After filing a patent back in December 2007, Apple now has been awarded the patent on certain touchscreen behaviors.
The experts say that this patent can give a huge blow to the rival touchscreen manufacturers.
The patent was worded as follows,
[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display.
This patent gives ownership to Apple of the capacitive multitouch interface, this could create problems for their competitors as Apple now can produce a new round of law suits on the usage of multitouch interface used in smartphones or tablets like Motorola or Samsung and others that use operating system similar to iOS, like Android.
The patent seems to have enough scope to virtually cover any mobile device with interface that incorporate finger movements similar to Apple’s touchscreen devices, like tablets similar to apple’s iPad and media players like iPod touch.
Apple now can bully their competitors unless this patent gets invalidated.
Apple up to certain extent can restrict makers of touchscreen smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices from selling their products in U.S. or they can reach a settlement by licensing their technology for a good income source.
But some sources say that that the effects of the patent could be narrower because
this patent only refers to special kind of multitouch behavior which could be with respect to webpage content and frames within the webpage. Such touchscreen interactions can be engineered reasonably by Google, Microsoft and others.
We now will have to wait and watch, how apple reacts, will it be its monopoly or other smartphone makers find a way out of this…
References : PCMAG, this is my next
TechGom (http://www.techgom.com) 