Indiana Patent of the Month – April 2022
With cell phones now safely a part of our everyday lives, companies are focused on designing reliable and useful accessories to support them. One common accessory is a magnetic mount which holds your phone for hands free use. In these designs, a ferromagnetic disc is typically built into the case. Unfortunately, if you rest your phone on a wireless charger while it has one of these cases on, the charging unit will heat the ferromagnetic material and damage the case. While the disk could be positioned at one end of the device and not between the battery and charging coils, this creates an off center weight distribution and requires a stronger magnetic force to hold the entire device.
Scooch, LLC, experts in phone case and accessory design, have designed a case that achieves a centrally positioned ferromagnetic accessory without damaging the case during charging. Rather than a flat and circular disk, Scooch’s design uses a series of straight lines. They can be positioned in different ways to create aesthetically pleasing patterns such as diagonal patterns or sundial shapes. Space between each line creates an alternating pattern of ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic material. These lines provide the needed magnetic force to hold a phone in place, while the spacing between prevents interference with the charging.
If a significant amount of ferromagnetic material is in between the charging coils and battery it causes fluctuations in the electromagnetic charging field. In Scooch’s design, the spaces are sufficient enough to prevent this fluctuation and charging can continue as intended.
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