This may be slightly off-topic, I'm not sure, but I was just reading Apple's patent on pinch-to-zoom[1], and in claim 8 (which is the one the jury were instructed to rule on) it says:

"determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation"

Now, I don't know how patents works, but on my Galaxy Nexus, you can scroll with two fingers, so this part about determining whether its a scroll or "gesture" by the number of touch points seems to work differently to what is described in the patent.

Does that mean the implementation in the Galaxy Nexus is non-infringing? I mean, if patents are supposed to protect the implementation of an idea, and the implementation is actually different then surely its not infringing?

Now admittedly I only tested a Galaxy Nexus, which is stock Android, so maybe Samsung made their version in TouchWiz different. Or maybe the implementation changed in later versions of Android, I'm not sure...

[1]: http://www.google.com/patents/US7844915