Items tagged with USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently ruled that only flesh and blood humans can be granted patents, not artificial intelligence systems, thus ensuring that a Skynet scenario will play out (you didn't think I'd talk about AI without a Skynet reference, did you? Pshaw!). Now it faces a lawsuit over its decision. What set this in motion is the filing of two patent applications in July of last year by Stephen Thaler, a physicist and AI researcher, on behalf of an AI "creative engine" called DABUS. One of the patents relates to an adjustable food container and the other one has to do with an emergency flashlight. On both applications, Thaler listed DABUS as the inventor. While neither...
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Apple has a new patent application that has turned up at the USPTO that outlines a new system of haptic feedback that aims to make on-screen keyboards feel more like the real thing. The haptic tech described in the patent is called "Static Pattern Electrostatic Haptic Electrodes," and the goal is to to provide more tactile feedback like a computer keyboard. The patent relates to haptics that use multiple static pattern electrostatic haptic electrodes that are driven by different voltages, which allows a range of different haptic outputs. The static pattern electrostatic haptic electrode could include conductive material and voids inside the conductive material that allows the material to be the...
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A relatively recent trend in the smartphone space is to implement dual cameras on the backside of the handset, which enables some nifty depth-of-field effects through hardware (rather than software alone). Some phones even wield four rear cameras, like Huawei's Mate 20 Pro. Well, LG apparently has aspirations of boasting the most cameras on a single phone, with a patent filing pointing to four times as many rear camera sensors as the Mate 20 Pro. That's right, LG filed a patent that discusses a 16-camera arrangement, which would be the most ever on a smartphone if it comes to fruition. How can there possibly be room for that many camera sensors? The answer is in the insect-like design. They're...
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There are a couple of challenges facing smartphone designers at the moment. One is the notch at the top of the display, a concept introduced by Andy Rubin and his Essential Phone, and later popularized by Apple and its iPhone X. The other being able to embed a fingerprint sensor into the display itself. It looks like Samsung is working to tackle both challenges. Samsung is not a fan of the notch, a concept it's repeatedly mocked at the expense of Apple. That's why the company's Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9—it's two most recent flagship handsets—emerged with a full-length border across the top. However, Samsung is definitely interested in offering a truly bezel-free phone. Great news!...
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There is another wrinkle in the ongoing dispute between Apple and Qualcomm over the issue of patents used in the former's iPhone devices. Previously Apple claimed Qualcomm was "unfairly...charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do with," and more recently, the company accused the chipmaker of "selecting asserting its patents," only targeting Apple devices containing Intel chipsets. Now Apple is trying a different legal tactic—it is asking the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to invalidate four of Qualcomm's patents. It's an interesting legal maneuver, and one that would render moot the dispute of whether or not Apple is infringing on Qualcomm's patents...
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Imagine if your smartphone could identify cracks in its display and then heal itself, much like your own body does when its suffers a scrape or bruise. It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but perhaps it is not all that far fetched. Motorola has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for that very thing, and how it works is pretty interesting.Motorola notes in its patent application that smartphones are becoming more prevalent and that one of the drawbacks is how easily touchscreen displays can suffer damage. In many cases, a cracked or shattered display panel renders the entire phone inoperable, depending on the extent of the damage....
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It has been more than four years since the introduction of the HTC First, otherwise known as the Facebook Phone. It ultimately flopped and since then we have not heard from Facebook about taking another stab at the hardware market, but never say never. A patent application filed by Facebook with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) outlines a "modular electromechanical device" with a processor module and other interchangeable parts. "The modular electromechanical device includes a chassis and a plurality of functional modules that can be connected to the chassis," Facebook explains in its patent application. "Each module is associated with a different functionality. The functionality...
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Innovation is not dead in the smartphone space, folks. Perhaps no company knows that better than Samsung, which has been changing the way we think of smartphone displays over the past few generations of handsets. The curved edge design proved so popular that both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have adopted it in place of flat panels. Looking ahead, Samsung's next flagships might sport a wraparound display that covers both the front and back. Samsung is laying the groundwork for such a design. It was recently awarded a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a smartphone with full wraparound display that covers the front, back, and edges of the handset, and it detailed...
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Using Windows Hello, a feature Microsoft introduced with Windows 10, you can log into your system (assuming it's compatible) with your face or your fingerprint. It's a nifty alternative to hammering out a password, but it could also be more secure. In an effort to make it so, Microsoft was recently granted a patent related to iris recognition that could be used in future Windows devices, including smartphones, tablets, 2-in-1 systems, and so forth. Microsoft's patented technology also includes "liveness testing," which means the iris recognition process would be able to tell when there is a real eyeball staring into the camera versus a photograph of an eyeball or some other form of "spoof data."...
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We’re inching closer to the release of the Samsung Galaxy S8, which is destined to be one for the best-selling smartphones of 2017 if we go by the performance of its predecessors. Leading up the launch, Samsung has filed for a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seeking protection for the name, Galaxy S8. The trademark was officially applied for on January 12th, 2017. It is widely expected that Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S8 at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, and launch it shortly after. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been getting what we confidently feel is the best look yet at the upcoming Android flagship. Samsung has removed the dominant...
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Microsoft may have closed the door on its Lumia family of smartphones, but that doesn’t mean that the company has given up on phones altogether. Mobile represents a huge opportunity for a company like Microsoft — an opportunity that up until this point it has largely squandered. However, a new patent filing reveals that Microsoft could still have a few more tricks up its sleeve; in this case, a folding smartphone. If such a design were to make it to production, it would likely adopt Surface branding, joining the likes of the aerobatic Surface Pro, Surface Book and Surface Studio. Entitled “Mobile Computing Device Having A Flexible Hinge Structure”, the patent shows a smartphone with a side-mounted...
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One of our least favorite things to do is type out anything lengthy on a virtual keyboard, like those found on smartphones, tablets, and so forth. With that in mind, you'll have to excuse us for not being stoked about a recently discovered Apple patent for a "configurable force-sensitive input structure for electronic devices." The patent describes a laptop keyboard that replaces traditional physical keys with a special touchpad. If Apple were to implement something like this on, say, a future MacBook model, it would sort of be like typing on the iPad's virtual keyboard, though a little more advanced to provide some haptic feedback and other tricks. As described in the patent, Apple's fancy touch...
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In a Twitter post on Monday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) confirmed that Michelle K. Lee is the organization’s new director. Lee once worked as a legal counsel for Google and now goes down in history as the first woman to lead the USPTO, filling a seat that has technically been vacant since 2013 (Lee was already serving as acting director). According to Reuters, Lee won the position by an unrecorded voice vote in the full Senate a mere week after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved her nomination. As such, she now officially leads a federal agency with more than 12,000 employees, though she's pretty much been in charge for over a year since former IBM...
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A big shout out goes to Amazon for forever changing the way we think about photography. You see, Amazon was recently granted a patent that, in short, describes taking photos of subjects and/or or objects against a white background. Brilliant! Wait, what's that? Photographers far and wide have long known about this technique and used it extensively in the past? Well, that changes things -- give a huge shout out to Amazon's legal team for somehow wording the patent application in such a way that the USPTO thought this was a brand new idea worthy of patent No. 8,676,045. "A subject can be photographed and/or filmed on the elevated platform to achieve a desired effect of a substantially seamless...
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Apple has snagged a patent from the USPTO for what amounts to Siri, evolved. The “method and apparatus for building an intelligent automated assistant” appears to be a situation where your whole home or office is littered with sensors that track where you are and what you’re doing while always being at the ready for voice commands and gestural input. The patented system would include message-passing between sensors as well as features such as language, activity, and time recognition with task automation, culled in part from events “collected from a user's environment”. In other words, the system (let’s assume Apple will call it “Siri”) will try...
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Apple's just been granted a rather interesting patent for an "Electronic device display module," which is really a fancy way of describing a clever dual-sided laptop display with a solar panel on back. The front of the lid would house your typical LCD, though the backside would be constructed from electrochromic glass atop photovoltaic cells and touch sensors. In other words, it's a solar panel. The idea, of course, is that the lid would pull energy from the sun to charge the laptop and/or offer longer battery life. That's not all Apple has in mind, however. As described in the patent filing, the light energy gathered could be used to illuminate the logo. Apple also envisions the rear of the...
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Google is apparently getting really serious about gesture control. In addition to acquiring Flutter, a San Francisco-based startup that develops gesture recognition technology, the sultan of search filed a patent application for using gestures in vehicles to perform a number of functions, such as changing the volume of music, raising or lowering the cabin temperature, and more. The patent describes using different gestures in different parts of the vehicle. Waving your hand in front of the radio, for example, would allow you to control the audio system. The obvious upshot is that once you learn the gestures, you'd be able to change the channel, cycle through presets, and crank up the volume when...
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Google has just been granted a patent for which it applied last year regarding the ability to launch programs via specific unlocking patterns. Android users can already unlock their phones with a special pattern to jump into the operating system, but in a future version of Android, it looks as though users will be able to leap into, say, Angry Birds or Netflix by inputting a custom launch pattern tied to each app. "This document describes a computing system that provides for alternative unlocking patterns. In general, a computing system may recognize multiple unlocking patterns," Google explains in its patent application. "The unlocking patterns, when entered by a user, may perform different...
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Apple may be looking to improve upon the stylus as we know it today. The Cupertino company filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (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. "Conventional styluses are passive input devices in that they are incapable of actively transmitting stimulus signals or sensing a touch-induced capacitance change in a capacitive touch sensor panel...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...
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Wielding a smartphone makes you a walking target. That's especially true of iPhone owners, and unfortunately, smartphone mugging has become the new trend in criminal circles. In fact, it was previously reported that half of all robberies in San Francisco so far in 2012 have been cell phone related, many of which took place in public places, like busy transit lines. Smartphone security is something that needs to improve, and it's the driving force behind a new patent application Apple filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). The patent is for an acceleration-based theft detection system for portable electronic devices. In short, it relies on the accelerometer to determine...
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Google has been granted a patent on a system for real-world object identification scanning that will allow the company to survey and tag images and videos. The abstract for patent 8,254,699 (hereafter referred to as the '699 patent) covers An object recognition system performs a number of rounds of dimensionality reduction and consistency learning on visual content items such as videos and still images, resulting in a set of feature vectors that accurately predict the presence of a visual object represented by a given object name within an visual content item. The feature vectors are stored in association with the object name which they represent and with an indication of the number of rounds...
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We're big fans of full contact Football and, up through the 1980s, Basketball could be considered a contact sport until the NBA decided that that league's multimillion dollar Basketball stars shouldn't be so much as sneezed on when driving to the basket (seriously, is the NBA really more entertaining without these kind of hard fouls?). But full contact Bingo? That's a new one to us, though not to Electronic Arts, which apparently decided to file trademark applications for the term earlier this month. EA submitted two separate applications for Full Contact Bingo (serial numbers 85560267 and 85560275), one that applies to "Entertainment services, namely, providing an on-line computer game;...
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