When it comes to patents, companies would love to have as many as possible – after all, you can never tell just how useful they can become in the future, taking into consideration how innovation from different companies might require them to make use of your idea. Having said that, we reported at the beginning of this month that Samsung holds pole position when it comes to patent filings for wearable technology, but the trick is to translate all of those patents into success in the marketplace via innovative and popular products. With that, we bring you word that Samsung has just picked up a patent for near invisible virtual buttons. Yes sir, this patent was recently approved by the USPTO, where the near invisible virtual buttons happen to be active areas that are located close to the edge of a touchscreen. This will then be able to, for instance, give the camera app a launch. I suppose you can refer to these as “sensor pads”, and thankfully, they are not restricted to a single function only, since you have the choice of mapping it to various other functions. It remains to be seen how these will end up as reality, and how they will be implemented in upcoming devices will need to be answered as well, but hopefully the day would arrive sooner rather than later.