It was mid 2009 when Apple applied for the patent. The patent is, “a device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device”.
Apple is aggressively fighting rival phone makers over what founder Steve Jobs saw as “stolen” features, especially in Google’s Android OS and Samsung Glaxy Tab and X2.
This is also reported that Microsoft and Google are planning to challenge this patent as they think this is too broad.