Comments on: Did Apple Just Corner the Market on Multi-Touch? I Hope Not!

By: did-google-really-cripple-android-to-please-appl « eonly.us

did-google-really-cripple-android-to-please-appl « eonly.us — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:57:16 +0000

[...] Google caved in so easily. While yes, Apple does have a significant stake in multi-touch as Harry pointed out in January, companies should not let this get in the way of innovation. In fact, its questionable [...]

By: Apple multitouch patent is not legal | andremalan.net

Apple multitouch patent is not legal | andremalan.net — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:09:09 +0000

[...] Did Apple Just Corner the Market on Multi-Touch? I Hope Not! (technologizer.com) [...]

By: Tom B

Tom B — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 19:37:08 +0000

You have to peruse the “claims” in any patent to understood exactly what a patent covers. Claims can be challenged individually by competitors, based on usefulness, obviousness, or novelty.

By: justcallmeben

justcallmeben — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:37:11 +0000

@Jeff: no, you can’t file a patent for something someone else invented. The moment you file it, you should be the only one who knows about your invention. When someone else created it, that offc isn’t the case.

By: Yikes

Yikes — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:38:43 +0000

Harry McCracken: “I’d love to see a definitive investigation into the concept of multi-touch interfaces and convincing proof of who was the first to come up with the idea, build technology based on it, demo it in public, and name it.”

I don’t think you should care. Apple is not patenting the general concept of multi-touch interfaces. And it is difficult to determine who was the first to come up with the idea, considering that scientists have been working for decades on what was later to become “multi-touch”. Sophisticated concepts are not invented in only one day by just one guy.

According to Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research): “Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, the original work undertaken by my team was done in 1984, […] and we were not the first. Furthermore, there was a significant body of prior art on which multi-touch was built.”

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

He says “and we were not the first.” It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly who was first and who to credit the idea to.

Harry McCracken: “And I’m not saying that Steve Jobs’ claim that Apple invented multi-touch is false.”

Of course it is false, this is at the very least a gross oversimplification. But Jobs was giving a keynote, not a lecture to students at some university. He won’t explain a technology which history goes back at least 25 years. It would take a semester to explain everything. :-)

Please note that Jeff Han’s (and Microsoft’s) implementation is totally different. Same concept, but based on a different underlying technology (rear projection surface).

Harry McCracken: “I’ll leave it to others to parse what it is exactly Apple that now controls”

Here is Nilay Patel’s attempt.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/#continued

“Nilay is admitted to practice in both Illinois and Wisconsin. In addition to practicing law, Nilay is also a contributing editor for Engadget.”

http://agency68.com/about/

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:42:29 +0000

Regardless of who invented the technology I thought the main thing was who filed the patent first.

By: JustCallMeBen

JustCallMeBen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:10:54 +0000

the patents can only defend the exact technology in the iPhone to do multi-touch (the electrolyte screen), nott he idea of multi-touch itself, since (as pointed out above) that idea has been around in public since the eighties.

This is btw the reason Adobe, MS and Apple all have technically very different techn ologies to detect the multi-point input: I know MS uses infra-red, I don’t know what adobe uses, but it’ll be something different then the Apple electrolyte-screen and the MS infra-red cameras.

By: KevinD

KevinD — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:50:04 +0000

Apple, MS and Han are all latecomers. Multitouch dates from the early 1980s:

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

Even the pinch was done at Sun back in 1992:

http://www.asktog.com/starfire/

No, the patent is not about either of those. Take the time to read the very few claims and you’ll see it’s about a particular way of determining user scroll or select.