The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of thirteen newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today covering a wide gamut of technologies including those related to Apple's Logic Studio, QuickTime VR and iMovie. The more notables within this group, however, included a major OS X patent relating to both their Foundation Kit and AppKit which originated with NeXT's OpenStep. The other patents of interest today covered Apple's Pro Photography app called Aperture, OS X's Dashboard and a design win for their new white iPhone 4 – A patent which could very likely end up being introduced in their legal case with Samsung.
Apple Wins Design Patents for the New White iPhone 4 + Older iPod Shuffle
Apple was granted two design patents today by the USPTO relating to their new white iPhone 4 and 2008 iPod Shuffle. Apple was granted a US design patent for their Black Glass iPhone 4 back in March in addition to a series of detailed iPhone 4 design patents in China that same month.
Apple credits CEO Steve Jobs, VP Industrial Design Jonathan Ive and team members Jody Akana, Bartley Andre, Jeremy Bataillou, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Richard Howarth, Duncan Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas Satzger, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer as the inventors of Granted Patent D638,835, originally filed in Q2, 2010.
Apple Has Been Granted a Major OS X Related Patent
Apple has been granted a Major OS X related patent covering specific aspects of their foundation kit. Apple's foundation kit originally stemmed from NeXT's OpenStep OS acquired by Apple. Today's invention generally relates to a computer programming technique to operate object-oriented software programs, and more particularly, to providing an application programming interface in an object-oriented programming platform to observe properties associated with an object.
Apple's patent FIG. 1 illustrates an object-oriented computing system which is further described as a "Macintosh Operating System (Mac OS), such as Mac OS X, application programming interfaces (APIs) are divided into frameworks including the Foundation framework 135 which supports the AppKit framework 150." Apple's patent FIG. 2 illustrates an application programming interface for use with the object-oriented computing system shown in FIG. 1.
Apple credits Ronald Lue-Sang, Ali Ozer, Mark Piccirelli and Andreas Wendker as the inventors of Granted Patent 7,954,110 originally filed in Q2 2004 or seven years ago.
Apple Has Been Granted a Patent for Multiple Dashboards
Apple has been granted a patent relating to OS X's widgets environment called Dashboard. Widgets themselves are, at the core, simply HTML files that are displayed within the Dashboard layer; they use the WebKit application framework that is also used in Apple's Safari web browser
Apple's patent specifically covers systems, methods, computer-readable mediums, user interfaces and other implementations for organizing, managing and presenting widgets in display areas associated with multiple dashboard environments. In some implementations, a first display area associated with a first dashboard environment is configured for displaying at least one widget from a first set of widgets. A second display area associated with a second dashboard environment is configured for displaying at least one widget from a second set of widgets.
Apple's Patent FIG. 8 illustrates a user interface displaying dashboard environments 802 and 804. In some implementations, more than one dashboard is available. For example, the user could create and configure one dashboard to contain widgets related to work, and another for widgets related to personal matters. In some implementations, the display areas 806, 808, could be presented and arranged in the user interface in either an ad hoc manner (e.g., anywhere in the user interface) or an orderly manner (e.g., cascaded, tiled, etc.). Apple's patent FIG. 18 illustrates an exemplary tool panel scheme for launching/displaying dashboards and/or widgets.
Apple credits Scott Forstall, Imran Chaudhri, John Louch and Eric Peyton as the inventors of Granted Patent 7,954,064 originally filed in Q1 2006.
Apple Has Been Granted a Patent Related to their Aperture Application
Apple has been granted a patent related to their Aperture application, titled "Parameter setting superimposed upon an image." Apple's patent fully incorporates two additional patent applications from 2007 and 2006 respectively titled "Full Screen Editing of Visual Media," and "Magnifying Visual Information Using A Center-Based Loupe." Apple was granted a patent in February relating to Aperture's magnifying loupe.
Apple's patent FIG. 1 depicts an example visual media editing user interface 100 that includes the following features of a visual media editing application: file menu (105), toolbar (108), editing window (115), and adjustments window 110. In addition, visual media editing user interface could include a number of other controls that allow the user to save, open, import, and perform other functions in a visual media editing context. The user interface could also include a full screen control (150).
Technically speaking, Apple's patent covers tools and techniques allowing visual media to be edited by superimposing a parameter adjusting mechanism on the visual media itself and adjusting parameter settings based on user input detected by the parameter adjusting mechanism.
In a visual media editing application, the parameter adjusting mechanism is superimposed on visual media so that the user could keep his eyes on the visual media and so that the visual media itself is unobscured by other user interface controls and windows as the user edits it. The user sets control points on the visual media that act as a fixed reference points for subsequent user input. The parameter adjusting mechanism detects subsequent user input calculates new parameter settings based on that input.
Apple credits Melissa Breglio as the sole inventor of Granted Patent 7,954,067 originally filed in Q1 2007.
Other Notable Granted Patents Published Today
1 – Cutting and Copying Discontiguous Selections of Cells
3 – Automatic Notification System and Process
4 – Adjusting a Variable Tempo of an Audio File Independent of a Global Tempo using a Digital Audio Workstation (Relates to Apple's Logic Studio)
5 – Object Movie Exporter (Relates to QuickTime VR)
6 – Low Profile Plugs (for iOS devices)
7 – Two-Dimensional Timeline Display of Media Items (Relates to iMovie)
Notice: Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of patents with associated graphic(s) for journalistic news purposes as each such patent application and/or Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trade Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any patent application and/or Issued Patent should be read in its entirety for further details. Patents shouldn't be digested as rumors or fast-tracked according to rumor time tables. Apple patents represent true research that could lead to future products and should be understood in that light. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.
