By way of the US Patent & Trademark Office, we've picked up some interesting info on a prototype Apple gadget that the company has just filed a patent for. The new patent is for what appears to be a "Mouse with optical sensing surface":

A configurable mouse with an extended sensing surface, which provides the mouse a customizable, programmable or adaptable way of generating inputs, the mouse including an arbitrarily shaped grippable member having a 3D shape, a position detection mechanism that detects the movement of the mouse along a surface, a multi-point touch detection mechanism that detects one or more objects that are contacting or in close proximity to a substantially large portion of the grippable member, and a controller for processing signals generated by the position detection mechanism and multi-point touch detection mechanism.

In layman's terms, this means we're looking at a possible multi-touch mouse in the near future. Not much else is said about this new design patent - we'll just have to wait it out until Apple decides to provide more details for this news. A most timely patent announcement, given that Microsoft recently released information on their very own touch table...