ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,366,939, issued on July 22, was assigned to Alps Alpine Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Coordinate input apparatus" was invented by Akira Sato (Miyagi-ken, Japan), Satoshi Nakajima (Miyagi-ken, Japan) and Tomohiro Sasaki (Miyagi-ken, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A coordinate input apparatus includes an insulating substrate, sensor electrodes having detecting positions, a top panel including an operating surface that allows an operation with a pointer and covering the sensor electrodes, a measuring circuit that measures capacitances of the detecting positions, and a calculating circuit that calculates a position of the pointer in two-axis dire...