I admit to only a quick scan through of the patent doc - but if they're 'predefined' paths, whether or not this is dismissed as prior art, does it count as a predefined path if you nominate your end points to swipe, or just have a swipe in some general direction e.g. left right, or up/down anywhere on the screen... then there was the Android style of sensing a swipe pattern. Would these fall foul? or only an iOS style "here is the predefined one way to unlock" built in to the OS?

If you're suddenly increasing the number of card-based transactions - won't that be a nice windfall for banks/transactions processing businesses that collect every time a transaction is run over their service? beyond the 'Big Brother' implications of this move, is there a profit motive?

From the description this sounds the same as Alpine PulseTouch which came out for their in-car media units several years ago