US Patent Issued to Apple on May 20 for "Self-mixing interference based sensors for characterizing touch input" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,305,982, issued on May 20, was assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).

"Self-mixing interference based sensors for characterizing touch input" was invented by Mark T. Winkler (Menlo Park, Calif.), Mehmet Mutlu (Grover Beach, Calif.), Omid Momtahan (Palo Alto, Calif.), Tong Chen (Fremont, Calif.), Wenrui Cai (San Jose, Calif.), Chau H. Nguyen (San Jose, Calif.), Giovanni Gozzini (Berkeley, Calif.), Michael K. McCord (San Francisco), Orit A. Shamir (San Francisco) and Prashanth S. Holenarsipur (Fremont, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed herein are electronic devices having touch input surfaces. A user's touch input or pre...