Does Apple own Multi touch screen technology?
Apple has finally been awarded the Multi Touch Patent. Does this mean Apple owns multi touch technology that other phone manufacturers are so frantically going after? Apple has indeed been awarded Patent number 7,479,949 which is titled “Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”
Here is a brief abstract of the patent itself:
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.
Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall are just some of the names listed in the inventors list. This particular patent has been languishing in the patent office for about 2 years now. With this patent Apple will own gestures such as “pinch”, “rotate” and “swipe” which pretty much make the Apple multi touch screen different from other phone manufacturers. Palm Pre has tried to emulate this and has already got some veiled threats from Apple. Now we can understand why they made those threats!
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