Apple granted incredibly important touchscreen patent.

There is no other way to say this but the fact that Apple has just been granted a patent relating to those touchscreens we use everyday on our smartphone, and a growing number of iPad wannabes, and you can be assured that this is not going to end well; for the consumer or Apple’s competitors.

As of today Apple has full rights over multitouch display and guestures.

Read that again folks.

Yup, Apple now controls the rights to the very way we interact with every smartphone and tablet on the market and as patent and IP blogger Florian Mueller puts it:

“This patent covers a kind of functionality without which it will be hard to build a competitive smartphone.

“Unless this patent becomes invalidated, it would allow Apple to stifle innovation and bully competitors.”

via TechRadar

There is no getting around this – this is a very bad patent for any one company to have; but given Apple’s propensity to litigate the hell out of any competition over anything they have a patent or trademark for one can imagine that this news is not being welcomed in too many places.