People under the age of 25 are too young to be able to afford cynicism - Diogenes the Pseudo Pesky Cynic
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Apple wins multi-touch patent
TOUCH APPLE'S multi-touch technology, and the fruity toymaker will slap you with the full weight of US patent law.
Apple has apparently just won the American patent (number 7,479,949) for touch-screen control technology, a fact which will have the firm's competitors very worried indeed.
Awarded to "Jobs et al" (Ed- who's Al?), Patent 7,479,949 gives Apple credit for "detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display". Basically, stabbing more than one of your pudgy, nail-bitten digits at a tiny screen to make things happen.
As if that wasn't enough, the incredibly long-winded patent also goes on to claim the Iphone and Ipod touch command system, including finger or thumb swiping or twisting and spreading to enlarge pictures or rotate them.
The patent was apparently issued on January 20th, just a day before the firm gloated over its seemingly recession-proof growing quarterly profits.
Apple can now legally stamp on any rival which tries to use its precious intellectual property without prior consent and lots of money changing hands. Not that Apple would want to crush its competition, oh no. Or at least, that's what the firm's chief operating officer, Tim Cook, told journos in a conference call.
"We think competition is good," said Cook before warning, "We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off and will use whatever weapons at our disposal."
Cook was particularly careful not to mention the upcoming Palm Pre touch-screen mobile smartphone, but, if we were Palm, we'd watch our backs, because as they say in the wild west of Silicon Valley, "dem's fightin' words". µ
Tags: Apple
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It's going to be a real financial pain in the butt for whoever Apple sues over this, regardless of the outcome. And judges come in all varieties of stupid, biased and techno-illiterate.
To everybody talking about prior art: who's ready to step up with the finances and the legal team to get this torn down? Fun stuff.
Despite the naive comments by so many authors who have not even read the patent, it covers VERY LITTLE.
Read the Claims section and you'll find it's about a way to decide between vertical scrolling and a couple of other actions.
No big deal.
Oughtn't Palm have enough handheld-related IP after all these years building them to countersue Apple to death?
can you say Prior Art? Multi-touch was shown clearly in everything from Star Trek: The next generation through to Minority Report, all predating the patent filing in 2007.
If you notice, the patent expressly says "one or more" fingers. And it specifically mentions items like selecting one thing and having it take you to another.....or as we all know it as, a SHORTCUT. So ALL touchscreen phones are affected by this. It's not just multi-touch, even ONE finger on a screen counts as sue-able under this patent.
Such a novel concept here right???
Star trek (or other sci movie here) never used multi touch interfaces before..
Apple will go dodo with Jobs. This debate about "wheel patenting" will be irrelevant.
Actually scrolling with vertical gesture is much older then iPhone. I don't remember the first time i used it.
I do remember that I used it when compiz was out in early stages. And it was funny to switch desktops(viewpoints, workspaces or whatever you call it) with a finger. And scrolling was long before it :)
I don't feel sorry for Palm. Their dev team was made up of mostly ex-Apple people anyway. They totally ripped off work. As for who might win a legal battle? Well, Apple got 30 billion in cash and now a patent. My bets on Apple.
In the Land of the "free will" you can patent everything.
I can't wait till the moment when some US corp. patents breathing. They could chip ppl first (which is inevitable consequense of the Patriot Act anyway), then when someone fails/forgets to pay the subscription fee, The System (which probably will be maintained by Micro$oft) will simply stop that "function". It would be a great oxymoron for those morons at USPTO. Next thing will be someone to patent the serial enumeration for the foreheads of the US citizens (ofc. also subscription based, maybe to G00gle), which seems to be a matter of time too...
I know it's from the wiki, but it was easier than scrounging through corp sites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch. Apples patent: A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items. If you read Apple's patent correctly, it seems to be patenting a specific way in which multi-touch is utilized and not multi-touch itself. Although, it seems to be going after the most useful way in which it is being used. What about Microsoft Surface? Which came first?
Such utter contempt for the intellectual property of Bell labs should be answered with utter contempt for that joke of a company.
It's getting worse than Microsoft.
And it even wasn't the first ones to use multitouch, I think.
What's next? Will they patent an equipment for typing that consists with a board with keys over it, and each key corresponds to a letter? And if they do, I'm sure many people would think they were the first ones to make it.
This is why people should turn their backs to M$, Apple and others.
Such thing could not happen in Open Source.
I'm so happy to live in country where such patents (for example mp3 and other codecs)are not applicable
As for this sad issue, some one can patent "gestures" and then make Apple's patent to be included in "gestures patent" and then sue Apple.
Actually Apple should patent ability to breath and f**k and then to sue all earth living population especially their brothers in brain insects.
This is such B.S., Apple wasn't the first company to utilize the touch screen interface. Why should they win the rights to the patent? It's like me coming up with and building a time machine and somebody else putting a patent on it. What a load of crap!