So something Professor Lavian said in class intrigued me this past Monday. People were patenting QWERTY keyboards on smartphones. For those of you who may not know exactly what a QWERTY keyboard is, it's the keyboard layout that is used in most present day keyboards for laptops and computers. If I remember correct, it was designed during the age of type writers (oh dang that's old). This is from memory, but I believe that it was designed so that letters that were used often were spread apart on the keyboard so that ink wouldn't get smeared/damaged and the keys wouldn't get jammed easily on the type writer.
I was intrigued that people were patenting QWERTY keyboards. Initially, I thought people were actually patenting the keyboard layout. However after some research, I found companies were just patenting how the keyboard was placed on their phone. I thought that this was interesting concept. It's true, how a phone has the keyboard on it is really crucial to user interface. I know I've hated certain phones of my past simply because the keyboard was just annoying to utilize. I guess in a way it's good for these companies to patent their layouts, it protects their idea! So I guess, good job companies!
That's very interesting. I thought they were patenting the QWERTY keyboard itself as well; it's crazy imagining how you could be sued over just the placement of the keyboard on the screen.
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