Samsung: Apple developed touch tech? Yeah, right (pictures)

Some of Apple's allegations, as it wages a patent court battle against Samsung, involve the iPhone's pinch-and-zoom technology. Other patents involve enlarging documents

Apple says this technology was new in 2007 when the iPhone debuted. Yesterday, Samsung showed the jury lots of examples of technology that it says predates Apple's.

Last year, Apple accused Samsung in a lawsuit of ripping off some of the technology behind the iPhone and iPad to launch numerous clone devices.

Samsung entered into evidence the above photos. The caption read: "In our lightbox application, users can not only move photographs around each with both of their hands, but can also use a simple two-point operation to simultaneously pan, zoom, and rotate the object in one natural and intuitive motion. A similar interface is offered in a geospatial browsing application, but along with additional gestures to handle navigation in the 3rd dimension."

Apple's '163 patent relates to double-tapping to enlarge and center portions of an electronic document.

Again, Samsung disputes that this function was new. This is what Samsung said about its technology.

"The LaunchTile and XNav Systems are executable on portable electronic devices with a touch screen display such as PDAs and cell phones. See LaunchTile Publication at 201. The method of the LaunchTile System includes displaying at least a portion of a structured electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the structured electronic document comprises a plurality of boxes of content.

"The LaunchTile and XNav Systems," the company continued, "detects a first gesture at a location on the displayed portion of the structured electronic document. LaunchTile uses gestures on a touch-sensitive screen for navigation, and works with both single and multi-tap input."

Samsung introduced a paper written in October 2005 by Mitsubishi Research Laboratories about "Direct-Touch Tabletops."

Apple didn't launch the iPhone until January 2007.

The Mitsubishi researchers noted in the report that the company installed a "DiamondTouch" table, which is similar to the original Microsoft "Surface" table in 2003. They also said the next year Wired magazine hosted a three-day conference on table technology called NextFest 2004.

Below are some of the photos they included to show the different touch technology at the conference. The technology included photo browsing and annotation software.

At GeoINT 2004, another event, the researchers tried out a multi-user map application.

"Up to four users can simultaneously open and use personalized zooming lenses on geospatial maps," the researchers wrote.

Samsung said the company's "LaunchTile and AppLens and LaunchTile Publication" describes a display touch type information input system for inputting operating information by detecting contact on a touch screen.

The company said a "multi-finger depinch gesture" on the touch screen display was capable of "enlarging a portion of the display in accordance with the de-pinch gesture."

This graphic showing the pinching action was included in Samsung's document.