Apple Awarded Capacitive Touchscreen Patent

[House]

http://www.techobserver.org/5708.apple-awarded-major-touchscreen-patent.html

After some time, Apple has been awarded a patent for the capacitve touchscreens found in its iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.

This will surely be a setback to many manufacturers who boasted with their device's capacitive touchscreens! Suppose, the ball is now in Apple's court....

 

[Synaesthesia]

Steve Jobs during the announcement of the iPhone in 2007:

...and we have invented a new technology called multi-touch, which is phenomenal. It works like magic. You don't need a stylus. It's far more accurate than any touch display that's ever been shipped. It ignores unintended touches. It's super smart. You can do multi-finger gestures on it, and boy, have we patented it.

 

[Elimentals]

Oooh this could be a nightmare of note.

Not only for other manufacturers but for the entire industry, as the patient wording is so broad that basically targets anything with a screen that reacts to external stimulus.

Glad I am not the lawyer that's gonna try and figure this one out.

 

[BeVonk!]

Wonder how much Nokia will now owe Apple? LOL!

 

[BeVonk!]

The mother of all gadget patents. This is HUGE.

 

[Elimentals]

The mother of all gadget patents. This is HUGE.

Thats the problem, I fear it might get tossed out because of the scope it covers.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...7,966,578.PN.&OS=PN/7,966,578&RS=PN/7,966,578

 

[Synaesthesia]

Was the iPhone really the first phone with a capacitive touchscreen?

Wikipedia:

The first touch screen was a capacitive touch screen developed by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK. The inventor briefly described his work in a short article published in 1965[5] and then more fully - along with photographs and diagrams - in an article published in 1967.[6] A description of the applicability of the touch technology for air traffic control was described in an article published in 1968.[7]

 

[Synaesthesia]

Thats the problem, I fear it might get tossed out because of the scope it covers.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...7,966,578.PN.&OS=PN/7,966,578&RS=PN/7,966,578

Well I realize it's really the multitouch aspect of it that Apple patented. That is a very broad scope though:
(An M-finger translation gesture is detected on or near the touch screen display, where M is a different number than N. In response, the frame content is translated to display a new portion of frame content on the touch screen display, without translating the other content of the page.)

 

[Elimentals]

Prior ART http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html

I have a finger gesture for Apple

 

[Synaesthesia]

Someone on Macrumors:

Patent doesn't cover what everyone says. It covers only the use of one finger to move a web page while using two fingers to scroll a frame. (or m fingers and n fingers).

To infringe, you need to do both.

 

[Elimentals]

Someone on Macrumors:

See video I linked, still prior Art aka Null and void as that was made public before apple filed.

 

[Synaesthesia]

Patent is actually quite narrow. It's about that two-finger scroll for frames in mobile Safari (which few people know about anyway)

 

[Elimentals]

Interesting to read the old comments from way back then

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=272326

I am rolling as I am reading the skeptics comments about touch interfaces....

 

[BeVonk!]

Elimentals, imagine how historians a hundred or two hundred years from now will laugh at our comments. The internet forgets nothing so there will be a lot of laughing.

 

[Rudimental]

The internet forgets nothing so there will be a lot of [-]laughing[/-] tears.

I think that is probably more likely.

 

[Jola]

Prior ART http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html

I have a finger gesture for Apple

Looks impressive, did Apple actually contribute anything ?