US Patent 7978185 Creating virtual replicas of physical objects

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for creating virtual replicas of physical objects. A computer system detects that a portion of a physical object has come into the physical vicinity of a portion of a multi-touch input display surface. The computer system accesses object identifying data corresponding to the object. The computer system uses the object identifying data to access image data for the object from a repository of stored image data. The computer system uses the at least the accessed image data to generate a virtual replica of the object. The computer system presents the virtual replica of the object at a location on the multi-touch input display surface where the portion of the object was detected.