Microsoft Surface – Multi-touch Technology and Patents

Multi-touch technology has been there quite for some time and some patents are filed on different ideas. Apple has filed a patent for Multi touch gesture dictionary too. FINGERWORKS, INC. had filed for many patents and had few products like iGesture, TouchStream etc. The company seems to have ceased its business for the reasons not known. Microsoft too has more than 5000 patents to its credit for various ideas. They are bound to make many more based in Microsoft Surface.

It is reported that theUnited States Patent Application by Microsoft bearing number 20070192550 citing “Adaptive Granularity Refinement In Detecting Potential Data Races” is said to be the patent for Microsoft Surface. But the same is not clear. Microsoft also files a patent application for ‘A display system and method for use in controlling movement of a virtual image version of a physical object is described’ against 20070188444, which probably would be useful for Microsoft Surface.

Apple’s United States Patent Application number 20060097991 dated May 11, 2006 for “Multipoint touchscreen” is for ‘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’. Another application 20060026521 from Apple, ‘Gestures for touch sensitive input devices’ is for ‘Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are disclosed. The invention in one respect includes reading data from a multipoint sensing device such as a multipoint touch screen where the data pertains to touch input with respect to the multipoint sensing device, and identifying at least one multipoint gesture based on the data from the multipoint sensing device.’

There is bound to be some excitement related to patents and Microsoft Surface.

The following are some applications for US patents on multi touch and similar technologies.

Document Document Title Inventor Filing Date US20070139395 Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces   WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 2/22/2007 US20070177803 Mult-Touch Gesture Dictionary  ELIAS, JOHN GREER (Townsend, DE, US), Westerman, Wayne Carl (San Francisco, CA, US), Haggerty, Myra Mary (San Mateo, CA, US) 1/3/2007 US20070177804 Mult-Touch Gesture Dictionary  ELIAS, JOHN GREER (Townsend, DE, US), Westerman, Wayne Carl (San Francisco, CA, US), Haggerty, Myra Mary (San Mateo, CA, US) 1/3/2007 US20070152984 Portable electronic device with multi-touch input   Ording, Bas (San Francisco, CA, US), Forstall, Scott (Mountain View, CA, US), Christie, Greg (San Jose, CA, US), Lemay, Stephen O. (San Francisco, CA, US), Chaudhri, Irman (San Francisco, CA, US) 12/29/2006 US20070070050 Multi-Touch Contact Motion Extraction Westerman, Wayne (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 11/14/2006 US20070070051 Multi-Touch Contact Motion Extraction  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 11/14/2006 US20070070052 Multi-Touch Contact Motion extraction  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 11/14/2006 US20070078919 Multi-Touch Hand position offset computation  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 11/14/2006 US20070081726 Multi-Touch Contact Tracking Algorithm  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 11/14/2006 US20070152980 Touch Screen Keyboards for Portable Electronic Devices   Kocienda, Kenneth (Sunnyvale, CA, US), Herz, Scott (Santa Clara, CA, US), Williamson, Richard (Los Gatos, CA, US), Novick, Gregory (Santa Clara, CA, US), King, Virgil Scott (Mountain View, CA, US), Blumenberg, Chris (San Francisco, CA, US), Van Os, Marcel (San Francisco, CA, US), Ording, Bas (San Francisco, CA, US), Forstall, Scott (Mountain View, CA, US), Chaudhri, Imran (San Francisco, CA, US), Christie, Greg (San Jose, CA, US), Lemay, Stephen O. (San Francisco, CA, US) 7/24/2006 US20070157089 Portable Electronic Device with Interface Reconfiguration Mode Portable Electronic Device with Interface Reconfiguration ModeBottom of Form Van Os, Marcel (San Francisco, CA, US), Anzures, Freddy Allen (San Francisco, CA, US), Forstall, Scott (Mountain View, CA, US), Christie, Greg (San Jose, CA, US), Ording, Bas (San Francisco, CA, US), Chaudhri, Imran (San Francisco, CA, US), Lemay, Stephen O. (San Francisco, CA, US) 7/24/2006 US20060238518 Touch Screens WESTERMAN, WAYNE (SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US), ELIAS, JOHN G. (TOWNSEND, DE, US) 7/3/2006 US20060238519 User Interface Gestures  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US), ELIAS, JOHN G. (TOWNSEND, DE, US) 7/3/2006 US20060238520 User Interface Gestures  WESTERMAN, WAYNE (SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US), ELIAS, JOHN G. (TOWNSEND, DE, US) 7/3/2006 US20060238521 Identifying Contacts on a Touch Surface   WESTERMAN, WAYNE (SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US),ELIAS, JOHN G. (TOWNSEND, DE, US) 7/3/2006 US20060238522 Identifying Contacts on a Touch Surface   WESTERMAN, WAYNE (SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US), ELIAS, JOHN G. (TOWNSEND, DE, US) 7/3/2006 US20060238517 Electronic Device Having Display and Surrounding Touch Sensitive Bezel for User Interface and Control   King, Nick (San Jose, CA, US), Kerr, Duncan (San Francisco, CA, US), Herbst, Paul (Morgan Hill, CA, US), Hotelling, Steven P. ,San Jose, CA, US) 6/23/2006 US20060197753 Multi-functional hand-held device   Hotelling, Steven P. (San Jose, CA, US) 3/3/2006 US20060125803 System and method for packing multi touch gestures onto a hand   Westerman, Wayne (US), Elias, John G. (US) 2/10/2006 US20070146336 Soft key interaction indicator   Ording, Bas (San Francisco, CA, US), Chaudhri, Imran (San Francisco, CA, US), Van Os, Marcel (San Francisco, CA, US), Lemay, Stephen O. (San Francisco, CA, US), Anzures, Freddy Allen (San Francisco, CA, US), Christie, Greg (San Jose, CA, US), Forstall, Scott (Mountain View, CA, US) 12/23/2005 US20060086896 Multi-touch sensing light emitting diode display and method for using the same   Han, Jefferson Y. (Holliswood, NY, US) 10/24/2005 US20060032680 Method of increasing the spatial resolution of touch sensitive devices   Elias, John Greer, (Townsend, DE), Westerman, Wayne Carl (San Francisco, CA, US), Orr, James Edmund IV 8/15/2005 US20060068870 Electronic card table and method with host console   Crawford, James T. III (Charlotte, NC, US), White, Gehrig Henderson (Charlotte, NC, US), Lester, Jonathan Talmadge (Gastonia, NC, US) 7/1/2005 US20060052885 Keyboard with input-sensitive display device   Kong, Yuan (Kirkland, WA, US) 6/30/2005 US20060197750 Hand held electronic device with multiple touch sensing devices   Kerr, Duncan R. (San Francisco, CA, US), Hotelling, Steve (Mountain View, CA, US), Huppi, Brian Q. (Mountain View, CA, US) 4/26/2005 US20060068864 Electronic player interaction area with player customer interaction features   White, Gehrig Henderson (Charlotte, NC, US), Crawford, James T. III (Charlotte, NC, US) 3/7/2005 US20060022956 Touch-sensitive electronic apparatus for media applications, and methods therefor   Lengeling, Gerhard , (Los Altos, CA), Rubinstein, Jonathan Jake (San Francisco, CA, US) 12/17/2004 US20060058088 System and method for providing an electronic poker game   Crawford, James T. III (Charlotte, NC, US), White, Gehrig Henderson (Charlotte, NC, US) 11/19/2004 US20050162402 Methods of interacting with a computer using a finger(s) touch sensing input device with visual feedback   Watanachote, Susornpol Joe (Bangkok, TH) 1/27/2004 US7030861 System and method for packing multi-touch gestures onto a hand   WESTERMAN, WAYNE (San Francisco, CA, US), Elias, John G. (Townsend, DE, US) 9/28/2002 US20030020733 Computer display having selective area magnification   Yin, Memphis Zhihong (Corvallis, OR, US) 7/24/2001 US20020185981 Multi-User Touch Surface  Dietz, Paul H. (Hopkinton, MA, US), Leigh, Darren L. (Belmont, MA, US) 5/24/2001 US20020140680 Handheld electronic device with touch pad   Lu, Jin (Hudson, NY, US) 3/30/2001

The above may not be a threat to Microsoft Surface, but reveal that many inventors are working on multi touch, multi user technologies all the time.