Apple Secures Multitouch Technology Patent

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MacWorld is reporting that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent on multitouch technology.

Patent 7,479,949 was filed on April 11, 2008 and finally awarded on January 20, 2009—a mere day before the conference call in which Apple COO Tim Cook stressed that Apple would strenuously protect its intellectual property. Among the inventors are listed such luminaries as the man himself, Steve Jobs, as well as VP of iPhone software Scott Forstall.
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Obligatory bash Apple and say that this technology has been around since the stone age post.
 
bonsai said:
Obligatory bash Apple and say that this technology has been around since the stone age post.
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Well, now that YOU mention it... There is indeed quite a bit of prior art involved here and what will be interesting to see is how aggressive Apple will be in defending something when they're not the originators of it. It's happened before, otherwise there wouldn't have been much merit to Creative's lawsuit against Apple. Why settle if you're right?

bonsai said:
And insert something about Steve Jobs and his health here.
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Oh that's not relevant at all, why do YOU have to bring it up? I mean, it's not like Apple ever lies and tries to conceal the truth or discredit those who have said it. Good thing there aren't any regulations out there that would prohibit the company from doing dishonest things that would otherwise inappropriately influence or delay the propagation of news that would affect their stock price. The SEC's never had to look into that, for sure.
 
Call me crazy, but I'm getting an urge to patent the 'I used Charmin to wipe my bum' motion.
 
If they want me to believe Steve Jobs invented multi-touch then I might as well accept he fact that Al Gore invented the internet. (Even though he may not have ever actually made that claim.)

Fail.
 
If you take a look at the patent, the claims are a little more narrow than what the headline implies. Apple is patenting their particular implementation of touch surface motions in a computing device, i.e. two finger pinch for zoom, swipe for next page, etc. Since they originated those methods, they have every right to patent it. Think about it in another way: was there any prior art for finger pinch indicating zoom? The answer (as the patent office sees it) is no.
 
killerbobjr said:
If you take a look at the patent, the claims are a little more narrow than what the headline implies. Apple is patenting their particular implementation of touch surface motions in a computing device, i.e. two finger pinch for zoom, swipe for next page, etc. Since they originated those methods, they have every right to patent it. Think about it in another way: was there any prior art for finger pinch indicating zoom? The answer (as the patent office sees it) is no.
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Except that the patent is MUCH more broad than that. Yes, there are specific claims in the patent that do protect a number of the particular gestures, but there are also claims that basically patent the concept of even detecting two points of contact via a touch interface and making determinations about it using heuristics. That is essentially patenting the use of heuristics for all touch devices for the next 20 years. That is WAY too broad. Not to mention their is prior art.

It's a bad patent that will have a chilling effect unless someone like palm has some smart people up their sleeve ready to document that their claim of patent is crap. Which is why I suspect Palm doesn't seem too worried over this stuff. Just from stuff I've seen, I suspect both Palm and Microsoft could mount a credible lawsuit on the subject.
 
I'm going to patent the act of double clicking your mouse. Both on and offline.
 
I'm going to patent the W,A,S,D keys for gaming (although i think Valve might have some challenge to that from 98) :D
 
No, you can only patent the use of the W,A,S,D keys in ways such as two-finger gestures for accessing porn sites.

Erm, fuck Apple I got my GTX 285s to be happy about.
 
Yeah, another BS patent. I wonder how this would apply to tablet pc's. My tx2z has the same gestures and Windows 7 is going to have this stuff built in and I wonder how it would affect Windows mobile.
 
heatlesssun said:
Yeah, another BS patent. I wonder how this would apply to tablet pc's. My tx2z has the same gestures and Windows 7 is going to have this stuff built in and I wonder how it would affect Windows mobile.
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Pfft...yeah, I agree. I am wondering the same thing about the tablet PC im going to acquire...
 
Apple is so fierce about their intellectual property because they are well aware of how easy it is to steal someone's intellectual property or get patents for things that are practically in the public domain.
 
Yeah, I mean, this is stuff that has been in products far before Apple patented it, and I heard (I could be wrong) that Microsoft was the original creator of Multi-Touch technology
 
Spartan1000 said:
Yeah, I mean, this is stuff that has been in products far before Apple patented it, and I heard (I could be wrong) that Microsoft was the original creator of Multi-Touch technology
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Microsoft has done as lot of work in pen and touch technology for over the years, thus the birth of the tablet pc. Plus pen and touch computing goes way back and Apple did a lot of work as well, ala the Newton. But the tablet pc is by far the most powerful implementation of this technology to date and not too much has been said about them in relation to Apple's "IP".

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I really doubt that Apple wants to start suing because it will get counter sued and claims will be made against it was well.
 
Doesn't MS's Surface have some (all?) of the same UI gestures that are specifically patented? I'd swear they have the gestures for pictures.

And after watching that Jeff Han video, it's clear that the gesture existed before 2007.....I'm the ideas (if not an earlier implementation) existed in 2005, if not earlier.
 
good link to the hans2007 guy. seems he/others developed such at nyu. then he created a company, pixel something or other. then he joined up with hans. all these developments before apple applies for patent.

so seems apples using what others have developed.

why didnt any of the three previous groups patent the multi-touch they were developing? can any of them turn around and say how dare you patent OUR developed tech?

would the patent office say, sorry, apple's already patented this so you can't? or can they turn round and show documents and such proving they developed it long before apple and therefore they should be awarded the patent?

im not a lawyer. :)
 
The patent describes "finger contact" specifically. I wonder if companies could get around this simply by saying you're 'supposed to' use your elbows and nose with the touch screen, and let consumers decide to use their fingers on their own.
 
hughJ said:
The patent describes "finger contact" specifically. I wonder if companies could get around this simply by saying you're 'supposed to' use your elbows and nose with the touch screen, and let consumers decide to use their fingers on their own.
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It doesn't matter, since finger contact is how all touch screens work and the video linked above clearly shows that a touch UI existed, almost a year before the iPhone, that used many of the gestures that Apple made famous.
 
Stupid apple. . .Guess Google's HTC Dream producers are probably glad they didn't enable multi-touch now. . .
 
killerbobjr said:
Apple is patenting their particular implementation of touch surface motions in a computing device, i.e. two finger pinch for zoom, swipe for next page, etc. Since they originated those methods, they have every right to patent it.
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I could see them getting by with pinch to zoom.

However, swipe for next page? That's just utter BS. We've been using that motion with scrollbars for ages now.

PhatMhath said:
why didnt any of the three previous groups patent the multi-touch they were developing?
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A few reasons.
1) "Big bad Microsoft" wouldn't have been awarded a patent like this because everything they create should be free and open source :rolleyes:
2) The other companies that have been using touch gestures realize it's a freaking GESTURE and won't bother patenting it.
It's like saying using an overhand motion while tying your shoe... I could patent that. It's just ludicrous.

Apple drives me crazy to no end. They've seriously got to have some US Patent officers on their payroll.
 
Surprised nobody mentioned this yet.

Touchscreen or Tablet PC + Opera + Mouse Gestures = .....

A swipe is a swipe. It was done before Apple laid claim to it.

Hell, I had multitouch on a off brand touchpad that I bought at CostCo (when it was still called Price Club)... PS/2 based, crappy Win3.11 based drivers, but supported multitouch though rudimentary. I could hold one finger down after a tap to serve as a right click, use another finger to continue moving the mouse cursor after right click had been activated. If that isn't multitouch at its most simple, I don't know what is. I used it for a while and the DOS/Win3.11 drivers worked with Win95. Crapped out on me after though and couldn't find it again.
 
Apple didn't invent this stuff, they may have refined it a bit, slappy a glossy screen or shiny piece of glass on it, but... well, let's just say the timing of this patent (meaning the approval and grant of it) happened too closely on the heels of the introduction of the Palm Pre and that stupid remark from Apple about going after people that might trounce on their ideas.

Someone at the US Patent Office is about to buy themselves a nice home in the Bahamas... and a lot of other stuff with the payout... that's my belief.

Regardless, this is a most excellent read covering a very wide and very old history of "multi-touch" devices over the years... if you have any interest in such technology at all, it's a must-read:

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
 
TechieSooner said:
1) "Big bad Microsoft" wouldn't have been awarded a patent like this because everything they create should be free and open source :rolleyes:
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Yeah, it's not like Microsoft holds more patents than just about anyone and files for 5 times as many patents in a year than Apple does. And it's not like Microsoft tries to patent anything absolutely ludicrious: http://gigaom.com/2008/08/27/seriously-microsoft-patents-page-up-page-down/

You might want to remove the fanboi blinders.
 
ok so what are the results of this awarded page up/down patent? anytime anyone develops software that utilizes this page up/down function they have to pay out a bit to ms to incorporate it into their software in the first place?
 
techrat said:
Surprised nobody mentioned this yet.

Touchscreen or Tablet PC + Opera + Mouse Gestures = .....

A swipe is a swipe. It was done before Apple laid claim to it.

Hell, I had multitouch on a off brand touchpad that I bought at CostCo (when it was still called Price Club)... PS/2 based, crappy Win3.11 based drivers, but supported multitouch though rudimentary. I could hold one finger down after a tap to serve as a right click, use another finger to continue moving the mouse cursor after right click had been activated. If that isn't multitouch at its most simple, I don't know what is. I used it for a while and the DOS/Win3.11 drivers worked with Win95. Crapped out on me after though and couldn't find it again.
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I talked about this earlier in the thread. I'm been using Tablet PC since day one and its hard not to miss the relationship.
 
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