UK judge rules Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent not valid in HTC case
One of the patents that forced a ban of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the United States has been deemed invalid in a UK courtroom, but don’t expect the overseas decision to make any difference when it comes to lifting said ban. In a separate legal tiff between Apple and HTC, Judge Christopher Floyd ruled that three of the four patents the Taiwanese manufacturer is accused of infringing upon are not even legally valid. In the case of the fourth, valid patent, it was found that HTC was not guilty of committing any intellectual property crimes.
Among the three invalid patents was the infamous claim to the slide-to-unlock feature found on most Android smartphones, one of the US patents that Apple leveraged against Samsung in recent proceedings concerning the Galaxy Nexus. The decisions of the UK courtroom will have no bearing on the current state of affairs in the US, but may offer a bit of ammunition on the Google side of things for manufacturers faced with defending slide-to-unlock functionality in the future.
[via Bloomberg]