The US Patent and Trademark Office has published a series of 34 new patents granted to Apple this week. They include functions like “slide to unlock”, the one that Samsung infringed on last year. Other patents are related to motion-based interfaces and the list goes on and on.
The slide to unlock feature is meant for directing a user to authenticate before accessing a device. The documents mention a slider mechanism to unlock the display, or a series of options to select simultaneously or sequentially. Ex Apple employee Tony Fadell is credited with this invention, as well as Andrew Hodge, Stephan Schell, Ruben Caballero and Jesse Lee Dorogusker. The list also includes Stephen Zadesky and Emery Sanford, all of them inventors of the patent filed in 2008 originally.
The more interesting bit is the patent covering movement-based interfaces for personal media devices. For example, an user will have to go through a series of steps or navigate a list of items shown by an application on a media device by rotating or flicking the hand or wrist. Apple also got 2 design patents recently, one related to the iBook Author Logo and the other for a “display screen or portion thereof with graphical UI”.
Is this a sign of more lawsuits coming?
