'Gesture' patents on touch devices

I was just in a thread about copyrighting of faces and it reminded me of something I've been wondering about for a little while. I've been working on mobile apps for a while now and often menus and gestures are designed to keep along the same paths as the device the user is using (Same goes for menus on standalone, games aimed at windows often emulate the windows UI layout, because the user is already familiar with it (Eve online is a great example of this)).

What I'm wondering is. Do Apple and Google (iOS and Android) have any patents or copyrights on gestures or menu transitions? I've tried looking around and Apple have a bucket-S***-crap-load of patents and some even mention gestures and UI transitions. But they are written in that arcane-bullshit language of all legal documents everywhere ("Everything herein, and thereafter shall be the aforementioned fairy of the constituents herein referred to as (and forthwith) The Fairy God Mother" ... WHAT?!?!) , so I can't make any sense of them.

I doubt there's many people here clued up on laws and such, but I thought I might ask (Also, I have over a hundred posts and have never started a thread I think! It's about time!).