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Tsera is suing 23 companies including both Apple and Microsoft over a patent regarding interfacing with a touchpad.  In plain English, if a touchpad tries to make sense of your gesture-based input, Tsera may have the patent on that.  The patent looks like it is broad enough to cover the scroll wheel of an iPod and the Zune’s touchpad. 

Tsera is suing Apple, Microsoft, Bang & Olufson, Philips, LG, and more.  Will the collective might of their lawyers be able to get Tsera to go away?  I would expect some kind of out of court settlement to put this matter to bed. 

Back in 2006, Apple and Creative settled a patent infringement case where Apple paid $100 million to license Creative’s patented user interface.  Will Tsera be so lucky?

If you are curious, here is some of the patent language for your inspection:

[If a user inputs data] by tracing patterns with [a] finger on a surface of the touchpad. . . . A microcontroller within the device matches the pattern traced by the user against a plurality of preset patterns, each of which corresponds to a predefined function or command of the device.  If the pattern traced by the user is a reasonably close match to any of the preset patterns, the device performs the predefined function corresponding to the matched pattern.”

Read: [InformationWeek]