Innovation and theft are two different things. Forget the hardware and architecture patents - I'm sick of design being treated as a commodity that's assumed to be freely copyable, simply because it's a user interface rather than a hardware element. Just as many hours and insights went into making the iPhone UI as it did the physical device.
"Just as many hours and insights went into making the iPhone UI as it did the physical device"
I seriously doubt it, unless you are counting all the GUI elements since the Xerox PARC days. Designing and manufacturing a device like the iPhone (or any other modern electronic device) is insanely complicated. It's bad when you use reference designs. It becomes absolutely insane when you invent something new.
It becomes obvious once you make the leap to "there is no keyboard, the touchscreen is the entirety of the interface", but prior to the iPhone no one had dared to try that particular path of development. It was probably not possible to patent the concept of only using a touchscreen for your UI, so instead Apple patented a lot of the little details that are a consequence of its innovative leap.
One shouldn't be able to patent something that's a direct consequence of having a specific limitation, This slide to unlock idea is something a reasonably clever designer would figure out in about 5 minutes.
And, BTW, is a common feature in many physical devices that employ a lock over a button. It reminds me of the locks I had in my car by the late 80's and the power button I had on a Compaq server in the early 90's.
Actually a patent already has to be 'not obvious to an engineer sufficiently skilled in the art' if I remember correctly, although that's almost never applied.
Not at the time. I remember people chuckling aloud the first time they saw it. "Hah! Clever!" Steve Jobs even repeats it multiple times in the original iPhone keynote to demonstrate.
I still don't think they should have a patent for it.
