Apple Wins Patent for Multi-Touch

Apple has managed to get a patent on its multi-touch technology used in the iPhone. The extremely long patent number 7,479,949 was awarded on the 20th and seems to be a way to stifle competition in the smart phone market.

This new patent comes as companies like Acer and Palm are getting into the market. Apple's acting man in charge Tom Cook said they were not trying to stamp out the competition but just wanted to protect their IP.

I am not sure I buy that, lately Apple has faced some stiff competition from the G1 and other smart phones that cost less and allow for greater freedom. Google was even selling Unlocked and Unrestricted G1 phones for less than you could get an iPhone. Something tells me this is method to slow down the other guys as they are getting too close to dethroning the iPhone.

Read more here.

11. A computer-implemented method, comprising: at a computing device with a touch screen display, 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; wherein the one or more heuristics comprise: a vertical screen scrolling heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command rather than a two-dimensional screen translation command based on an angle of initial movement of a finger contact with respect to the touch screen display; a two-dimensional screen translation heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to the two-dimensional screen translation command rather than the one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command based on the angle of initial movement of the finger contact with respect to the touch screen display; and a next item 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.