Pinch zoom on computers dates
from at least 1983.
It was later featured in both a 1993 concept film (scene cut) and a very popular 1996 book from a
Sun Microsystems UI developer:
It was demoed to Apple by at least
one touch developer by 2003.
Not to mention Jeff Han showing it off to the whole world in 2006:
Edit: oops, Renzatic and thekingofnerds beat me to Jeff while I was editing.
Okay then, I'll throw in the first publicly announced multi-touch phone, the Open Linux Moko developer's model. Its announcement came in Nov 2006, two months
before the iPhone was revealed by Steve Jobs:
And drawings of its planned pinch zoom. (The multi-touch unfortunately didn't come to production right away because of cost. But the idea was there. ):
In short, Apple never had a patent on pinch zoom, since they didn't invent it.
However, this particular patent tried to grab it anyway, by patenting the idea of discerning the use of one finger for scroll and two fingers for zoom. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds, simply combining two gestures. Small wonder that the USPTO found tons of prior art when they reviewed it.