Taiwan companies concerned about Apple's "slide to unlock" patent

The United States Patent Trademark Office issued a patent grant to Apple for the Slide to Unlock gesture earlier this week. Premier Wu Den-yih initiated an investigation on the possible impact of Apple’s latest patent win, over the local Taiwanese companies.

He also indicated that he is very concerned about the possible adverse effect on the Taiwanese companies especially those in the smartphone and tablet sectors.

He has already directed the ministry of Economic Affairs and the Industrial Technology Research Institute to look into the matter. To protect Taiwanese industry is in fact one of the key roles of ITRI so they might have already started take steps with respect to the request from Wu.

But globally, the patent has not been considered as the same as US, the Dutch court has ruled out the Slide to Unlock patent as the Neonode N1m has the same kind of gesture way back in May 2004, which was much before the iPhone.

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