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Of course, there are other ways to do it, and it is being done in other ways very successfully.

However, that is not the point -- the point is that Apple did not invent/originate that multi-touch gesture (nor any other gestures), so Apple has no valid claim to the feature. It does not matter whether or not Samsung tried to copy Apple -- Apple did not originate the technology.

The non-Apple prior art is staggering in this instance (as it is in most Apple instances). I won't bother to link the decades-earlier multi-touch items. Suffice it to say, pinching to scale items came about around 1983. For a more recent citing, in July of 2004, Nintendo applied for a patent for multi-touch on handheld devieces: http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/26/patent-application-reveals-ninten...

Note that Nintendo was granted the patent in February 2006, over a year before the Iphone was released. "Multi-touch" certainly included pinch-to-zoom in 2004-2006, so, in keeping with Apple's methods, Nintendo should sue Apple sh*tless for stealing "their" handheld technology.

Apple doesn't validly own the rights to 99.95% of their technology (nor designs), so they cannot rightfully claim that someone is stealing "their" IP by "copying."



No. The difference is that in the Twitter/App.net instance, Twitter might have originated protected features that Apple is using without rightfully compensating Twitter, but in the other instance, Samsung is using obvious and/or long established technology/art that Apple also uses -- Apple did not originate any of the technology/designs.

Edited 2012-08-25 05:55 UTC