Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to a possible future iPad that could support one to twenty-four  inductive charging coils behind the iPad's display to charge an Apple Pencil while drawing and/or painting and charge an Apple Watch and/or iPhone when the iPad is not in use.  

Some embodiments of this disclosure are directed to electronic devices that have a stylus that is inductively charged and/or inductively powered when positioned proximate a screen region of the electronic device. While the present disclosure can be useful for a wide variety of configurations, some embodiments of the disclosure are particularly useful for tablet and laptop computing devices that are commonly equipped with an active stylus configured to electronically communicate with the computing device.

For example, in some embodiments an electronic device includes a display screen and one or more inductive charging coils positioned behind the display screen and configured to generate a charging region positioned across an external surface of the display screen.

A corresponding stylus can include an inductive receive coil that receives power when positioned within the charging region such that when a user positions the stylus on the display screen the stylus is continuously charged during use.

In further embodiments the electronic device and the stylus can establish bi-directional communications through the inductive charging circuit so that communications is only performed when the stylus is in use to reduce power consumption.

In some embodiments a transmit coil can be used to provide power to other electronic devices than stylus. For example, an inductively charged watch can be placed on display 115 and in response electronic device 100 can selectively engage the appropriate transmit coils to inductively charge the watch.

In further embodiments the watch can communicate with electronic device (iPad #100) to notify that charging is complete and in response the iPad can turn off its transmit coil.

Other devices such as, but not limited to, smart phones and portable media players can be inductively charged in a similar fashion.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 is to confirm that the patent is about an iPad; FIG. 2 is a simplified cross-sectional view of an iPad and Apple Pencil shown in FIG. 1; FIGS. 4-7 illustrates various inductive coil configurations that Apple may implement so as to be able to charge Apple Pencil will drawing/painting on the iPad cover glass while being able to charge an Apple Watch or iPhone when the iPad is not in use.

For more details, review Apple's granted patent 11670972.