After Motorola recently sued Apple over eighteen infringed-upon patents, Apple has delivered a serious counter-punch in the form of two lawsuits over six multi-touch patents which Motorola is infringing upon in nine different handsets.
Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq / XT, Backflip, Devour A555 / i1 and Charm 1 have been named in the list of devices which infringe Apple’s patents. Patently Apple has expertly summed it all up in the followed text:
The following information pertains to six granted patents listed in Apple’s two distinct lawsuits.
One: Apple, Inc patent titled: Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces: Patent Abstract: Apparatus and methods are disclosed 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.
Two: Apple, Inc patent titled: Multipoint Touchscreen: Patent Abstract: A touch panel having a transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time and at distinct locations in the plane of the touch panel and to produce distinct signals representative of the location of the touches on the plane of the touch panel for each of the multiple touches is disclosed.
Three: Taligent, Inc patent titled: Object-Oriented System Locator System: Patent Abstract: A method and system for adding system components (documents, tools, fonts, libraries, etc.) to a computer system without running an installation program. A location framework is employed to locate system components whose properties match those specified in search criteria. The framework receives notification from the system when system components whose properties match the search criteria are added to or removed from the system.
Four: Apple, Inc, patent titled: Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics: Apple’s invention generally relates to electronic devices with touch screen displays, and more particularly, to electronic devices that apply heuristics to detected user gestures on a touch screen display to determine commands.
Five: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing Control and Status Information in a Computer System: Apple’s invention generally relates to the field of computer systems; particularly, the present invention relates to displaying a status and control function bar or window to enable access of user selected indicia to a computer system user.
Six: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Support for Custom User-Interaction Elements in a Graphical, Event-Driven Computer System: Apple’s invention relates to graphical, event-driven computer systems, more particularly to custom interactive user-interaction elements in a computer system having a window-based graphical user interface.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t go through the entire quoted text since it is full of technological mumbo-jumbo that most of us can’t understand.
But the point is: yet another tech company has sued yet another tech company. This is after Apple sued HTC / Nokia, HTC counter-sued, then Microsoft sued Motorola, then Motorola sued Apple and now Apple has counter sued Motorola. To make sense of it all, check out the handy chart from Design Language below:
[via Patently Apple]
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