Taiwan's Elan sues Apple over touchscreen patents

Elan says it owns the rights to technology that allows Apple's products to detect the position of a finger on a touchscreen or touchpad.
(From Reuters)

The story "Taiwan's Elan sues Apple over touchscreen patents" published April 8, 2009 at 7:18 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[monkeyfun14]

Anyone else notice the massive amount of patent chasers these days?

[umbrae]

No more so that the past. The existing patent law has been in place for a while and abused equally over the years.

[mbenedict]

On first glance, Elan's patent appears to be valid:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5825352/description.html

Patent granted in 1998, specifically covers multi-touch on capacitive screens (among others.)

[Vegaman_Dan]

These screens have been in use in the public sector for years now, well before the iPhone was conceived. You could find these Elan panels in places like airline self-checkin ticket kiosks, ATM's, and other information terminals.

I have a 19" Elan touch screen monitor that I got used- it works as a touch screen with a serial port, but not something I actively use as such. It was built in 2000. Surprisingly, it works with multitouch in Win7 without any driver support needed.

Look back far enough and you'll find that for every 'new' tech feature, someone did it first without much fan fare originally. Those are the patents that are being sought after by legal / patent chasers. Buy up the company and then sue whomever is using the technology in a popular selling product today. There's no point in suing until after you know there is money in it.

[t3b3r8]

Don't you have to protect the patent for it to remain in effect?

[hardcashe]

American computer companies no longer design and manufacture computers. American computer makers have become the sales and marketing arms for the 'real' computer makers located in Taiwan. Elan already won a similar case. This is serious.