EPO dismisses Apple appeal over ‘gesture unlock’ patent
The European Patent Office ( EPO) has dismissed an appeal from Apple, ruling that one of its applied-for patents is unpatentable because it lacks an inventive step.
In a decision last month, the EPO rejected a patent (application number 1,019,435,9) for “unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image”.
In its feedback, the EPO said it had relied on prior art to make its decision, specifically an article, “Touchscreen toggle design", which was published in the “ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems” publication in 1992.
The EPO said Apple’s application relates to a “gesture-based procedure for unlocking the touch screen of a portable computing device such as a mobile phone”.
But, it said Apple had failed to prove that Apple’s claimed invention helps users solve a technical problem, or had an inventive step over the prior art.
It said the “problem solved by the claimed invention is to provide an implementation” of the features listed under the claims of the patent.
The implementation of these is “straightforward”, so the claimed invention lacks an inventive step, the EPO concluded.
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