ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,747,521, issued on Sept. 29.
"Fabric control device" was invented by Daniel A. Podhajny (Morgan Hill, Calif.), Daniel D. Sunshine (Austin, Texas) and Kathryn P. Crews (Menlo Park, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A fabric-based item may include a housing that is covered in fabric. Areas of the fabric may overlap input circuitry such as button switches, touch sensors, force sensors, proximity sensors, and other sensing circuitry and may overlap other components such as light-emitting components and haptic output devices. The fabric-based item may include control circuitry that gathers user input from the input circuitry and wireless...