

Apple Slapped with Multitouch Patent Lawsuit - minalecs
http://www.osnews.com/story/23089/Apple_Slapped_with_Multitouch_Patent_Lawsuit

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Groxx
I still find it amazing that this patent holds water. It's so vague, they can
apply their flow charts and finger operations to any and all multi-finger
interaction with a surface. The finger detection method I _know_ I've seen in
other uses, and quite frankly if given a pressure-sensitive touchscreen it
would've been the _first_ thing I did with it.

If it's something stupendously obvious and vague, isn't it inherently
unpatentable? If it weren't, we'd have a rush to patent "using a round object
with an axle to move other objects more efficiently" and "causing an object to
traverse a distance through the air by imparting kinetic energy".

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gjm11
Yeah, that's pretty much what we thought at Synaptics. It seems not to have
turned out that way :-).

(I was working at Synaptics when what-was-then-Elantech first sued Synaptics.
I never had much to do with the lawsuit. I left Synaptics quite a while before
the suit was settled.)

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pohl
This was reported before, albeit from a different site:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1229821>

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kevindication
Does this in any way explain the omission of multi-touch from the Apple v. HTC
lawsuit?

