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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Nice.

Now this is out could we get a TrackPoint keyboard please? https://community.frame.work/t/thinkpad-keyboard-mod-super-e... is getting there I am sure with a little support it would happen finally.

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We've been watching this thread closely (and providing cscott with additional documentation as he finds missing info).

I'm curious if there's (still?) a patent on TrackPoint-like devices.

(This is a tangent question. IIUC from that community thread, people are considering adaptive real ThinkPad keyboards to work in a Framework.)

According to Wikipedia:

IBM introduced it commercially in 1992 on its laptops under the name "TrackPoint", and patented it in 1997 (but the patent expired in 2017)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick

Wikipedia is wrong as always, it patented an improved version in 1997. I will try to edit but I am not holding my breath.

The original patents on track point ran out years ago. Even dell has a (not great) version in some of their laptops.

There could very well be some new patents on Lenovo’s recent stuff for whatever reason, but there’s nothing stopping anybody from copying what IBM put out.

Dell and HP and Toshiba all had pointing sticks on their professional laptops even before the patents ran out. They were utter shit of course because it was negative inertia which made the TrackPoint usable and that was patented and by the time it expired everyone was high on trackpads which are , once again, obviously utter shit because they can not be as efficient as a TrackPoint which is where your fingers are compared to a trackpad where you need to move your hand to.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5570111A/en expired 2014 (this is what makes the TrackPoint more than just a pointing stick)

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6115030A/en expired 2017

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