Patent Forms reveal Touch and Multi-Touch research and development

At least a dozen patent applications from Apple came into the US Patent and Copyright Office yesterday morning; Most of them involved multi-touch research going on at Apple by Wayne Westerman, former co-founder of Fingerworks.

The patents include avoiding unintentional contact and advancing the hardware technology. Also, 'Gesture Learning' is a way to teach advanced gestures to users. This would teach gestures that appeared to be to unnatural for the user to catch on right away. Apple is researching visual feedback in the form of animated motion trails, hand motions, and interactive games to teach these gestures to users.

A very cool other possibility is using the regular fingertip as a primary 'click' (just like a left click on a mouse) and the fingernail as a secondary 'click' (just like a right click on a mouse). That would enable copy/paste and text selection which would be good for email or instant messaging. Too bad it will still be a while until Apple takes advantage of these features, as the current iPhone has no copy and paste.

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