Remember when Microsoft was actually aspiring to be mobile phone players? It seems like yesterday—but actually it was not so long ago. With the rise of the iPhone and flashy Android launches, the world got used to unsightly stats showing the Windows Phone dip.

While its drop of market share became evident, there is keen interest in whether or not Microsoft has ambitions as a comeback kid, not with a Windows Phone but with something now being rumored by watchers as a “Surface Phone”.

That probably explains why the “Hinge with free-stop function” patent filed this year has drawn a lot of interest among tech watchers when it surfaced on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website.