Good news for Apple, a patent application filed in 2004 has been granted by USPTO for their capacitive multitouch displays.

US Patent #7,663,607 describes a “transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches” by way of two sandwiched layers of conductive lines hooked up to an appropriate circuit, and also covers a specific type of multitouch display with a similar two-layer capacitive sensor made of glass.

Apple’s touchscreen is still the best touchscreen in the market and now looks like they’re going a level up.

Apple’s iPad tablet though attracted a lot of media but lacks notebooklike functionality which has disappointed a lot of people. The ExoPC slate has been revealed in a 8.9” form factor.

According to Engadget, the tablet PC sports a 8.9” multi-touch form factor and seems to offer a lot of the features that seem lacking in the 9.7″ iPad, though the latter was never really advertised as a tablet PC. The ExoPC will extend full browser support as well as flash through Windows 7.

The slate will have an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of DDR2 memory. It is cited to incorporate a 32GB SSD with SD expansion option. The user replaceable battery will deliver approximately four hours of battery life. Additionally, a non-multitouch prototype is currently available at $780 (approx. Rs.36,172).

The ExoPC slate with multitouch support will be there in market this March for $599 (approx. Rs.27,778).