Hopefully, I'm not falling for the bait.
I don't understand how you think this rates a patent.
Actually, I'm trying to guide you towards addressing the patent claims, rather than some vague gist of the idea... The claims are the only part of the patent that matters, not the title, not the abstract, etc. In order to call the claims obvious, you have to show that all of the elements in the claims existed in the prior art and could be reasonably combined by someone of skill in the art. Saying "mice exist and can do gestures" is a useful first step, but the claims recite a sensor that receives "a set of multiple 3D coordinates representing a gesture by a hand positioned within a field of view of a sensing device" and I'm sure you'll readily agree that a mouse doesn't do that.
Using well-known protocols and scripts already out there in the world I rigged my son's laptop to wake when he walks into the room.
Did you do that before 2011?
This constitutes a gesture in 3D space by the loosest criteria. If you read my post, I said that the patent on the sensing device and related firmware is fair, as that is what is determining the discrete actions in 3D space.
Probably not after the Microsoft Kinect, actually.
However, patenting a response to an input which has very broad and very frequently used precedent is dubious at best.
Except that you haven't proven it... You've said mice exist, sure, but I'm sure you'll also admit that a mouse doesn't actually read on this. You've said there are well-known protocols and scripts and that it's very frequently used... But just saying "prior art exists" doesn't mean anything unless you can actually name that prior art: which protocols? Which scripts?
As soon as the kinect came out dozens of people starting working on how to make the gesture capability do everything (even the impractical) via gesture. So the idea is neither obscure nor non-obvious.
But was it at the time? The Kinect was released in Nov. 2010. This patent is from early 2011. It may be obvious now, but you can only prove that by showing prior art that existed at the time.
The code implementation will be unique and thus protected via copyright,
Copyright isn't useful for protecting code. See, e.g. Dream Heights/Tiny Tower, Farmville/Farm Town, Candy Crush Saga/dozens of similar games, MS Office/Open Office, etc., etc. It's great when people want that specific thing, like the latest Avengers movie rather than a Bollywood superhero movie, or Harry Potter rather than "Larry Kotter, Boy Wizard", but it's useless when the software is fungible.
... and the gestures may be enforceable via trademark or copyright.
Not sure if serious. You can't get a trademark or copyright on a gesture.
This patent ranks right up there with "swipe-to-unlock" which again mimics a mouse movement in a different medium, making it stupidly obvious.
And yet, no one had anything like it before swipe-to-unlock came out, and lots of people immediately copied it. That indicates it wasn't stupidly obvious prior to Apple's disclosure of it.
IF they did something super spiffy like authenticating the user via Fitbit, audible pacing of footsteps, and a gesture then the patent still would not be on the concept, it would be on the aggregation of the data in such a manner that it constitutes and unique representation of the user. Definitely patentable, but probably more profitable to keep under lock and key copyrighted.
As noted above, if you write your own code to do that, you don't violate copyright. Copyright is useless for 90% of software. It only works in cases where there are proprietary formats of data, so you need to get the specific program rather than a competitor's, and lack of interoperability is a bad thing for consumers.
The only reason that Apple wants this patent is to "rent-seek" and inhibit competition on an obvious and ubiquitous feature while they can get away with it in court.
If you're rent seeking, you're not inhibiting competition - i.e. if you're receiving royalties for your patent, then someone must be practicing it.
No, Apple wants this patent to force competitors to come up with other ways of doing the same thing, because Apple believes theirs is more intuitive and will be preferred by consumers. I doubt they would ever grant a license to this patent.
Yes, and? No one is claiming Apple invented cameras or gestures. Remember, you have to focus on the claims of the patent, not just "it's a patent on gestures, so if I find any mention of a gesture, I've invalidated it."