Galaxy Nexus not under fire in Apple slide-to-unlock lawsuit
Last week we cringed to learn that Apple had dragged the Galaxy Nexus into their latest round of litigation against Samsung, this time going after the phone for violating a slide-to-unlock patent. It now seems that those reports originating at the FOSS Patents blog were false. A Samsung exec speaking to the Korea Herald says the Galaxy Nexus is no where to be found among the list of devices being targeted in Apple’s latest patent spat. “We’re aware that there was a hearing involving Apple’s slide-to-unlock feature after our patent infringement case last Friday and a series of products in the Galaxy lineup were accused there,” the unnamed executive stated, “but what we’ve discovered is that the Galaxy Nexus wasn’t one of them.”
While we wouldn’t put much past Apple when it comes suing the pants off of their competition, we found the original claims hard to believe, as written in our original article. Though the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 feature a method of unlocking the device by sliding an icon from the locked to unlocked position, the overall appearance and functionality is fundamentally different from Apple’s design. Google has included the ability to slide to the right to jump directly to camera mode, something lacking from Apple’s version.
Still, other Galaxy devices, those using Samsung’s custom interface and older versions of the Android software, are under fire for potentially violating Apple’s patent. We are beginning to think Apple really won’t call it quits until Android has been eradicated from this earth, and since we don’t see that day coming any time soon expect to hear about their next lawsuit any time now.
[via AndroidCentral]