U.S. Patent 7920129 was awarded to Apple Inc. on 2011-04-05 and describes a “Double-sided touch-sensitive panel with shield and drive combined layer.” This patent has been cited 364 times by other U.S. patents which places it in the top 500 cited patents since 2010 according to our law firm research, and makes it of the most innovative computer technology patents in the field of electrical engineering. The abstract states:

A multi-touch capacitive touch sensor panel can be created using a substrate with column and row traces formed on either side of the substrate. To shield the column (sense) traces from the effects of capacitive coupling from a modulated Vcom layer in an adjacent liquid crystal display (LCD) or any source of capacitive coupling, the row traces can be widened to shield the column traces, and the row traces can be placed closer to the LCD. In particular, the rows can be widened so that there is spacing of about 30 microns between adjacent row traces. In this manner, the row traces can serve the dual functions of driving the touch sensor panel, and also the function of shielding the more sensitive column (sense) traces from the effects of capacitive coupling. Link: U.S. Patent 7920129

This patent was originally filed on 2007-01-03 which gives it a processing time of 1553 days, compared to an average processing time of 1638 in the field. Apple Inc. has 15027 total patents. The first named inventor is Steven Hotelling of Los Gatos, CA. The primary examiner was Quan-Zhen Wang.

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