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."

Re:Call me dumb...

[Reverand Dave]

Not so much want it old is new again as much as what was already invented has been slightly modified and swallowed by the patent glutton that is apple. Let the lawsuits begin!

cost not going up

[P-niiice]

"According to Apple, active styluses allow for more accurate input without driving up cost."

Yes, cost, but not price. That's going to be driven up quite nicely, thank you.

Re:Do those require power?

[FrankSchwab]

A company I used to work for lost a patent battle with Wacom about those self-powered pens. We ended up having to use powered pens to avoid their patent.

The whole field of digitizers - which grew up in the '70s and reached it's peak in the '80s and is used now in devices like the Smart board (http://smarttech.com/smartboard) - explored active stylii extensively. RF, Capacitive, and Resistive digitizers were all invented, explored, patented in those eras. It would be very surprising if this invention doesn't duplicate patents that issued thirty years ago.

Innovation, indeed.

Re:Call me dumb...

[Theaetetus]

I stand under correction here but I'm under the impression that the motor industry doesn't bother with patents much. I don't remember who told me that or where I heard it so I can't really substantiate it...

Not sure who you heard it from. It's false. [iptoday.com]

In fact, one of the biggest Supreme Court decisions on patents in recent years, KSR v. Teleflex, was about patents around gas pedal sensors.