Last month the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Microsoft that revealed their continuing work on a smart ring. We covered their original patent filings on this device back in November and December 2015. The timing of this latest invention is interesting as it now marks an industry trend. Patently Apple just filed a series of patent filings from Apple relating to the interpretation of tendon movements being interpreted as gestures to control any number of devices including future versions of the Apple Watch, iPhone and/or iPad. We also covered an extensive smart ring patent filing from Apple back in October. In order to understand Microsoft's overall direction for their smart ring you have to review their previous patents in addition to this current filing. Yet for the sake of brevity, in this particular invention, Microsoft covers a system for a smart ring that uses a least one flexion sensor or 'bend sensor' secured to the smart ring in a manner that is able to detect a distance between the at least one flexion sensor and a second segment of a users' finger to control aspects of a device. In one scenario the user is able to wear multiple rings on their hand and use them in sync to control a virtual mouse that could perform regular right or left clicks. That feature alone has the potential of being a killer app for Microsoft if they could actually deliver this concept to market in a timely manner. For more on this, see Patently Mobile's full report here.

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