Another example is their patent on unlocking a device with a gesture. Asides from Windows Mobile already using gestures for unlocks prior to iPhone beind released, achieving tasks with gestures has been around for years and adding a particular task 'unlocking a phone' doesn't make that novel.
Apple has no patent on the general concept of "unlocking a device with a gesture". They have a patent on their implementation. You can't patent a concept.
This would be clearer if patent titles were prefixed with "A", as in "A method...", etc. Most people seem to read them as "The method...", which when combined with the linear format (even though claims are dependent), makes almost all of them sound much more broad than they actually are.
You might might get a better idea of what the patent is intended to cover by noting the differences between implementations, rather than the similarities. I won't speak to that myself, as I have never seen the Windows Mobile implementation.
> Apple has no patent on the general concept of "unlocking a device with a gesture". They have a patent on their implementation. You can't patent a concept.
You're right, but:
a) I didn't say the word concept (or the word implementation for that matter).
b) the standard wording on any modern patent is 'this is but one embodiment of the concept' meaning other implementations that meet the language described (which is designed to be as broad as can pass a patent examiner).
I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. You cannot patent a concept, only inventions. You don't have to actually build the invention, but it does have to be a concrete thing and and not a wholly abstract idea. This is why patents have specific claims, descriptions, and diagrams associated with them, and not just titles.
For instance, you can obtain a patent on a self-cleaning cat box by describing one and how it works[1], but if someone comes along and invents another self-cleaning cat box that works via some totally different method[2], your patent does not apply. You do not own the patent on the concept of a self-cleaning cat box, only the subset of all possible self-cleaning cat boxes that work more or less the way yours does.
