ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,278,503, issued on April 15, was assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).

"Wireless power systems with foreign object detection" was invented by Adam L. Schwartz (Redwood City, Calif.), Niloofar Rashidi Mehrabadi (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Hossein Sepahvand (Santa Clara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A wireless power system has a wireless power transmitting device and a wireless power receiving device. The wireless power transmitting device uses a wireless power transmitting coil to transmit wireless power signals to the wireless power receiving device. The wireless power transmitting device determines whether an external object...