I was able to reproduce this in both Maple paint and Note Everything by brushing the optical pad. Exact same lines going up to the left hand side in both applications. I covered the pad with an heavy piece of plastic, and no problem.

In a way, it makes sense that they would go there. Pressing on the touch screen feeds x and y coordinates to the system depending on where you touch. The optical pad has no reference points, only skips to the next "hotspot" (icon, menu, text position). When you "wake up" the pad by brushing your finger over it, and the cursor, pointer, etc is not already on a hotspot, where does it go? First hotspot in the upper left corner (ie the pencil icon in maple paint, or the title input box in a note everything paintnote).

The other thing this reminds me of is an frequent occurance waaaaay back in my Palm pilot days. Every so often some crud (technical term) would get stuck under the bezel and cause the same sort of line (position was more random). The solution was to fold a thin piece of paper, slide it under the bezel and fish the crud out.