ViewTouch Leadership and Our Role in ensuring Patent-Free Innovation, Patent-Free Software Development in Graphic Touchscreen Point of Sale A ViewTouch 'First' - Indicates that this is a specific and significant point of sale software feature originally developed at ViewTouch and introduced to the world without the attachment of a patent.  The company and its founder have always steadfastly refused to make use of patents.  ViewTouch 'First' software always means that ViewTouch can prove prior art on the software feature in the event that any person or company might attempt to patent a ViewTouch 'First' feature.  ViewTouch has offered and will continue to offer its substantial and historic catalog of prior art in point of sale software as a means of blocking or overturning any attempt to patent any software feature which it has pioneered. ViewTouch has, since 1977, regularly and frequently been the first to develop and to put into use, virtually all of the core functional components of point of sale systems, virtually all of which have subsequently been put to use worldwide.  This has always been done without the effect of patents.  The effect is that the world community of point of sale software developers have been free to copy and to use all of the innovations which ViewTouch has introduced into the point of sale software development community.  The effect of this freedom is that the world has been blanketed with point of sale software which is intuitive, low cost, royalty-free, easy to learn and easy to use, and which runs on 'off-the-shelf' hardware. The implications of our behavior extend into the future beyond our vision. Here's a list of ViewTouch Innovations and Firsts - the equivalent of inventions given free to the world, unencumbered by patents or royalties and subsequently widely copied throughout the world. PC used in a restaurant with a point of sale, or order entry, software to record transactions. PC printer used in a restaurant kitchen to provide information about the transaction to speed food preparation and increase accuracy in food preparation. PC used for colorgraphic representation of a restaurant's table layout and of a restaurant's menu. PC used for colorgraphic table layout to open a guest check. PC used for colorgraphic touchscreen order entry by restaurant staff PC used for colorgraphic touchscreen order entry by restaurant customers Colorgraphic terminal First commercial POS solution based on Free Software First commercial POS solution that uses all of the CPUs in the POS network as nodes in a single image supercomputing cluster. ViewTouch POS automatically balances the load between all of the of the CPUs in the cluster.  POS nodes can join or leave the running POS application without disruption. The workload is balanced between nodes according to their connection and CPU speeds.  A load-balancing algorithm transparently migrates processes to cluster CPUs, aiming to optimize utilization on a continuing basis. A host of touchscreen graphic effects, including the illusion of a light coming on inside or underneat a graphic when the graphic is selected on a touchscreen.