From the same article:

"Pinch to zoom was first dreamt up decades ago by Myron Krueger and the University of Toronto developed and published papers on virtually equivalent technology almost 25 years prior to Apple producing its first multi-touch device (the iPhone), but Apple claims to have "invented" pinch-to-zoom as it appeared to be the first to do it in the context of a capacitive multi-touch screen."

Laughable. Perhaps Apple should also patent it 'in the context of' a black rectangle just to be extra sure.

I'm surprised Samsung's lawyers didn't go for the 'prior art' defence rather than the 'we did not copy Apple' defence, it seems there's plenty of prior art for all of Apple's 'inventions'.


There was an episode of 'The Goon Show' where one of the characters patented the word 'help' and then went around pushing everyone in the river. Real life has got nearly as silly.