According to the US Patent Office Apple was awarded patent number 7,479,949 on January 20, 2009. The patent which was filed on April 11, 2008 covers multi-touch and all associated gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotation.

The patent is titled:

Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics

The initial patent abstract is as follows:

A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall are just some of the names listed in the inventors list

Multi-touch Patent