Three years ago we called for an ultrathin iMac and today Apple delivered it. The new thinner iMac design was mainly accomplished by eliminating the optical drive as they did with their MacBook Air and other MacBooks over time. Yet to be fair to Apple's industrial design team lead by the fanatical Sir Jony Ive, they sweated over the details to refine the LCD process and even used a new welding process called "Friction Stir Welding" in order to get the thinner design just right. And in the heart of this new beast lies an all-new hybrid hard drive that Apple calls a Fusion Drive; a drive that fulfills a 2011 patent application.
The biggest stories of the morning concern Apple's new court filing countering Samsung's motion for a new trial and that Apple has dropped Java due to a severe security warning. As you could see by our cover graphic, there's more news worth checking out in our report.
It appears that Apple's trademark filing for "Passbook" fell through the cracks over at the US Patent & Trademark Office this past summer. Apple filed for their trademark on June twenty-seventh and it only came to light this morning. In other news, Apple has acquired the hip San Francisco HTML5 firm "Particle."
Apple has filed for the trademark "Guided Access in Hong Kong China. The trademark represents a new iOS 6 feature that builds on Apple's Accessibility feature set. The new feature provides users with the ability to confine touch input in certain parts of the screen. In other news today, Microsoft's Xbox Music will debut today, well ahead of their Windows 8 launch.
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office's database was updated yesterday and behold, we see that both Nokia and Amazon are continuing their formal opposition to Apple's App Store trademark filing. Our report fills you in on the status of this case.
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of nineteen newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we briefly cover two of Apple's granted patents relating to 4G LTE. These are part of the 434 LTE patents that have been amassed by Apple to fully support the iPhone-5 and to fend off potential lawsuits from competitors. On another note, Apple has been granted a design patent for their classic iTunes Logo that lists Steve Jobs as one of the inventors.
According to news from Korea, the South Korean SK Telecom has been granted an unprecedented iPhone 5 feature and we'll tell you what it is. In other news, Apple filed for the new 'Passbook' trademark in Europe and Taiwan's Hon Hai acquires some interesting patents. Report Updated October 04, 2012
Earlier this month, the Korean Times reported that Samsung officials had stated that the patent dispute with rival Apple has strengthened their innovation drive. Specifically, Yoon Boo-keun, the president of Samsung's consumer electronics division stated to media sources that "Becoming a software-driven company is the main initiative. We will raise the quality of our products and services by pressing further for software, design and solutions." Yet where they're beginning this great initiative is really hilarious if not ironic.
China's Hong Kong IP Department has officially published a series of ten Apple Inc. registered designs which are the equivalent of US granted design patents. All ten of the designs relate to Apple's iOS intelligent personal assistant feature branded Siri. Siri is included on modern iDevices such as the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad (Gen 3), and the new iPod touch (Gen 5). Apple's designs cover both the Siri logo and user interface.
The US Patent & Trademark Office just published Apple's latest trademark application for "Apple Lightning" under application85726560. Phil Schiller introduced the new lighting connector during Apple's special event this week. "The iPhone from its start used the iPod 30 pin connector which we launched originally in 2003 and it served us well for over a decade," stated Schiller who went on to point out several key attributes of the new 'Lightning' connector as presented in our cover graphic above. Report Updated February 05, 2013
Right out of the gate Apple has filed for the new "EarPods" trademark in Europe under application number 01182532. Apple's trademark was filed under International Classes 9, 35, 38 and 41 which basically covers all hardware, phones, advertising, telecommunication services, digital audio and entertainment services. Apple's all new EarPods were introduced at yesterday's special iPhone event. The EarPods are part of Apple's improved audio for the iPhone which includes their patent pending beamforming technology. Second Update Oct, 05, 2012
On September 12, 2012, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's logo as an official registered trademark for social networking under number 5,206,562. Apple officially filed for their logo update on August 31, 2010. While Apple filed for their updated trademark to support their social networking service Ping that debuted in September 2010, the service is to officially end when the next version of iTunes is released. As John Paczkowski of AllThingsD put it, Apple is abandoning Ping and "using its partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to make its various software and service offerings social in a way that consumers actually care about." Whether Apple has another social networking project in the wings is unknown at this time.
