The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 20, 1998
Filed:
Mar. 31, 1997
Mark S Aubuchon, Spring, TX (US);
Jeffrey T Lininger, Spring, TX (US);
Meera K Manahan, Tomball, TX (US);
Compaq Computer Corporation, Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
The elongated body portion of a lap-supportable remote infrared computer keyboard is contoured on its bottom side, by means of a spaced pair of arcuately shaped, generally parallel recesses that extend between front and rear sides of the body, to conform to upper side portions of a seated user's thighs. Positioned in the recesses are spaced series of elongated outwardly projecting parallel ribs which longitudinally extend transversely to the lengths of the recesses and serve to frictionally inhibit front-to-rear shifting of the lap-supported keyboard along the user's thighs. The key member portions of the keyboard are positioned on the top side of the body between left and right end portions thereof. On the top side of one of these end portions is a pointing device, representatively a track ball, and on the top side of the other end portion are a pair of selection buttons. This end-to-end separation of the pointing device and selection buttons permits the user to operate them while holding an end of the keyboard body in each hand, thereby substantially preventing the use of either the track ball or the selection buttons from tending to tip the keyboard either leftwardly or rightwardly on the user's lap.