May be a way around using Apple's patent would be to throw your phone on an inductive cooker to charge.
Instead of 20 years for a patent, 5 years would be more fair.
Ready for ANOTHER patent war? Apple 'invents' wireless charging
Apple is trying to patent wireless charging, claiming its magnetic resonance tech is new and that it can do it better than anyone else. This would be cool if its assertions were true. Apple's application, numbered 20120303980, makes much of its ability to charge a device over the air at a distance of up to a metre, rather than …
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Monday 3rd December 2012 12:17 GMT Francis Vaughan
Total bollocks from el Reg
Seriously, we get two articles on this patent in one day on el Reg, and it appears that in neither case have the authors actually bothered to read the patent, or if they have, they lack the technical competence to understand it. What we do get is the now very tired Apple bashing fest that is fast making technical commentary from el Reg on anything to do with Apple essentially worthless. This is sad, there was a time where el Reg was actually worth reading for such commentary. It no longer is.
1. The patent does not attempt to patent near field charging. Got that? Really it doesn't. The title alone should be a give away: "Wireless power utilization in a local computing environment" Note the bit about "utilization." It is a patent on how to use wireless power in an innovative manner.
2. The innovative bit about the patent is the re-radiating of power from one device to another, and a protocol for controlling this. Go down to the claims section and have a look. The claims is where the actual meat of what is patented is. The stuff earlier is explanation, it isn't what is claimed for patent cover. Indeed the rules of patents require that you cover any earlier contributing technology. If you see something in a patent that you have heard before, it is there, not because of some nefarious attempt to re-patent existing technology, but due to a requirement to place the new work in the context of what has gone before. Not doing this can cause the patent application to fail. Note that you can't be expected to cite provisional applications from competitors - they are secret until the patent is approved.
Seriously, this article is so bad it should be deleted. It is an embarrassment to both el Reg and the author.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 12:55 GMT Peter Simpson 1
Re: Total bollocks, all right
"The innovative bit about the patent is the re-radiating of power from one device to another"
Let me get this straight: "re-radiating" is somehow better than just letting the end device pick up the power on its own? Recovery of radiated power by the re-radiator is necessarily inefficient, as is the process of "re-radiation" (whatever that may be). I guess it'll work as long as the battery in the "re-radiator" holds out.
Up to a meter, huh? I'll believe it when I see it work without something melting or the disc on my electric meter spinning faster than light.
//it's the one with "Secrets of Free Power" in the pocket, thanks
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Monday 3rd December 2012 15:11 GMT gkroog
Re: Total bollocks, all right
' "re-radiating" is somehow better than just letting the end device pick up the power on its own?'
Its better for Apple since it will let them make money off of someone else's patented technology. Someone else did all the hard work of developing it, and Apple just had to figure out a way for them to get in on it and make money off of it.
Other companies may have done the same, but Apple's the one most likely to sue over it.
And I'd like to know if WiPower's original patent includes something like this. As we've learned in a previous story (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/apple_loses_patent_case_facetime/), Apple's engineers pay no heed to the IP of other companies when developing products.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 22:39 GMT Francis Vaughan
Re: Total bollocks from el Reg
Sadly true. Seven thumbs down and counting. One assumes that the down-voters also lack the technical ability to understand what I wrote. I have come to the conclusion that there is a core group that will down-vote any comment that does not actually slam Apple, and even comments that are neutral to Apple will attract their down-vote. The stream of comments to this article that suggest that many see it as simply a forum for Apple bashing, and nothing more rather reinforces this view. It is becoming no better than YouTube comments.
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 08:07 GMT Steve I
Re: Total bollocks from el Reg
There is certainly a hard core of commentators who are genuinely incapable of understandting technical articles, guilty of just scanning headlines for keywords (and as the headline is wrong too, this is not a good strategy) and commenting on what they think it said, or just troll.
I actually hope it's the 3rd option, as surely there aren't enough stupid people around for either of the first 2 to be correct, are there?
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 16:19 GMT Jop
Re: Total bollocks from el Reg
Unfortunately the Apple fanboi in you was so bright there was no need to confirm that 90% of your posts in the last 3 months are related to Apple or iProducts. I did it anyway and got a stalker badge to sew on!
Just waiting for Nintendo to come along and claim WiPower is a Trademark infringement...
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Monday 3rd December 2012 13:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
wireless induction goes back to the dawn of time
thought wireless induction went back to the dawn of time - wot with galvani, voltz hertz, maxwell, gauss, marconi, tesla, eddison - to name but a few - might have patents on this or their respective businesses long after their earthly passing.
btw - isn't apple something you eat - not choke on when you see attempts to dazzle patent officials?
still apple has to try something - otherwise likely will run out of dosh in 10-20 years time - after all, what is there that apple could invent that anyone would want, let alone buy?
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Monday 3rd December 2012 13:15 GMT Rolf Howarth
Successive refinement...
As the article points out, someone else already has a patent on the basic idea of wireless charging. In order to be able to do anything in that area without paying exhorbitant licensing fees Apple therefore has to try to refine and improve on what the other patents say and patent that improvement, however minor a detail it might address. They can then use their patent when negotiating cross-licensing deals with the other patent holders. Effectively it just gives them a bargaining chip to sit at the Consortium for Wireless Power table, it doesn't mean they're planning a patent war.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 14:13 GMT Gel
Wireless charging over distance.
I have done charging with solar panels from sun. (still radio waves, albiet higher frequency) (very long range)
I have done charging with crystal sets. (medium range but very low power.)
induction hobs?
microwave cookers?
It is obvious. But it may not be safe at higher charge rates.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 17:48 GMT Wile E. Veteran
Oh, my. What will they think of next?
The illustration from the patent app is a simple parallel resonant circuit. Tunable because of the variable capacitor. Uses an inductor with a core, presumably iron given the frequencies involved. Goes back to Marconi and before.
Magnetic coupling ain't new. That's how a transformer works. "At a distance?" -- depends on the distance. Air-gap transformers are pretty common in a lot of applications, particularly at RF. "Transfer of power?" Any audio or RF device does that. Only the power level varies.
Unless Apple has discovered a new law of physics there is nothing new here. At best it is a development of existing ideas and technology, not a non-obvious invention.
The USPTO is out of control and works only as a shill of the highest-paying entity. Time for major reform.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 18:10 GMT Alistair
I'll admit that this patent might have a leg to stand on.
Mostly because I'm not that up on the patents that do exist and the finer points of the patent itself.
I just want that the next 26" 16x10 LCD monitor I buy can radiate a recharge to my cordless keyboard and trackball so that I don't get interrupted mid-incident call by having to change the damn batteries. I *like* cordless trackball and mouse that don't clutter desk with cords.
And -- I want the whole damn thing contained in the *batteries* themselves so I don't have to buy a proprietary keyboard and trackball......
On that note, off to the patent filing website.....
(D'oh for the obvious part)
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Monday 3rd December 2012 20:38 GMT david wilson
Re: I'll admit that this patent might have a leg to stand on.
>>"I just want that the next 26" 16x10 LCD monitor I buy can radiate a recharge to my cordless keyboard and trackball so that I don't get interrupted mid-incident call by having to change the damn batteries. I *like* cordless trackball and mouse that don't clutter desk with cords."
Wouldn't a cordless device which gave good early warning of low power (and/or had some motorbike-style 'reserve tank' approach) be a workable solution, at least to having 'surprise' running-out of power?
Surely it can't be hard for the device not simply to flash an LED, but to tell its driver wirelessly that it's getting low on power and only has N hours/days left, triggering some user-configurable warning to pop up on the screen?
If there's not enough demand for devices to do any of those things, one might wonder if there's enough to make wireless charging for other manufacturer's kit a feature monitor makers think worth adding to their monitors.
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 05:50 GMT armster
Re: I'll admit that this patent might have a leg to stand on.
Try using any actual Apple mouse. They give you a warning message 2 days, 2 hours and 5 minutes before they stop working. I would still prefer a mouse that 'just works' without me going for the battery charger whenever the 2 hours left message comes on.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 18:16 GMT Number6
Efficiency
So how much of the power radiated by the transmitter is actually received and used for charging, and how much is sent off into space? The point of the close-contact stuff is that it allows fairly tightly controlled fields to improve the efficiency. If something is a couple of metres away then much if the radiated power is going to be absorbed by everything else in the room. I guess it'll help keep you warm in the cold season.
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Monday 3rd December 2012 21:13 GMT All names Taken
You are all correct no?
I may be mistaken (apologies if so) but I'd guess that Apple has a device of sorts that uses a well known observable and historic fact that things can be charged wirelessly.
Trouble is interference, charging the wrong things by mistake, making things run hot or even interfering with other devices into carrying voltages they should not have might also be historic problems?
If so, maybe the Apple has patented a way or a technology to avoid some of those undesirable results?
I guess time will tell.
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 05:06 GMT tom dial
Patents
Patents are, and always have been, evidence of successful rent seeking. There *may* be some social benefit from the fact that the patent documents must disclose the invention so that others may build upon it (the alternative being to keep the invention a trade secret). My admittedly untrained observation is that many or even most most of the software related patents I have read tend strongly to obscure the nature of the invention, which turns out after study to be pretty obvious to anyone even moderately skilled in the arts of programming. Indeed, it has for some years been my opinion that a programmer who fails to infringe at least a patent a day is not being very productive.
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 05:49 GMT armster
Did anyone look at the patent before commenting?
I think the patent talks about distance charging, not inductive mat charging which has indeed been around for years. If I read this correctly it will be used for the Apple mice and keyboards, and will be integrated in future macs (but I could be wrong). Certainly nobody builds anything like that currently, and I don't know enough about the Wireless Power Alliance patents to see if they have anything similar. The older patents are certainly very different.
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Tuesday 4th December 2012 08:12 GMT Steve I
Re: Did anyone look at the patent before commenting?
"Re: Did anyone look at the patent before commenting?" - if you mean the downvoters then bear in mind that that is The Register i.e. of course not. All those pages of technical information and all the mouth-breathers think that it simply say says:
<adopt caveman voice> "We Apple. We charge no wire. hur hur hur. We first."
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Wednesday 5th December 2012 09:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Actually... something smartera.
OK I am worldly and wise but what I do know about, and what I am proficient in, is merely a matter of practice...
Some I practice much and some I practice little.
While I am sort of probably getting the term wrong, with that Apple patent theft / of that little diagram of the transformer coil and the capacitor, the term, "a charge coupling" transformer?" seems to fit the bill?
I have seen shit loads of that circuit in transformer design circuits.... Inductive coupling...
That circuit is as elementary as basic wire wound transformers, light bulbs, resistors,
Like a half wave pulse rectifier.......
This Apple patent scam is fucking crap. "Oh we are taking out a patent infringement on something that has been around since Voltair took a shit one Sunday morning, or was it when Layden took a piss in a jar on Monday morning?"
Ooooo this such bullshit................
There must be some 400,000,000 circuit diagrams in the last 200 years before the meat heads at Apple ever fired up their brain cell over the issue.
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