You can't touch this: Apple secures multi-touch patent

If you’ve been following proceedings for the past few days you’ll know that Palm has been thumbing its nose at Apple and its multi-touch patent claims.

In short, Palm reckons its quite safe launching its Pre – replete with iPhone-aping multi-touch gestures – and has therefore essentially been sticking two fingers up at Apple. For its part, Apple has made it clear that it has no intention of letting rivals muscle in on its multi-touch turf. More after the cut.

Though not singling out Palm, Apple’s acting CEO Tim Cook last week let it be known that his company would not stand by and watch while other firms introduced multi-touch products that infringed its then pending patent. Cook said:

...we’re ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP [intellectual property] ripped off and we’ll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I can be more clear than that.

No, that seems pretty clear, Mr Cook. And that statement was made before the US patent office issued you patent number 7479949, wasn’t it? So it should be interesting to see what Palm does next.

[ Apple patent application]