Apple Wins Key iPhone Virtual Keyboard Patent, More
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of ten newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. The notables within this group include one relating to Apple's iPhone/iPod touch virtual keyboard, another for the iPhone's isolated antennas and two important NAND Flash related patents. Apple's virtual keyboard was one of the initial differentiating features that made Apple's smartphone so revolutionary and ahead of anything that came before it. The iPhone's software keyboard is adaptable, allowing users to switch between more than 40 international layouts. Apple's iPhone also features sophisticated character recognition software that lets users draw a Chinese character with their finger and tap to choose the matching result. Check out Apple's webpage for more information about this sophisticated virtual keyboard.
Granted Patent: iPhone, iPod Touch Virtual Keyboard Technology
Apple's patent generally relates to touch screen user interfaces and, in particular, it relates to the operation of a computer based on interaction by a user with a virtual GUI item, such as a virtual keyboard on a touch screen user interface. Apple utilizes this technology in their iPhone and iPod touch Media Players.
Apple credits Bas Ording as the sole inventor of granted patent 7,614,008 officially titled: Operation of a computer with touch screen interface. The patent was originally filed in Q3 2005. Update: Apple was granted another patent for their virtual keyboard in October, under number 7,602,378.
Granted Patent: iPhone's Isolated Antennas
Apple's Abstract: Handheld electronic devices are provided [in the patent] that contain wireless communications circuitry having at least first and second antennas. An antenna isolation element reduces signal interference between the antennas, so that the antennas may be used in close proximity to each other. A planar ground element may be used as a ground by the first and second antennas. The first antenna may be formed using a hybrid planar-inverted-F and slot arrangement in which a planar resonating element is located above a rectangular slot in the planar ground element. The second antenna may be formed from an L-shaped strip. The planar resonating element of the first antenna may have first and second arms. The first arm may resonate at a common frequency with the second antenna and may serve as the isolation element. The second arm may resonate at approximately the same frequency as the slot portion of the hybrid antenna.
Apple's patent FIG. 12 is the heart of this patent. It is a perspective view of an illustrative handheld electronic device antenna arrangement in which a first of two handheld electronic device antennas has an associated isolation element that serves to reduce interference with from a second of the two handheld electronic device antennas in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
Apple credits Robert Schlub, Robert Hill, Juan Zavala and Ruben Caballero as the inventors of granted patent 7,612,725 originally titled "Antennas for handheld electronic devices with conductive bezels." The patent was originally filed in Q1 2007. This is Apple's second granted patent on this technology in 30 days. The other patent granted for this technology can be found in this report under patent number 7,595,759 officially titled "Handheld electronic devices with isolated antennas."
Granted Patent: Systems and Methods for Operating Multi-Level NAND Flash Cells
NAND flash may generally provide non-volatile storage at a low cost per bit as a high-density file storage medium for consumer devices, such as Apple's iPhone and iPod Media Players, digital cameras and so forth.
Typical flash memory stores a unit of information by storing an electrical charge in each memory cell at a voltage representative of a digital data value. Single level cells store one bit of information based on the cell being charged to a "high" voltage, or being discharged to a "low" voltage. NAND flash memory has been developed to store up to two bits of information in a single cell by decoding the charge as being within one of four different voltage ranges.
In one general aspect of Apple's patent, adjustments to account for sag in stored data values can be accomplished after applying charge to multiple memory cells.
Apple credits Michael Cornwell and Christopher Dudte as the inventors of Granted Patent 7,613,043, originally titled: Shifting reference values to account for voltage sag. This patent was originally filed for in Q1 2007. Apple's second NAND Flash related patent is officially titled "Interleaving charge pumps for programmable memories." Apple credits Michael Cornwell as the sole inventor of this patent which was originally filed for in Q1 2007.
Other Noteworthy Granted Patents Published Today
Portable browsing interface for information retrieval: Apple's granted patent 7,613,684 is directed to information retrieval systems, and more particularly to an integrated searching/browsing retrieval system that combines the functionality of a full-text search engine with the flexibility of a browser. The patent was originally filed Q2 2003.
Methods and Apparatuses for Data Protection: Apple's granted patent 7,613,743 generally relates to protection of data on a non-volatile storage device against corrupted write operations which may cause data inconsistency, such as file system inconsistency.
In one embodiment, a technique of crash protection uses an atomically updated global transaction indicator to switch a set of data structures from one set of versions to another set. In one embodiment, the storage space for multiple versions of a data structure is allocated at the time the data structure is created on the storage device so that the multiple versions of the data structure can be kept close by. Between two consistent points, some data structures are modified to create new versions without changing the corresponding previous versions; and unmodified data structures are not copied. At a consistent point, the global transaction indicator is updated to indicate a set of consistent versions of the data structures, such as metadata of a file system.
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. For additional information on any granted patent reviewed here today, simply feed the individual patent number noted above into this search engine. To read this report in another major language, use Yahoo! Babel Fish.
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