This seems like an important step towards the fabled "Computronium"(1) allowing our environments to compute. Heavy handed regulators should pay very close attention to the consequences of monopolies granted around these ideas. One misstep allowing the patenting of "controlling stuff with touch" instead of allowing only the much more restrictive specific methods of detecting that touch could prune an entire branch off our technological development tree for decades to come.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium