This was surely expected! With iPhone first ever device in commercial production creating a revolution with its multitouch interface, Apple finally has got multitouch patent. With Steve Jobs as one of the innovator himself, the patent has around 25 total inventors.
Patents are a great source for an organization to earn money by licensing the rights to others who want to work on the same technology commercially. With multitouch getting so popular these days, this is like a fortune for Apple.
The abstract of the patent says -
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 remember, Microsoft Surface is one of those device having multitouch and now with Windows 7 multitouch support, Apple may also get some share of money by OEMs creating Windows7 compliant multitouch devices.
Not just such devices, but these days many organizations are coming up with devices like multitouch trackpads, mousepads, mouse etc which supports gestures where you have to use your fingers to zooming and panning, which is exactly what this patent is all about. In fact, Apple’s MacBook Air comes with that multi-touch touchpad too.
If we think in terms of mobile phones then again there are lots of models that we’ll likely to see this year supporting multitouch. Till now there are almost no mobile phone that competes with Apple’s iPhone’s multitouch interface. Most of the phones support multi-tap where you cannot slide your fingers but can only tap them together on the display screen.
You can read full details about this multitouch patent here.
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