Prior art doesn't mean it was obvious, but it does mean the patent was invalid. It doesn't matter, for patents, whether you knew about the previous creation of the thing in question, your creation of it still can't be patented (and if the previous one was, you are still infringing - although you may not be "knowingly infringing", which can affect the penalties but not whether you infringe in the first place).
Yes, but if i recall correctly, apple's patent claim is quite specific about dragging an on-screen picture across a visually represented path -- isn't that how google got around it in android? The neonode, on the other hand, doesn't look to have any visual indicator at all; it just uses a corner-to-corner swipe with nothing extra on the screen.
Also, it was the judge who said the neonode made it obvious, which seems wrong to me given the lack of mainstream implementations.
But none of this changes the fact that this patent is ludicrously trivial -- even if not obvious -- and should never have seen the light of day.
