U.S. Patent Office deals Apple an ace against Palm

The "don't rip off our IP" spat between Apple and Palm continues: Turns out the U.S. Patent Office has gone ahead and awarded Apple a patent covering its "multitouch" technology, including gestures such as "pinching" and "swiping." Will it be the ace up Apple's sleeve?

Apple's newly approved patent (first reported by World of Apple) could spell trouble for Palm and its new, red-hot phone—the Palm Pre—which (among other features) includes a multitouch-enabled touch display, complete with support for (you guessed it) gestures like pinching and swiping.

Yep, it's turning out to something of a feud between the two legendary tech companies, which began last week after acting Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors that while Cupertino "like[s] competition, as long as they don't rip off our IP (intellectual property), and if they do, we're going to go after anybody that does."

Cook didn't mention Palm by name, but given that analysts had just been asking about the Palm Pre and its touch interface, there's no mistaking who he was talking about.

Palm quickly fired back, telling All Things Digital's John Paczkowski that "if faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves."

Brave words indeed—yet just a few days earlier (the news only came to light Monday), the U.S. Patent Office gave its seal of approval to Apple's mammoth, 358-page patent application, which (as VentureBeat details) covers all the broad multitouch concepts, including "detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch display," "applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device," and finally, "processing the command."

Now, personally, I'm not so thrilled with the idea that Apple somehow "owns" the concept (not just the technology, mind you, but the concept) of a multitouch screen. Isn't that antithetical to, you know, the whole idea of this open marketplace that we all know and love?

Maybe so, but that's patent law for you (and as I've said before, I'm no patent lawyer), and the reality is that Apple may well have the law—right or wrong—on its side. Indeed, VentureBeat came up with an apt analogy for the whole Apple-Palm spat: A high-stakes game of poker. Palm called Apple's bluff, and now "Apple has just flipped over its cards, and it looks like a winner hand."

OK, so how does this all play out? As Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog notes, Apple could take its patent, go to civil court, and demand monetary damages along with an injunction. Another (more likely) scenario: The parties could settle, with Palm agreeing to pay Apple a fine and/or licensing fee, allowing the Pre to go on sale as scheduled.

However it shakes out, it looks like we've got a duel on our hands. Stay tuned.

Update: Check out Engadget's exhaustive analysis of the Apple-Palm patent debate, which notes that Apple could end up opening a can of worms if it takes Palm to court: "By suing Palm, Apple's putting its iPhone patents at risk, and that's an awful big ante. Same for Palm if it sues Apple and loses—it stands the risk of losing its patents, and we'd bet it's making a tidy sum licensing at least some of them out to other companies." A fascinating read.

Related:
Apple Awarded Multi-Touch Patent [World of Apple]