Apple Receives Major Granted Patent for Multi-Touch

Apple has received a Granted Patent from the US Patent Office today that relates to one of earliest multi-touch patents on record. It's one of the patents that Apple gained when acquiring a gesture recognition company called FingerWorks back in 2005. Multi-touch was the driver behind the revolutionary 2007 iPhone.



Apple's newly granted patent covers apparatus and methods for simultaneously tracking multiple finger and palm contacts as hands approach, touch, and slide across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface. Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions enables unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device.

All of Apple's popular iDevices utilize virtual keyboards and they're still working on virtual keyboards for future Macs.

Apple credits Wayne Westerman and John Elias as the inventors of this patent which was filed in Q4 2006. The patent relates to 1998 and 1999 patents on record.

The Other Eight Granted Patents Issued to Apple Today

Audio plug with core structural member

Cable connector retention clips

Self fixturing assembly techniques

Systems and methods for providing a system-on-a-substrate

Dynamically generated ring tones

Increased speed of processing of data received over a communications link

Techniques and graphical user interfaces for categorical shuffle

Previewing different types of documents

It's Granted Patent Day

Readers should be aware that every Tuesday the US Patent and Trademark Office publish Apple's Granted Patents. Granted patents are approved patent applications that Apple applied for months or even years ago. In the vast majority of cases, "granted patents" aren't covering any new kind of technology on the day the patent is being granted. New Apple technologies are generally revealed on Thursdays by the US Patent Office in the form of published patent applications. Some Mac sites confuse this process by making claims and presenting bylines on Tuesday that insinuate that Apple has just revealed a new technology or process. In 99% of cases, this is simply untrue and readers should be made aware of this fact. Known exceptions would include patents that were recently acquired by Apple or a domestic and/or foreign patent application that Apple had never presented in the US before under its own brand name.

NOTICE: Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.

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