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Multi-Touch Tech Firm Seeks iPad Sales Injunction
An anonymous reader writes "Taiwan-based Elan Microelectronics just filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission alleging that Apple is infringing on its patents and violating the Tariff Act, and is seeking a ban on imports of the iPad as well as an order to stop selling the mobile device along with iPhones, iPods, and Macs. The move was taken as a 'continuation of our efforts to enforce our patent rights against Apple's ongoing infringement,' the company said." Considering many iPad pre-orders have tracking #s already, I suspect it might be a little late.
It's tricky and unless you know more details about the specific case, it's hard to say who actually owns what. This is what I know from the case:
Apple bought a company called Fingerworks in 2005. Fingeworks made multi-touch keyboard and mice. Shortly after bought by Apple, Fingerworks ceased to sell or make any products. The best guess is that Apple bought Fingerworks solely for it's patents and technology. As of August 2008, Fingerworks continued to file patents.
Apple releases the iPhone in 2007. Elan Microelectronics sues them thereafter.
When looking at these patent cases, there has to be certainty about the specific technology involved. Multi-touch is large collection of differing technologies. MS Surface for example relies on cameras whereas the iPhone appears to use capacitance. The devil is in the details and that's what lawyers are for.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have been following this story since April of 2009. This link http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html is the best explanation of how multi-touch technology was created.
The best guess is that Apple bought Fingerworks solely for it's patents and technology.
There's actually almost zero guessing on this point, although it takes some digging to find all of the facts. Much of the details were posted on the Fingerfans forum back when the purchase happened. Other useful info may exist primarily in the Internet Archive at this point.
Synopsis: Fingerworks as a company was a young venture founded based on Wayne Westerman's Ph.D. work relating to capacitive multi-touch interfaces. Fingerworks was one of the first companies to have useful (awesome, actually) multitouch based products on the open market. These included the GesturePad, a multi-touch pointing device not dissimilar to the recent Wacom Bamboo Touch; and the TouchStream multi-touch keyboard. The TouchStream was pretty cool: max typing speeds were slower than a conventional keyboard, but the whole surface was usable for multitouch pointer input and gestures.
Apple apparently liked what they saw and bought the company up -- its patent portfolio as well as Westerman and their core R&D team. This was not even remotely public knowledge at the time. To outsiders' view, Fingerworks practically vanished. The release of the first iPhone was the coming-out party for this technology at Apple. Westerman and his team have continued to do multi-touch research at Apple, issuing a variety of patents under the auspices of their new company. I recall a few of those being mentioned on Slashdot in the past, specifically one about ongoing work to improve haptics (touch feedback) for multi-touch keyboards.