US Patent Issued to NXP on April 21 for "Capacitive earbud detection in an earbud charging case" (Austrian Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,610,173, issued on April 21, was assigned to NXP B.V. (Eindhoven, Netherlands).

"Capacitive earbud detection in an earbud charging case" was invented by Lukas Johann Gortschacher (Gratwein-Strassengel, Austria) and Erich Merlin (Gratkorn, Austria).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An earbud is provided having an earbud housing. Formed on a surface of the earbud housing are first and second conductive elements configured to form a first capacitive element. When the earbud is located within a charging case, the first and second conductive elements are arranged with a third conductive element mounted to an inside surface of the charging case i...