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Comment by AlisdairO | Hacker News Reader

Apple's trademark application got denied because the term multi-touch is generic ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/66447722/Multi-Touch-Trademark )

Additionally, there's a load of research referencing the term 'multi-touch' a long time prior to the iPhone - a quick google scholar search, for example: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=multi-touch&hl=en&...

Apple did not invent capacitive multi-touch capable screens, and they did not invent the common UI metaphors used in multi-touch screens. Apple's software did make for a very precise capacitive touch screens, but their improvements were incremental.

This is not to downplay their achievement in the iPhone - I think it was a marvellous device, and the first truly usable smartphone - I just don't think it's fair to ignore the contributions of those who came before, and the long history of research into multi-touch screens.

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You shifted the goalposts. The trademark is listed on the USPTO.gov site, as being live and owned by Apple. They don't provide the ability to link to it directly, which is why I quoted it with enough info for you to do your own search.

I'm not ignoring the contributions that came before, I'm refuting the claim that Apple didn't invent it, specifically when people cite other methodologies.

Here are two papers which thoroughly describe capacitive multitouch interfaces years before Apple released products based on the technology:

A Multi-touch Three Dimensional Touch-Sensitive Tablet: http://www.billbuxton.com/leebuxtonsmith.pdf

Applying Electric Field Sensing to Human-Computer Interfaces: http://www.media.mit.edu/~jrs/jrs_EFS_HCI.pdf

If you go through the references you'll find dozens of other papers on the subject. Academics in the HCI field have been working toward this kind of technology since the late 70s.

Fingerworks/Apple did not invent the technology, can we put this to rest?

Neither of those papers describe capacitive multitouch interfaces, nor do they describe the technology Apple invented for multi-touch. The first describes a multi-point interface that does not do what Apple does, and the second doesn't even describe a touch interface at all.

This would be obvious if you'd taken a few minutes to read their abstracts, and were aware of the nature of Apple's multi-touch invention.

The issue has been laid to rest, but I can't stop you and others from continuing to link to increasingly irrelevant claims.

The real question, to my mind, is why are you so desperate to believe that Apple didn't invent anything, such that you'd disparage yourself by being as dishonest as you have been here?

The first paper describes a multitouch capacitive touch tablet in 1985. It is absolutely identical to the core technology of an iPad. Apple may have improved things but the core ideas are layed out right here two decades before the iPad.

> A prototype touch-sensitive tablet Is presented. The tablet's main innovation is that It Is capable of sensing mare than one point of contact at a time. In addition to being able to provide position coor- dinates, the tablet also gives a measure of degree of contact, independently for each point of contact. In order to enable mutU- touch sensing [...]

What's more the author of the paper, Bill Buxton, is widely cited in the literature as inventing the capactive multitouch display. Wayne Westerman, one of the cofounders of Fingerworks dissertation has dozens of references to his work. But even in his own words:

> What I am pointing out, however, is that "new" technologies - like multi-touch - do not grow out of a vacuum. While marketing tends to like the "great invention" story, real innovation rarely works that way. In short, the evolution of multi-touch is a text-book example of what I call "the long-nose of innovation."

It's all clear as day if you do your research, unless of course you're already made up your mind... then maybe it's not so clear.

Here's a link to the trademark claim in question: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...

Note the status:

> Current Status: An appeal of a final refusal to register the mark is pending before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. For further information, see TTABVUE on the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board web page.

Their trademark claim is basically dead in the water. Multi-touch is a generic term. I leave it to the other reply in this thread to deal with the debate about the novel work Apple/Fingerworks did.

edit: You probably owe other posters in this thread an apology for accusations of lying, based on your own misconception of what multi-touch actually means.

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