Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to wear-resistant coatings on keyboard keys to better protect glyphs. In addition, eight patents were published today covering practically every inch of Apple's iPhone 14 Pro hardware.

Systems with Durable Coatings

An electronic device may have input-output devices such as keyboard keys or other buttons. Components such as cameras and other devices may have trim structures. A housing may be used to form an enclosure for the components. Keyboard keys, trim structures, and/or other device structures such as housing structures may be provided with wear-resistant coatings. For example, a keyboard key may have a glyph such as an alphanumeric character formed from patterned layers of ink. To prevent wear to the key and glyph, the glyph may be coated with a wear-resistant coating. The wear-resistant coating may be formed from a polymer with embedded mineral particles such as aluminosilicate particles.

As illustrated by structure #40 above in FIG. 2, some of components #36 (e.g., buttons) and/or some of the structures forming housing 30 may have surfaces that are exposed to exterior region #32. The structure may be, for example, a button member (e.g., a keyboard key member), a housing wall, a component trim structure, and/or other structure in device #10. The structure may have one or more different portions (see, e.g., support member #44 and optional layer(s) 46).

The structure may be covered with wear-resistant coating #48 that may include a polymer layer such as polymer layer #50 with embedded wear-resistance particles #52. When exposed to contact by a user's finger (e.g., finger #53) or other external structures, the coating may resist wear (e.g., coating #48 may resist burnishing due to repeated finger presses). If desired, the coating may be at least partly transparent, so that underlying glyphs and/or other patterns formed in layer(s) may be viewed through the coating.

Any suitable polymer material may be used in forming the polymer of the polymer layer. As an example, polyurethane such as a self-matting polyurethane (e.g., a self-matting polyurethane polymer resin dispersed in water) or other water-based polymer, which may sometimes be referred to as a polyurethane dispersion may be used in forming the layer. A hydrophobic polyurethane may be used.

For more details, review Apple's patent application number 20230223212.

8 Patents covering iPhone 14 Pro Hardware

Today the U.S. Patent Office published 8 iPhone 14 Pro related patents under the following numbers: 20230221782, 20230221802, 20230224389, 20230224392, 20230224393, 20230224387, 20230224391 and 20230224388.

Each patent covers a slightly different focus. Read the patent "Abstract" at the beginning of each patent to catch the differences between them. The eight patents combined cover 991 pages. Happy Hunting!