Touch-Screen Patents Come Thick And Fast; Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson

Touch screens were ill-received before the iPhone gave them some cred, and now companies are looking for ways to get the touch-screen edge on their competitors through patents. Engadget has pointed to three patents:
Apple has filed a patent for pressure-sensitive touch screens, which can tell how hard someone is pressing the screen and therefore “force information may be used as another input dimension for purposes of providing command and control signals to an associated electronic device”.
Nokia has filed a patent for touch-screen input lids, which appears to be a flip-phone with a touch-screen on the bottom, and when closed the lid offers a tactile input to the touch-screen. For example, “a circular lid could give you easy access to volume, while a horizontal version could easily slide through music tracks or voicemail messages. The documentation points out that lids could contain a switch that would allow users to access a second set of user interface inputs “based on the position of the lid in relation to the touch sensitive area.” I’m not entirely sure what benefit this would have over simply having the commands available on the lid, but I suppose the screen could be reprogrammed easier so people could decide what they wanted the lid to affect.
Sony Ericsson has a patent for a reverse-slider with a touchscreen, with the secret sauce being a hole in the top section of the phone so the touch screen can be seen (and presumably touched) beneath it. What the screen below the hole does can change whether the slider is open or closed.

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