If you thought that Apple's appetite for passion wasn't going to stop with the 1,136 patents that Apple took possession of in 2012, you're right. Apple has just secured a patent for a glass-on-metal trackpad design partially envisioned by the late Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, the man who serves as Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design and is often described as the "spiritual successor" for Steve Jobs.
Granted to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patent No. D674382 is known only as "Portable Computer." But apart from this altogether vague title, the patent application does point to some specific information regarding what Apple has actually obtained here.
What Apple has secured, in essence, is a patent for a glass trackpad to be placed on top of an aluminum unibody enclosure (think MacBooks). Despite this relatively simple design, documents show that Apple has been angling to secure this particular patent for more than four years now.
It should also be noted that Jobs and Ive are not listed as the lone inventors of the aforementioned design. Thirteen other names are tacked on to the patent application. They include: Bartley K. Andre, Daniel J. Coster, Daniele De luliis, Evans Hankey, Richard P. Howart, Duncan Robert Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas B. Satzger, Christopher J. Stringer, Eugene Antony Whang, and Rico Zorkendorfer.
The patent filing can be reviewed in full here.
Source: USPTO (via Apple Insider)
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