Apple Files Patent For "Active Stylus" For Use With Capacitive Touchscreens 112
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."
First Touchscreen Laptops, Now This? (Score:5, Informative)
No (Score:5, Informative)
The Galaxy Note [wikipedia.org] series use Wacom technology [wikipedia.org] which, according to Wikipedia, was patented and is now expired. This is separate from the touchscreen, and provides stuff like pressure, tilt, and multi-device support (though I'm not sure if the latter is supported on Samsung devices). In short, it works really well, it's well-proven, and it's not patentable.
Re:Call me dumb... (Score:5, Informative)
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.