Patent app for touchscreen printer from Sony Surfaces

An interesting concept from Sony has come to light courtesy of the US Patent & Trademark Office, deftly titled: "Image forming device, having an ejection tray, and a display is mounted to a cover." That's a lot of words to describe what is basically a Surface-like touchscreen mounted onto a flat, clamshell printer (shown open after the break). The idea is for users to set their cameras down, view and manipulate images wirelessly, and then print them directly to honest to gosh paper. It appears to be quite a bit smaller than Microsoft's uber-table, and a lot less likely to get Al Roker's groove on too, but it also looks rather more practical and affordable; something you might actually expect to see in someone's home in the next few years. But, don't get too excited about the real-world prospects here -- your guess is as good as ours about Sony's plans for bringing this to market.