Welcome to Patent Bolt, a dedicated Intellectual Property news site that specializes in dissecting patent applications from leading industry players such as Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others. If you love to explore future inventions, you'll love our site.
A pure tablet computer provides great efficiency in note-taking environments or in a highly mobile environment where it is difficult to set up or use a keyboard and mouse to input data into the computer. Unfortunately, this advantage is also a great disadvantage because, many users may still find that there is a great need and efficiency in using a keyboard for data entry. Even for existing convertible tablets which have keyboards, users may find they are thick and heavy. A new patent application published this month illustrates that Lenovo wants to enter the Ultrabook detachable notebook market in the not-too-distant future, beyond their Ultrabook convertible that debuts this June with Intel's new from the ground up Haswell processor.
Multiple screen display computer systems are becoming more prevalent due to cheaper prices of a secondary display. Another factor is that a multiple screen computer system offers a computer user more area upon which information and work may be displayed. With a greater display area, the computer user may spend less time cycling through overlapping windows, frequently referred to as "thrashing," to find information that may lie hidden under the overlapping windows. The US Patent Office has published a new Lenovo patent that will allow a user to run their future Windows and/or Android tablets as a second display. The camera on both devices will use face recognition to set up the device so that the devices will be visually coordinated properly as shown in our cover graphic.
Lenovo, the world's second largest supplier of personal computers understands all-too-well that they need to jump into the smartphone business as consumer's are generally preferring these devices as their primary computing device. It was reported in the last few days that Lenovo has been negotiating with Japan's NEC Corp to buy its handset subsidiary. The talks were confirmed in a separate Reuters report by a source familiar with the negotiations. The talks have been ongoing for about a year. Proof of their interest in smartphones in general was discovered by Patent Bolt in a recently published patent application by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent filing describes new flexible display functionality associated with turning a page of a book and more. The timing of the application just happens to coincide with a similar feature being developed by Sony.
In a series or recently published patent applications, Lenovo reveals that they're working on providing new touch controls or touch keys to both notebooks and tablets. Lenovo envisions using the traditional top "F Key" row found on all notebooks to work as a Windows 8 Tile controller of sorts. As illustrated above, Windows 8 users will be able to program which keys will match what tiles on Windows 8 so that open quickly. To remain consistent, Lenovo wishes to extend this idea through to their future tablets if not right through to smartphones by adding tile buttons to the device's bezel.
One of the trends that we're likely to see in 2013 is the titlable touch desktop display. A recent patent application from Lenovo reveals a future desktop display that's on the drawing board. They've also designed a variant display stand design that could hold a large tablet. These kinds of displays will support Windows 8 and provide users with a sound ergonomic design for typing, gaming, drawing and drafting. Our report presents you with supporting patent figures for this new kind of display from both Lenovo and HP
In 1984, Ted Selker, a researcher at PARC, worked on a pointing stick based on a study that a typist needed a relatively long 0.75 sec to shift the hand from the keyboard to the mouse, and comparable time to shift back. Selker built a model of a device that would minimize this time. It was only three years later, working at IBM, that Selker refined his design, resulting in the TrackPoint product on which IBM received US patents for in 1996. In 2005, Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business making them one of the top PC makers overnight. Last week Lenovo's patent application for the reinvention of the TrackPoint was published by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The new design, according to Lenovo, may be integrated into future iterations of their ThinkPad and/or workstation keyboards.
At one point in time, the only company designing both work and in-home tables with built-in multitouch displays was Microsoft. Their 2007 project which was originally called "Surface," was rebranded as PixelSense last year when they officially partnered with Samsung. PixelSense is targeting industry verticals such as retail, media and entertainment, healthcare, financial services, education, and government. Considering the shear scope of this emerging market, we now know that China's Lenovo wants in on this market before it really takes off. A newly discovered patent reveals Lenovo's detailed system. While it may take a few years before this technology trickles down into the general consumer space, Lenovo's entry into this segment of the market should stir on healthy competition that translates into products coming to market sooner rather than later.
In one of Lenovo's latest patent applications published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, we're able to see that they're clearly preparing to bring their first hybrid tablet-notebook to market. According to Lenovo, tablet computers have an advantage in mobility and size while notebooks have the advantage of increased processor power and battery life. Lenovo's vision of a hybrid notebook-tablet is simple: Run Windows on the notebook side of the hybrid and Android on the tablet side. At the end of the day, Lenovo's hybrid notebook-tablet will be ready to catch the next wave of hot devices coming to market in 2013.
There's still a market out there for slider keyboards on smartphones and a huge base of Blackberry users who just won't give up on hard-keys. Yet when it comes to larger slates, such as tablets, the trend dies out. Well, Lenovo thinks that those who love hard keys should have a solution for tablets and they're trying to patent a few of these designs at this very moment. Lenovo's patent describes the tablet accessory as a "handgrip keyboard." Keyboard junkies would definitely rejoice if Lenovo could ever get these to market in time for Christmas. But I have my doubts that Santa will be ordering any of them for this year. Time will tell.
