Multi-touch itself is nothing new – its been around for ages. I don’t know about patenting, but I always liked to mention the Fingerworks (now defunct) TouchStream LP which was in essence just a large touchpad, multi-touch of course, with keys drawn on it. It lets you type as a keyboard, point as a mouse or just do multi-finger gestures. And this wasn’t something in the lab (like the above link, which is cool and shows how the technology can be used but show no real world applications) – this was a device that you could actually go to the store to buy. It was rather expensive for a keybaord, at $400, and was probably the reason why the company closed down – if it was $200 I might have bought it.

The point is – it doesn’t matter who showed it earlier in the lab – it matters who brings it first to the eager hands of the consumers – and who gets the buck 🙂