The battle of words between Apple and Palm stepped up a gear yesterday after it emerged that the former had been granted a patent for using multi-touch technology in mobile devices.The spat became public when Apple COO and current standee chief executive Tim Cook warned the firm's competitors in its financial call that it would "not stand for having [Apple's] IP ripped off," adding that the firm would "use any weapons [it] has available."
The patent is question is US7479949, which grants Apple IP rights over devices that work by "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."
It had been thought that Cook had been referring specifically to Palm's Pre device, which was announced at this year's CES and features heavy implementation of multi-touch gestures. It is unclear what affect the granting of the patent will have upon Palm's development of the device – if any – but shares in the company fell ten per cent on the news.
Only yesterday, Palm released a statement saying that: "If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves," as reported by PC Retail.
Source: Fortune
Advertisement
Related Stories
- The Apple iPhone 5 rumour mill May 25th 2012 at 2:50PM
- Developer fined £50,000 over fake Angry Birds app May 25th 2012 at 12:28PM
- Yahoo unveils innovative search software for Apple May 24th 2012 at 2:27PM
- Apple tells Siri complainers to get a different phone May 18th 2012 at 12:13PM
- iPhone 5 'bigger screen' rumours gather pace May 17th 2012 at 2:13PM
- Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 released May 9th 2012 at 10:28PM
- iOS update fixes bugs and security flaws May 8th 2012 at 5:45AM
