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.)
(This is a tangent question. IIUC from that community thread, people are considering adaptive real ThinkPad keyboards to work in a Framework.)
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6115030A/en expired 2017
IBM introduced it commercially in 1992 on its laptops under the name "TrackPoint", and patented it in 1997 (but the patent expired in 2017)
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.