Qualcomm bought unspecified intellectual property assets related to gesture recognition, as well as some engineering resources from Gesturetek. GestureTek retains some of its assets and will continue its business in gesture-enabled digital signs. The companies did not disclose financial details of the transaction.
Prior to the deal, GestureTek said it owned eight broad patents on camera- and video-tracking that issued starting in 1996 and said it had applied for 37 others. The company first got its software into handsets in 2007 in a deal with Japan's DoCoMo. It also is used in handsets from HTC, Motorola, Nokia, NEC, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG. Licensees for other products include Panasonic, Microsoft (Xbox 360), Sanyo, Sony, IBM, and Intel. Last year the company demonstrated its software running on Android and Symbian environments. It also supports Linux, Nucleus, Windows Mobile and Qualcomm's Brew for feature phones.
