Apple Awarded Multi-Touch Patent

The US Patent Office awarded Apple patent number 7,479,949 on January 20th, 2009, according to World of Apple. The patent was filed on April 11, 2008 and covers multi-touch and all associated gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotation.

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Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: 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. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.
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