ZDNet : Oracle suit overwhelms Ubuntu launch

"Like a President having to talk about anchor babies or mosques when he would rather talk about education and the economy, Mark Shuttleworth had his launch of Ubuntu 10.10 hijacked by the Oracle suit.
We had a good excuse, however. Ubuntu 10.10 will support multitouch, the technology at the heart of another lawsuit, the one Apple filed against HTC over its inclusion in Android. Software patents are not legal in Europe, where Ubuntu developer Canonical is based." ~ Dana Blankenhorn

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/oracle-suit-overwhelms-ubuntu-launch/7185?tag=content;selector-blogs

This could be an issue for Apple. Linux is Open-source, so the code for this particular function is going to be available to everyone. Even MS. Being that patents are illegal in Europe, it will be a little tougher to stop this.