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:
Feb. 03, 2004
Filed:
Mar. 30, 2001
Nathan C. Sherman, Sammamish, WA (US);
Brian D. Williams, Redmond, WA (US);
Steven N. Bathiche, Redmond, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A method and system that monitors movement of a wheel or slider included on a keyboard, and conveys information indicative of the movement and its direction to a host computing device to which the keyboard is coupled, using predefined scan codes or Universal Serial Bus (USB) data signal. State changes and the direction of rotation are detected as the wheel is rotated. Preferably, an elapsed time between state changes is compared to a set of threshold times, and the scan code representing the closest threshold time is selected. Alternatively, a scan code is transmitted that is indicative of the sign and magnitude of a threshold number corresponding to an accumulated number of state changes. The host computing device decodes the scan code or USB data for use in controlling a scroll distance, zoom, etc. as a function of the movement indicated by the scan code or USB data.