Just a few days after Apple officially secured a patent for its touchscreen technology used in iPhone and iPod touch, Apple"s interim CEO Tim Cook warned its iPhone competitors that the company will use any and all weapons to keep its intellectual property from getting ripped off. Though the comment was not aimed specifically at anyone, many experts concluded that it was directed at Palm and its new upcoming Palm Pre.
Jim Goldman, CNBC, reports that wireless analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez of Global Crown Capital has given a
detailed note on how financially dangerous and difficult will it be for Apple if it decides to go after Palm.
Perez-Fernandez"s report says that if Apple goes after Palm, it could also wage patent war against HTC, Garmin and Research in Motion since all of them use some form of the "multi-touch" interface, specifically the "pinching" motion to control images on the screen. He also added that US Patent Office may have erred in its awarding of the Apple patent which may be in violation of a patent already awarded to the University of Delaware. He also argues that the Bell Labs, and other universities, companies and research labs work with many of the same gestures that Apple has patented.
Perez-Fernandez points out that Apple also tries to pre-empt Microsoft"s use of multi-touch in Windows 7 and to trademark multi-touch, which is ridiculous since the term has been used openly for a long time. Apple has no legal ground to stand on, and if were to move forward with any litigation based on this, it could prove more threatening to itself.