Ever since Apple’s acting CEO Tim Cook made some comments about Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) protecting its intellectual property from companies trying to rip them off, it has gotten an instant response from Palm (NSDQ: PALM) that it was also ready to throw down in a patent wrestling match. Meanwhile, the media has been digging into what it sees as an increasingly possible legal battle (VNUnet has details of the comments). The story has been given new life by the recently-awarded-to-Apple patent number 7,479,949, which covers a “touchscreen device, method and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics” reports El Reg.

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The patent seems to involve the handset trying to guess what someone means with a tap or gesture by comparing it to similar actions in a database. Apple has applied for a bunch of other patents notes El Reg (none of them quoted seem particularly innovative to me). One patent is described as covering “the idea of having multiple gestures triggering the same action - so a swipe to the right might show the next album cover, but tapping on the perspective-viewed cover would also work, as would tapping on a “next” button”, which is a good design, but hardly an innovative idea.

Likewise, this comment annoys me: “The Fingerworks keyboard has the same function, only using five fingers, and Apple’s patent clearly differentiates from such prior art by specifying a “portable electronic device” and the use of icons”—simply moving something to a mobile device does not make it innovative. Anyway, any lawsuit is a fair while in the future—Apple has more patents to be awarded and Palm has to actually launch the Pre. I hope it remains just a bunch of talk and both companies get on with the process of building better devices rather than desperately trying to own a minor part of the graphical user interface.

VentureBeat suggests that with Apple’s huge stockpile of cash it could simply buy Palm…