Steve Jobs Patent On iPhone Declared Invalid

[wraggster]

Apple's most famous multitouch software patents are increasingly coming under invalidation pressure. First the rubber-banding patent (http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/10/23/1551229/us-patent-office-invalidates-apples-rubber-banding-patent) and now a patent that Apple's own lawyers planned to introduce to a Chicago jury (http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/06/judge-posner-forbids-apple-to-turn-this.html) as 'the Jobs patent.' U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 covers a method for distinguishing vertical and horizontal gestures from diagonal movements (http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/12/us-patent-office-declares-steve-jobs.html) based on an initial angle of movement. For example, everything up to a slant of 27 degrees would be considered vertical or horizontal, and everything else diagonal. The patent office now seems to think that Apple didn't invent the concept of 'heuristics' after all."

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/12/07/2346246/steve-jobs-patent-on-iphone-declared-invalid