this dispute, simply what it looks like. Some have objected to Apple, arguing that in the case of a touchscreen you cannot do anything else with it other than tap, pinch and swipe. How can one company patent those gestures as its own? But seen in another way, the reasons why these disputes are so hotly contested is because much of the technology used in mobiles and smartphones is shared between many of the leading manufacturers. Even Apple and Samsung share the same technology: much of the iPhone's own technology is made by, you guessed it, Samsung. article continues after advertisement As such, new technological advances that would have given one manufacturer a technical advantage over another have disappeared. Now, companies often license their innovations to other manufacturers. Those who pay to use particular patented innovations benefit from using a technology they no longer have to compete with; those who hold patents gain significant revenues from royalty fees. One simple example of this convergence is in voice-operated features, where a user can use their voice to control the phone to operate an application, dictate text or play a music track. Apple made much of its own voice-controlled feature, called Siri, at the launch of its last model, the iPhone 4S. By that time, Samsung's Galaxy S2 smartphone already had its own voice-controlled assistant, called S-Voice. Both manufacturers had licensed the same voice-recognition technology from a company called Nuance, which claims to be the world's biggest supplier of mobile handset and