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Apple to patent wireless charging
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Apple are trying to patent Wireless Charging. The basic technology dates back to 1826 and induction is used in a multitude of electronic equipment. Wireless charging has been commonly used in toothbrushes for decades. So obviously Apple had a time machine
Apple are obviously going to try and sue any mobile phone company who incorporates this technology. Nokia are using it in the 920.
Innovative Apple will no doubt patent fire and wheels next :eek:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/03/apple_charging_patent/
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20120303980.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_energy_transfer
Apple are obviously going to try and sue any mobile phone company who incorporates this technology. Nokia are using it in the 920.
Innovative Apple will no doubt patent fire and wheels next :eek:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/03/apple_charging_patent/
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20120303980.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_energy_transfer
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Do they exist?
well there are already phones out on the market that have wireless charging ......
to be fair to apple they are patenting inductive charging over distances but this too has been around a while....
http://www.whathifi.com/News/JAPAN-Sony-develops-wireless-power-system-for-TVs/
There are many ways to do wireless charging, chances are Apple has patented one way.
Sounds pretty cool though, saves having to charge peripherals.
So the keyboard would receive power from the computer and resend a portion of this to the mouse using NFMR.
Nothing is wrong with the patent system IMHO in the case of devices like this.
Ohh and to the people above complaining, you clearly didn't read the patent application as its got nothing to do with inductive charging as seen in the Lumia 920 and Nexus 4.
The key is the new implementation. If you're just patenting something that someone else has done but didn't bother to register, that's wrong. If you've figured out a new, better way of doing something, then fair enough.
But the principle is still wireless charging which they didn't invent. I heard this exact thing talked about years ago in a tech programme. Also I'm sure a power company talked about this a while back as well.
So far, wireless power is essentially just a gimmick really when it comes to consumer devices. The direction Apple are going in with this patent is an invention that will deliver wireless power in a way that actually delivers tangible benefit to consumers, such as computers powering their own peripherals, and handling the charging of multiple devices.
If Apple patented the wheel people would be rightly pissed off. But if Apple pattented a wheel that was self supporting by magnets, had no spokes or hub and was powered by sunlight then that would be fine. However, no doubt parts of the internet would still go mad that Apple were patenting "the wheel"
There are replacement batteries and bottoms for some mice, including Apple's Mighty/Magic mice, no less, that provide inductive charging.
There are a number of phones that do it too, and of course things like electric toothbrushes as well.
If Apple patented a wheel made of rasberry jelly and ice cream that was 20% more fuel efficent and had 20% more grip in wet and icy conditions then some people would still be throwing a fit that Apple had patented the wheel.
Is that any better
That is using magnetic induction that requires the devices to be very close to each another, essentially 2 coils that store energy in the form of magnetic fields, when the field from one coil overlaps the second it generates a current in the second coil.
Apple is using something called Near Field Magnetic Resonance that itself isn't new (Witricity did this, as well as things like RFID tags but in a larger scale) but using it to daisy chain devices is a new implementation of it.
Again they may not get the patent as Witricity may already have one but this isn't how your toothbrush charges.
Because I've decided it will........:rolleyes:
As someone mentioned above, a patent is supposed to relate to a very particular implementation, not the basic concept of something. This is usually where problems with the system arise. If it's done correctly, only completely original implementations should be patentable.
I'm unsure how that in any way relates to this patent...
Apple have invented a new implementation of NFMR that allows you to daisy chain computer peripherals as long as they remain within 1m of each another. As far as I can see this hasn't previously been done but as i said if it has they wont be granted the patent.