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

and the iPhone trademark

[Toe, The]

Not unlike the word "iPhone" itself... which Apple announced they would use even though clearly Cisco already held the trademark to it.

Interesting Analysis

[rm999]

Engadget wrote a surprisingly well thought out analysis of the patent situation between Apple and Palm:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/

It's interesting that the motivations behind their patents aren't as obvious as they may seem. For example, Apple has several patents in the pipeline simply so they can tweak them later to specifically target Palm's Pre.

Re:Interesting Analysis

[crmarvin42]

Apple is most likely not going to pursue Palm unless their hand is forced. I don't see anyone having a problem developing non-infringing multi-touch UI guidelines, or baring that lisencing them from Apple.

Legal battles cost money and risk having patents invalidated. They are the Big Stick in the line "Walk softly, but carry a big stick." By having the patent they can intimidate their competitors into using only obviously non-infringing multi-touch features. Thus maintaining the novelty of their device.

Besides, I fail to see how their patent can stifle innovation. They were awarded the pantent for doing something innovative in the first place. If Palm wants to stay competetive they'll just have to do some more innovating to keep up.

Re:Problems with patenting...

[Zackbass]

On the other hand, the problems that patents present to progress along a line of design can actually work in our favor. I've run up against patents in the past and in working on an alternate way of solving the problem I run into a better solution. There's no reason that what was patented is the best solution, it's most likely just the most obvious. It's actually a cool little trick for forcing development out of local minima (assuming a cost function on optimality like all sane people do).

Random rant: I've found 90% of the patents I run into are stuff someone patented to sit on and aren't actively developing. Apparently actually making the thing and marketing it are too hard, it's much more efficient to patent a swath of bad ideas and try to force licenses upon those who actually want to make progress.