ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,366,017, issued on July 22, was assigned to GOOGLE LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).
"Touch-sensitive cord" was invented by Tong Wu (Mountain View, Calif.), Ivan Poupyrev (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Xiaoyu Guo (Santa Clara, Calif.), Shiho Fukuhara (Tokyo), Shozo Harada (Tokyo) and Adam Bernstein (San Francisco).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An interactive cord can include a plurality of non-conductive lines and a plurality of conductive lines arranged together in a first longitudinal portion to form a touch-sensitive area within a first longitudinal portion of the interactive cord. A non-touch-sensitive area can be formed in a second longitudinal po...