Since Microsoft spends over $1 billion on research and development annually it’s not really that odd that it applies to a whole lot of patents. Yesterday it announced that it had been granted its 10,000nd US patent. The milestone patent covers recognition of objects placed on a surface. Thus, it is a part of Microsoft’s Surface technology.
Those of you who are new to this, it’s a matter of a large touchscreen display placed horizontally, like a table, and built a computer into the space beneath. The patent covers technology used by this “table” to recognize which objects that are placed on top of it and use this to start related applications, etc. Indeed interesting technology, but perhaps still a bit too expensive to be used at home.
