has already been questioned in courts around the world, with a court in the Netherlands already throwing it out. The effect that this type of patent has on innovation has also been called into question.  On one hand, the patent is indicative of the growing patent war between global technology companies like Apple and Google. On the other hand, the patent represents a technique to inhibit innovation through the use of double patents. The ultimate effect means that smaller technology companies will be locked out, stifling the promotion of innovation.

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