Granted Patent: The Antennas for the Nike + iPod (For iPod & Shoe)

In a recent Robert X. Cringely report he stated that "Apple files for a lot of patents that may or may not find their way into products. Over the past three years, the Cupertino crew has sought to patent ways to embed sensors into clothing (like running shoes) that communicate with iPods and iPhones…. We haven't seen any of those things appear in Apple products... yet." Well, Mr. Cringely may have enthusiastically overstepped his all knowing authority on patents with that statement because today's patent makes the link between the Nike+ iPod product and Apple's technology. In today's granted patent we clearly see that the embedded shoe antenna and the antenna attached to the iPod and or older iPhone are in fact one in the same and in the marketplace under the Nike + iPod product. (Click to enlarge the graphic.)

Apple credits Shu-Li Wang, Juan Zavala and Christopher David Prest for granted patent 7,623,077 originally filed in Q4 2006. 

Granted Patent: Relates to the Nike + iPod Wireless Communications Adapter

Further to Apple's first granted patent noted above covering antenna technology related to the Nike + iPod product, Apple's second granted patent titled Antenna for portable electronic device wireless communications adapter specifically covers the wireless communications adapter as noted in patent FIG.4 below.  

Granted Patent: System and Method for Recognizing Touch Typing under Limited Tactile Feedback Conditions

Apple's granted patent relates to a recent patent report titled Apple Wins Hot Virtual Keyboard Patent with Many Interesting Twists. Today's patent sheds further light on the subject.

A system is disclosed for recognizing typing from typing transducers that provide the typist with only limited tactile feedback of key position. The system includes a typing decoder sensitive to the geometric pattern of a keystroke sequence as well as the distance between individual finger touches and nearby keys. The typing decoder hypothesizes plausible key sequences and compares their geometric pattern to the geometric pattern of corresponding finger touches. It may also hypothesize home row key locations for touches caused by hands resting on or near home row. The resulting pattern match metrics may be combined with character sequence transition probabilities from a spelling model. The typing decoder then chooses the hypothesis sequence with the best cumulative match metric and sends it as key codes or commands to a host computing device.

Apple credits Wayne Carl Westerman as the sole inventor of granted patent  RE40,993, originally filed in Q1 2006. It should be noted that this was a Re-Examination patent. Original dates are scattered amongst other filings and should be consulted to determine an accurate originating filing date. 

Granted Patent: GPIO mux/dynamic port configuration

Technically, Apple's granted patent generally relates to ASIC logic designs, and more particularly, to dynamically configurable routing logic coupled between physical I/O ports and special purpose I/O associated with functions within a panel ASIC that provides for a number of different routing configurations. The ASIC logic designs relate to Multi-touch and multi-event sensor panels which cover multi-hover sensors.

Apple credits Christopher Horst Krah and Richard Reeve for granted patent 7,622,950, originally filed in Q1 2007.

Granted Patent: System and Method for Preventing Damage to Media Files within a Digital Camera Device

This is a reissued patent that stems back to Apple's original work on camera technology back in 2001. According to Apple's long winded abstract, the patent is about a system and method for preventing damage to media files within a digital camera which comprises of a power manager for detecting power failures, an interrupt handler for responsively incrementing a counter device and a removable memory driver for performing memory access operations, evaluating the counter device to determine whether a power failure has occurred during the memory access operation and for repeating the memory access operation whenever a power failure has occurred during the memory access operation.

 

Apple credits Eric C Anderson as the sole inventor of Reissued patent RE41,014 which dates back to 2001. The last filing occurred on July 17, 2003.

Granted Patent: Image Scaling Arrangement: Methods and system for transferring images between devices are disclosed. For example, differently scaled images by a host device may automatically and/or selectively be transferred to a media player for display. In turn, appropriately scaled images may be transferred automatically and/or selectively to another display device for example a TV, camera or printer. The selectivity may occur either at the host level or at the player level. For more information, see Granted patent 7,623,740.

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.