ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,681,578, issued on July 14, was assigned to Alps Alpine Co. Ltd. (Japan).
"Input device" was invented by Makoto Abe (Miyagi-ken, Japan) and Toshiki Nakamura (Miyagi-ken, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An input device has: a panel having a front surface; a manipulation area provided on the front surface so as to be continuous in hierarchical form; a capacitance detection electrode provided in the manipulation area; a plurality of icon display portions provided in the manipulation area, each icon display portion representing one of a plurality of functions; and a tactile response generation portion provided in the manipulation area s...