Apple Receives a New Patent For 'Smart Fabric' (dwell.com) 52
MikeChino writes: Is Apple branching out into clever clothing? On January 1, 2019, the tech giant was awarded an original design patent for "Fabric." First filed for in September 2016, the "Fabric" patent shows a swatch of a ridged material in gray, dark gray, and white to represent contrasting appearances. Apple has filed for several patents in the last few years related to combining technology with fabric, but this is the first glimpse we've had at what that fabric might look like. The "smart" fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events, and/or respond to pressure and touch.
As Dwell notes, "Apple's other fabric-related patents have involved a jacket that sends tactile or audible signals to visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog -- and a force-sensing fabric with interwoven circuits that could be used in a glove to track a wearer's vital signs and control devices wirelessly."
As Dwell notes, "Apple's other fabric-related patents have involved a jacket that sends tactile or audible signals to visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog -- and a force-sensing fabric with interwoven circuits that could be used in a glove to track a wearer's vital signs and control devices wirelessly."
Events (Score:5, Insightful)
The "smart" fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events
You mean like when it's cold outside?
I already have a sensor for that.
Re: Happy Investigation Day to All (Score:1)
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How many Science Fiction stories have already been written on this subject?
It should be sufficient to declare as prior art. Precedence - see waterbed invented by Heinlein and placed in the Public Domain by him.
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How many Science Fiction stories have already been written on this subject?
It should be sufficient to declare as prior art.
Unless those stories included illustrations that are the same as the image in the patent, they aren't prior art.
This is a design patent. Design patents are more like trademarks than they are like utility patents (what we typically call just "patents"). Apple didn't receive a patent for "fabric with areas with contrasting appearance", they received a patent for the specific design shown. This design patent also doesn't cover anything about "smart" fabric, since design patents can't have any functional ele
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It doesn't need constant battery charges or need an app, either. Two more strikes against it.
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On the plus side: It has a neural uplink. That'd a better buzzword than 'Bluetooth', which is getting quite old now.
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Obviously, the sensors on the fabric would be ones that are different than the wearer's built in humanoid sensors; and like there are people who are blind, there are also people who cannot detect cold outside. For example: the inebriated. There are many useful sensors that could alert the wearer: radiation, carbon monoxide. Alert! dodge incoming high velocity objects.
Could you just imagine (Score:5, Interesting)
If Apple actually did anything with all these patents besides hinder innovation?
They can't hinder prior art (Score:2)
The things covered by this patent have been done for years by makers enthusiasts and has spun since then an entire cottage industry (with shops like Adafruits catering to the specific needs such as microcontroller small and light enough to be sewed in).
So:
- Apple hasn't managed to hinder the development of cloths with micro-controller sewed in.
- How the hell did Apple get a patent granted on this ? This has been publicly discussed in forums for ages. Unless they have filed a submarine patent a decade ago...
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The things covered by this patent have been done for years by makers enthusiasts...
Unless you can give examples of people making fabrics that look exactly like the illustration in the patent, your statement is incorrect. This is a design patent, not a utility patent.
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Now you can't make a shirt with rounded elbows.
Has Apple read Make! Magazine? (Score:2)
Since pretty much every issue includes prior art of makers creating fabric items with electronic sensors for exactly these purposes.
Have you read TFS, let alone TFA? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFS makes it clear that this is a design patent. TFA makes it even clearer, when it says the "Fabric" patent is a claim on an "ornamental design for a fabric,". This is not a patent on technology, it's a patent on a design. Nobody else can make smart fabric that looks like Apple's. So what? Change the weave, add a pattern, change the color even, and now the patent doesn't apply.
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Both the summary and the article imply this has something to do with smart fabric. However, you're right--follow the links all the way to the patent and this is nothing more than a particular configuration of fabric, with no mention of anything smart whatsoever. That's not a design patent, it's a fabric pattern patent. Why is the U.S.P.T.O. even patenting something that silly. That's a copyright concern, at most.
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Both the summary and the article imply this has something to do with smart fabric. However, you're right--follow the links all the way to the patent and this is nothing more than a particular configuration of fabric, with no mention of anything smart whatsoever. That's not a design patent, it's a fabric pattern patent. Why is the U.S.P.T.O. even patenting something that silly. That's a copyright concern, at most.
Because if you remake the fabric on your own, you wouldn't infringe the copyright.
Design patents are more like trade dress (minus the requirement of distinctiveness and adding requirements of novelty and nonobviousness and a time-limited term), which is why it's natural for the USPTrademarkO to cover them.
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Weaving into the underwear of an IT project manager would be way worse.
Is this newsworthy? (Score:1)
We hear about these Apple patents all the time, but they never seem to turn into any type of product.
I think anybody can pretty much patent anything.
A fashion company (Score:2)
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Cleverer than the people who'll be buying it, the "iPhone" and the "smart watch" crowd.
We all need more things that need constant battery charges just to make it through the day.
Fashion choices (Score:1)
It will be available in the choice of black turtleneck sweater.
Who says the patented fabric is smart? (Score:1)
In the first article, except for the title, there were no quotes of anyone saying that the fabric was smart. The article said that Apple had gotten a patent for "Fabric", and the article assumed that the fabric was smart. In the second article, there was no mention of "smart" at all.
Maybe the fabric isn't smart, in the sense of making decisions or communicating.
I wonder if the fabric uses the motions of you walking and moving your arms, to generate a small electric current that can charge your phone.
This sort of medical tech is a dead end (Score:2)
I used to work in this end of the medical devices field (non-invasive therapy equipment stuff) and it is not going to be the boon Apple seems to think it will be. The reason for this is that there is only so much you can do by non-invasively measuring temperature, pressure and electrical signals from a patient. For example, we have known how to do ECG for a really long time now. It is not expensive. If there was a general benefit to performing periodic ECGs of the population en-mass this could have easily b
A new world is opening up (Score:2)
"The 'smart' fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events, and/or respond to pressure and touch."
Subway pervert uses for such fabric would seem to be almost limitless. For less specialized porn applications, of course, one would remove "almost" from the previous sentence.
Daredevil outfits (Score:1)
visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog
Put on this suit and you no longer need to see or hear? Hopefully it works out better than the original Apple Maps.
Emperor Cook (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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That God. (Score:1)
Finally something that will put a new meaning to "Wardrobe Malfunction"