German court says ‘swipe-to-unlock’ not sophisticated enough to be awarded

The Federal Court of Appeals in Karlsruhe, Germany, has rejected Apple’s claim over the patents covering the “slide to unlock” feature in mobile phones.

Apple won that case but the ruling was later overturned by the federal patent court. In May 2014, Samsung was found guilty of infringing on the patent and causing “irreparable harm” by using the swipe-to-unlock on its phones. Neonode Inc called itself an intellectual property firm licensing patented optical technology for use in phones, tablets, readers and other touchscreen devices.

Neonode sold phone with slide to unlock a year before the iPhone launched. Motorola, at that time, under Google Inc had filed the case along with Samsung against Apple.

This is the second of Apple’s patents which were used against Samsung that has been invalidated recently. This feature has since been used by many smartphone OEMs and operating systems. Bloomberg Bloomberg reports that the appeals court said swipe-to-unlock “didn’t reach a level of sophistication needed to award patent protection”.

Today’s Federal Court of Appeals decision reinforces the latter ruling, effectively invalidating the German version of Apple’s “Slide to Unlock” European patent. Now, Motorola will be moving forward with the case and the ruling might just be in favour of Motorola.

Apple has suffered yet another setback in its Bleak House lawsuits, with another German court deciding to throw out its swipe-to-unlock patent.