The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (UPTO) has invalidated an Apple patent co-invented by its late founder Steve Jobs. UPTO was re-examining Apple's touch-screen patent first filed in April 2008 which was granted nine months later.
This is the second action by the UPTO in less than two months taken against Apple's patent claims. In the first event in late October, a first Office action in a re-examination proceeding stated the preliminary conclusion that all 20 claims of Apple's rubber-banding (over scroll bounce) patent are invalid. "This week, the USPTO issued a first Office action rejecting all 20 claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 on a "touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics", which has been referred to by many people, including Apple's own lawyers, as "the Steve Jobs patent," Forbes reported. However, the decision over the touch-related technology, is not final.
The '949 patent' is a broad property that covers the general functionality of multi-touch screens like those used in the iPhone and iPad. The 949 patent's abstract says that "a computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command.," Apple Insider notes. The decision came just a month after Apple's '381 "rubber-banding" or "bounce-back" patent was also invalidated in a similar preliminary action.
