That is an interesting article but it's not the same thing. The ATOMIK keyboard, presented in the paper you reference, was designed to minimize the movement necessary to spell words in English. We optimized the layout to minimize the number of swipe patterns that create ambiguous input, i.e. potential swipe errors.
Also, Cliff Kushler and Randall Marsden are the inventors of Swype, not the authors of the paper you cited.
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shumin_Zhai/publication/...
They recently won a "lasting impact" award for this paper.