Toyota Trademarks Inductive Charging, Touch Panels Names

[Guest]

Touch and is definitely making its way much deeper into cars. Car and Driver spotted two trademarks submitted by Toyota that hint toward touch-sensitive panels as well as inductive charging features.

Toyota Trademarks Inductive Charging, Touch Panels Names : Read more

 

[face-plants]

Sounds good to me. Always happy to see the automotive market bringing innovations from consumer electronics and other fields into their products.
Having a cup holder or little cubby that could charge my phone by induction whenever it's sitting in there would be a dream come true. I wonder how they'll get customers to agree to purchase the other end of the charging system (the inductively charged battery for your phone for example.) Maybe every new car purchased will come with two of the special batteries for devices of your choice. As long as the support for a wide range of devices comes along with the system it sounds like a great step forward.

As for the Intellitouch touch sensitive panels, that could be just about anything imaginable. Here's the implementation I'd love to see though:
Imagine getting into a car and having your own personal preferences for the layout of all the essential controls being configured automatically for you...totally sweet!

A touch sensitive steering wheel with fully programmable areas to control the nav/stereo/climate control would be a great start. One of my biggest complaints with adjusting to a new vehicle is dealing with all the controls in different places. Not a big deal when you only use 1-2 cars on a regular basis but my company has about 8 different makes/models as company cars. I'm always in a different one it seems.

 

[aftcomet]

This is fucking bullshit. Toyota didn't invent touchscreens in cars. They didn't even invent touchscreens!!

This patenting of technologies that have been used forever is driving me insane!!!

Inductive charging in cars??? Search for the Magne Charge interface for General Motors that was in 1998! NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING EIGHT.

Bullshit. Oops, can't say that, Apple or some other asshole organization probably patented its use.

Patents were about knowing you could invent something and not have someone steal it. Nowadays patents are about patenting everything you could possibly conceive and suing the ass off of everyone else with it. All that's doing is killing innovation.

Speaking of which, what's this week's Apple Patent of the Week?

 

[aftcomet]

Re-reading this it seems that they've trademarked them and not patented them. So my previous comment seems to be in vain. What can I say? It's late, I'm tired, and I'm honestly used to seeing some crazy patent on Tom's all the time. But a good chunk of that post still applies, namely about how patents have gotten out of hand.

 

[face-plants]

That's another article...actually two new ridiculous patent stories today. So I guess your rant can be forgiven:

"Microsoft Patents TV Video Conferences via a PC"
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-patent-video-conferencing-tv,16557.html

AND Apple trying to patent autosave: "Apple Claims Rights to ''Saveless'' Documents"
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-patent-document-saving-automatic,16559.html

 

[WyomingKnott]

Is it really that much trouble to plug in a device to charge?

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]aftcomet[/nom]This is fucking bullshit. Toyota didn't invent touchscreens in cars. They didn't even invent touchscreens!!This patenting of technologies that have been used forever is driving me insane!!!Inductive charging in cars??? Search for the Magne Charge interface for General Motors that was in 1998! NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING EIGHT.Bullshit. Oops, can't say that, Apple or some other asshole organization probably patented its use.Patents were about knowing you could invent something and not have someone steal it. Nowadays patents are about patenting everything you could possibly conceive and suing the ass off of everyone else with it. All that's doing is killing innovation.Speaking of which, what's this week's Apple Patent of the Week?[/citation]
Dude relax, a trademark is just making the name explusive to your company they did not patent anything.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]Dude relax, a trademark is just making the name explusive to your company they did not patent anything.[/citation]
Meant exclusive not expulsive BTW

 

[vistaofdoom]

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]Meant exclusive not expulsive BTW[/citation]

Expulsive sounds much better, like a Michael Bay comment kind of.