Touchy: company claims patent violation on iPhone’s keyboard

How to tell when a product is a success? When it starts generating numerous lawsuits. On top of the class action battery suit comes a second legal action against Apple, this time on charges of patent violation. A company called SP Technologies is seeking “reasonable royalties” for the iPhone’s usage of a virtual touch-screen keyboard.

At the center of the controversy is a patent which describes “method and medium for computer readable keyboard display incapable of user termination.” Of course, if patents were ponies, we’d never walk again—or something like that. SP claims that Apple knew of the patent, and thus willfully and deliberately violated the intellectual property.

I’m pretty sure that any number of companies are going to be digging through their patent reserves to see if they can find the barest hint of something in the iPhone that could potentially violate patents. I doubt this is the last lawsuit we’ll see.