To all those saying "tactile feedback!" and stuff, it wouldn't be able to be a universal control scheme if it was set to a specific physical control scheme. While a touch screen isn't the best of all solutions, if this one controller is supposed to be for all three consoles and such then I wouldn't know how else it could be universal.
Keep in mind, this is just a patent, doesn't mean Sony will actually use it like the thousands of other unused patents I'm sure.