Read what I said, Diogenes. . . Apple invented the multitouch transparent screen. . . Non-of those others were at all transparent. They were opaque pads. There's a huge difference. Apple holds the patents on the multitouch transparent screens. Prior to the iPhone the only transparent touch screens were single X,Y coordinates that worked with styluses. Apple is NOT deliberately misleading anyone on this point. THEY hold the patents which were granted to them and have survived all challenges. SHEESH!
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I should have been in the Ipad inventing business back in the 1980s. Transparent touch screens strikes me as a freakin obvious idea. As a matter of fact, I seem to recall several variations of the idea of a touch screen from the 1980s and 1990s. There were Membranes, there were LED/Photodiode grids, Light Pens of course, and there were capacitive touch screens back then. The Membranes and the capacitive touch screens were certainly using Indium Tin Oxide to produce transparent conductors, that much I distinctly remember.
That Apple wins court cases is not very persuasive. My observations lately are that the modern Judiciary is about some of the dumbest/ignorant people in positions of power that we have ever seen. As a matter of fact, I am becoming persuaded that the courts are starting to serve very well the function of a negative barometer. If they are in favor of it, it's probably objectively wrong. Examples are too numerous to mention.
I wonder if Apple would have won had an engineer familiar with the industry been the judge instead of some Juris Doctorate that has no actual useful knowledge?
Apple probably developed the best algorithms for interfacing with LCD touchscreens, but once again, I think you are probably giving them far more credit than they actually deserve. As near as I can tell, they just added a third button to a mouse, and pronounced it a magnificent accomplishment.
Maybe I just need to look more into what it is they did, because so far, i'm just not suitably impressed.