Apple Lands US Patent for ‘Fusion Keyboard’ With Touch-Sensitive Mechanical Keys

Apple landed a U.S. patent Tuesday for a “fusion keyboard” featuring “individually depressible mechanical keys having a touch sensitive area located on their surface,” Patent and Trademark Office records for patent number 9,041,652 show. “One or more of the depressible mechanical keys can be multi-purpose keys capable of being depressed to multiple levels,” says the patent, which was applied for in September 2011 listing John Elias, of Townsend, Delaware, and Steven Martisauskas, of San Francisco, as the inventors. Under the invention, the touch-sensitive mechanical keyboard “can receive key depression input, touch event input, or combinations thereof at the same time,” the patent says. The keyboard can “further include a processor for distinguishing detected touch events from detected key depressions,” it says. “The processor can generate a key depression command or a touch event command in response to the detected touch events and key depressions.” Apple representatives didn’t comment.