I think there must be more to this than is in the article. I think some of the Apple sample apps use and I've bought apps that use it. There's no reason for Apple to not want developers to use common gestures. They even made it easier with one of the recent SDKs by adding gesture recognizers so you can reuse gestures more easily.
I think it has more to do with pinch to "peek" at photo albums.
The idea that you can expend an icon to reveal a preview of the content is an innovative idea, which differentiate their products / apps.
It makes sense for them to protect it.
Nautilus in gnome used to support resizing icons to show more of the file content. I never found it that useful (and this feature seems to have been removed).
I don't think patents have to be defended like trademarks and even if they do Apple could definitely license the patents to people who pay for the developer program. I don't think this helps their case against HTC at all.
If this approach is indeed the case, then it is extreme and counter productive.
I hope that the case is actually what was stated above, and that apple releases this in their next API version, its a sensible approach.
then again, since there is only one way to load in apps, they can dictate whatever disabling of technology they want, with poorly explained reasons, and it stinks.
