Is Apple's Multi-Touch Patent Valid?

An anonymous reader writes "There is evidence that Apple's multi-touch patent application may have failed to list some prior art that showed gestures in multi-touch interfaces as early as the mid 1980s. Some of these examples even appear in the bibliography of Wayne Westerman's doctoral dissertation, and he's one of the inventors on the application's list. If true, that could leave them wide open for legal attack, should they try suing someone like Palm for patent infringement. Also, Apple may be infringing some key multi-touch patents owned by the University of Delaware — and co-developed by Westerman while getting his doctorate."

Comments

Re:No

[icebike]

> I love multi-touch. I used to like having a mouse on a laptop, but now that multi-touch is here, its simply better than a mouse.

Perhaps for small notebooks, (or tablets), but realistically its simply too slow and disruptive with larger screens to be waving your entire arm around just to click a button. It also requires a very sparse interface to allow for imprecision of touch.

Much as a mouse can be compared to poking at machine together with a stick, multitouch can be like trying to assemble small parts while wearing mittens.