Samsung-what a crappy company

[Nye Bevan]

26. US patent office rejects claims of Apple 'pinch to zoom' patent

Apple has lost another patent relevant to its perpetual twilight war with Samsung, again related to the ways users interact with touchscreen devices.

This time it was U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915, which describes the way a user can "pinch-to-zoom" and differentiates that function from scrolling.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared that the function was predicted by Patent No. 7,724,242, relating to gestures on touch screens and filed by W. Daniel Hillis and Bran Ferren in 2005.

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/apple-loses-another-patent-relevant-to-samsung-case-1169838

So either Apple was simply too slow off the mark or (perish the thought) the "pinch to zoom" was not their idea originally.