German court invalidates Apple's swipe feature

Apple Inc's patents covering the ''slide to unlock'' feature on smartphones have been held invalid, Germany's highest appeals court ruled yesterday, reaffirming a 2013 decision and rejection of the US company's claims by a lower court.

The ruling by the Federal Court of Appeals pertains to one of the Apple iPhone's most popular defining features, of which rival Android-based phones makers had developed their own versions.

The appeals court said in a statement that it confirmed a ruling by the lower Federal Patent Court that cancelled Apple's German patent, on the basis of the technique's similarity to a phone released by Swedish company Neonode Inc a year before the iPhone's 2007 launch.

The Neonode N1 had similar technical features, the patent court had found and ruled that the iPhone maker's easier-to-use interface was not in itself patentable.

Neonode sold its phones by the tens of thousands before declaring bankruptcy in 2008. It later moved into intellectual property and  licensed its patented optical technology for use in phones, tablets, readers and other touchscreen devices.

The original suit had been filed by Motorola Mobility, at the time a unit of Google Inc but now owned by China's Lenovo Group Ltd. It  filed the suit in a Munich court against the Apple user interface patent.

Slide to unlock had been one of Apple's biggest patent fights with Samsung and while district court Judge Lucy Koh agreed to this particular patent, the combined 10 judges of Germany's Federal Patent Court in 2013 and the five judges of the Court of Justice held a different view.

They said there was no prior art for the mechanism itself. Swedish manufacturer Neonode had a Windows CE phone named Nim back in 2005 that used a similar method to unlock the device, which it had patented.

The difference between its implementation and Apple's was that while Neonode used pure text to give instructions Apple added a slider visual. According to the German court, that was a negligible difference.

According to commentators, though the ruling comes as a victory for Google, Samsung and other Android manufacturers, it would have little impact immediately. Also the ruling would apply only in Germany.

In 2013, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had invalidated Apple's ''bounce back'' or "rubber-banding" patent, (See: US Patent Office bounces back Apple's ''rubber-banding" patent).