My previous, and rather combative, post has seemingly (and probably rightfully) disappeared into the aether of trollbait. Here's something rather more reasoned.
It turns out that Hobday has, indeed, patented certain parts of the Maltron keyboard. And quite rightfully so. For example :
https://www.google.com/patents/WO2003046938A1 which covers the flexible circuit board stuff. This patent references one issued by Kinesis (
https://www.google.com/patents/US5610602).
More interestingly, the Kinesis patent above, in turn, quite rightfully references Lilian Malt's 1977 patent,
https://www.google.com/patents/US4244659This, in its turn, references Einbinder's 1973 patents
https://www.google.com/patents/US3929216 and
https://www.google.com/patents/US3945482 as well as Ross' 1971 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US3805939 (which covers "anatomic" key layouts) and McNamara's 1917 (yes, 1917) patent, also referenced by Kinesis,
https://www.google.com/patents/US1395049 which has separate thumb clusters.
Kinesis also reference Tyberg's 1926 patent (split board with thumb cluster, again), Felton's 1974 patent that covers split keyboards, and so on.
Other patents of interest might be Hall's 1923 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US1468566, Solon's 1943 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US2369807, which both cover non-planar keyboards, Heidner's 1914 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US1138474, Dodds' 1969 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US2369807 on split keyboards, and so on.
Or maybe Torrey's 1897 patent
https://www.google.com/patents/US606903, which is a split symmetrical board with thumb keys. Quentell, also 1897 covers a symmetrical board with thumb keys. Vollberg's 1930 german patent on a split, curved board. And so on. It would be easy to spend hours, if not days, tracing the lineage of both the Maltron and Kinesis boards through their *patented* previous iterations, and that wouldn't even touch on the stuff that either wasn't patented or considered patentable.
What I'm trying to get at is that the Maltron keyboard didn't spring into existence out of nothing. It builds on previous work over the better part of a century. And the Kinesis board builds on that (and acknowledges the fact by referencing Malt's original patent).
It's not theft of Maltron's precious eye-pee. It's incremental enhancement, and it works both ways (see Hobday's referencing of a Kinesis patent). Incremental enhancement is the way science and technology advance.