Sorting through this week’s cell phone makers’ issued patents, I found a couple examples of patented concepts (dating back to 2000-2001) that have found their way into the market more than once by means of “fast following”. In this post-KSR patent world, fast following on cool features will likely become even more important for manufacturers.
Seen the above from a couple different players? Take a guess of two phones that use these designs and you can see a few I found after the jump…
Slide up fronts are growing in popularity, with the Chocolate as a notable design…
While not as interesting, the 180 degree spring-action rotation phone style has also gotten a following notably with Nokia…
The patents have quite specific claims, which the above are likely to not have an issue with. My prediction is that we’ll be seeing far more fast following in the days to come.