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Apple Files Patent For "Active Stylus" For Use With Capacitive Touchscreens
MojoKid writes "Apple may be looking to improve upon the stylus as we know it today. The Cupertino company filed a patent application with the USPTO for what it calls an 'Active Stylus,' which can be used on capacitive touch sensor panels like those found on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. 'Unlike conventional styluses which work passively by blocking electric field lines between the drive and sense electrodes of a capacitive touch sensor panel, the styluses disclosed in the various embodiments of this disclosure can either act as a drive electrode to create an electric field between the drive electrode and the sense lines of a mutual capacitive touch sensor panel, or as a sense electrode for sensing capacitively coupled signals from one or more stimulated drive rows and columns of the touch sensor panel or both.' According to Apple, active styluses allow for more accurate input without driving up cost."
(6951a) Application also defines a new stylus feature, in which the apparatus for holding stylus will either randomly release the stylus, or actively eject the stylus, depending on how important it would be in selection of one of the next features of software (see 976 d,e,g,zz et al) that may come up. Application claims trademark on the definition of this feature, Auto-Loss (tm), which is filed under separate registration for protection.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I would say that St. Jobs must be rotating furiously in his grave by now, but I think the fact that this "innovation" is yet another example of Apple patenting stuff that already exists is probably enough to ease his restless spirit...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
this is for capacitive screens
you seem to not get the concept of patents. you can't patent an idea of a stylus but a specific implementation of it. in this case using a different type of stylus on a specific type of screen
yes we have had these before, but this one is different. just like we've had 100 years of the combustion engine but car makers still get patents every year because they find new ways to squeeze more efficiency out of them.
Did those things have an Apple logo on them?
Nope.
Therefore, they are NOT the same.
Were the light pens called "iPen" or "iGridPad"?
Nope.
Therefore, they are NOT the same.
Were those things stole....created with the divine direction of St. Steve Jobs?
Nope.
It's NOT the same!
It's new and different.
This actually reminds me of a decade old piece of military equipment- think of a ruggedized, 2" thick tablet with a 3" screen. The 'neat' thing with the stylus for this device is that it doesn't actually have to touch the screen to work. Note: It's completely insensitive to fingers and such, you have to use the stylus, but that might be some sort of sensitivity setting.
Plenty of prior art, I think.
It reminds me of a centuries old piece of equipment called a "Pencil". They were heavily used while I was in school before being replaced by newer, sleeker technology. It was pressure sensitive, and though it would work on a multidue of surfaces, it worked best only on a specially formulated screen that we called "paper". Different styluses could be used for different effects (colors, darkness/thickness of lines, etc), but most people used the plain old #2. By inverting the stylus, it had some limited "undo" capability, but there were some ghosting artifacts left behind and excessive undo use could lead to screen damage.