Did Microsoft just steal from another inventor?

This caught my attention this morning.
I being a tech freak always reading up on technology found this amazing.

In a TODAY exclusive, I had a chance to talk with Gates at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus about a revolutionary new device Microsoft now calls “Surface.” (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

“Pretty exciting, eh?” Gates said with a sly smile, when he put his hand down on what looked initially like a low, black coffee table: At the touch of his hand, the hard, plastic tabletop suddenly dissolved into what looked like tiny ripples of water. The ‘water’ responded to each of his fingers and the ripples rushed quickly away in every direction.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Try it.” When I placed my hand on the table at the same time, there were more ripples.

It took a moment to appreciate what was happening. Every hand motion Gates or I did was met with an immediate response from the table. There was no keyboard. There was no mouse. Just our gestures.

But it also reminded me of a video I saw about a year ago on You Tube.





Now I don't know who came up with this first but it would seem to me that Microsoft just stole the Idea from Jeff Han. I would want to think that Microsoft BOUGHT the idea from Jeff, but I did not see any reference to that in the MSNBC article.