Microsoft recently announced its Surface Book as a brand new idea in mobile computing and the first notebook class device that transforms from a notebook computer into a tablet by detaching the display unit as a tablet and with an additional graphic processor in the base / keyboard part. When combined, they act as a fast notebook computer, and when separated you have a fully functional, yet slight less powerful, tablet device.
Now, the US patent office granted a patent to Apple that pretty much describes the same device. The US patent 9,176,536 describes a detachable display unit that communicates with the tablet via a wireless connection.
Source: Apple Patent 9176536
In case you wonder if that means that Microsoft is now going to pay royalties to Apple, there is one significant difference between the Surface Book and the Apple patent, Apple puts the processor into the base unit and connects the display to the base unit either via a hard or a wireless connection. Microsoft pretty much creates a tablet that has some additional performance enhancing components including battery in the base unit. In other words, they are creating the same device but with a different approach.
Analyst Comment
The Apple patent was filed on September 30, 2011 and published on April 4, 2013. In other words, Microsoft was pretty much aware of the Apple patent application and designed their device pretty much around this patent. It also shows that the patent system today is very ill-equipped to deal with the speed and depth of technological development these days. When it takes four years after filing a patent to finally get the patent it is pretty much useless at that point in time. This time span may just describe the complete life cycle of a product these days. While the patent idea maybe based on a specific technology, like the wireless connection in this case, this particular technology may have been replaced by a newer and more powerful one that makes the idea more important or unusable. Take your pick. (NH)
