More Apple lawsuits coming to a courtroom near you?

Apple has been awarded a 20 part patent, (US patent number 7,479,949) on the iPhone's touchscreen functionality, or to give it its proper title:

"Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items."

The "inventors" are

"Jobs; Steven P. (Palo Alto, CA), Forstall; Scott (Mountain View, CA), Christie; Greg (San Jose, CA), Lemay; Stephen O. (San Francisco, CA), Herz; Scott (San Jose, CA), van Os; Marcel (San Francisco, CA), Ording; Bas (San Francisco, CA), Novick; Gregory (Santa Clara, CA), Westerman; Wayne C. (San Francisco, CA), Chaudhri; Imran (San Francisco, CA), Coffman; Patrick Lee (Menlo Park, CA), Kocienda; Kenneth (Sunnyvale, CA), Ganatra; Nitin K. (San Jose, CA), Anzures; Freddy Allen (San Francisco, CA), Wyld; Jeremy A. (San Jose, CA), Bush; Jeffrey (San Jose, CA), Matas; Michael (San Francisco, CA), Marcos; Paul D. (Los Altos, CA), Pisula; Charles J. (San Jose, CA), King; Virgil Scott (Mountain View, CA), Blumenberg; Chris (San Francisco, CA), Tolmasky; Francisco Ryan (Cupertino, CA), Williamson; Richard (Los Gatos, CA), Boule; Andre M. J. (Sunnyvale, CA), Lamiraux; Henri C. (San Carlos, CA)"

and the assignee company is Apple Inc. (Cupertino, CA). It covers such novel things as pinching and swiping your fingers on a touchscreen. You have to read it (ok I accept in depth reading might be the domain of legal geeks but it's worth scanning). On the 3-step patent test,

• Is it inventive? Yes.
  
• Useful? Definitely
• Not obvious to the average someone schooled in the art? That one I'm not so sure about.

It probably means we'll be seeing a few more iPhone based lawsuits on the horizon.