On August 30, 2010, a San Diego based gaming technology company by the legal name of Tritton Tech of Texas, LLC and known as Tritton Technologies, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo and Apple Inc., in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The company claims that Apple's iPhone 4 violates their 1993 patent which covers accelerometers for sensing linear translation along three axes of a Cartesian coordinate system and three angular rate sensors for sensing angular rotation about the three axes.

 
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 19 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. The notables within this group include five industrial design patents relating to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPod nano. Among the standard granted patents, we see that Apple has finally picked up two iMovie related patents that date all the way back to the year 2000 – as well as one for the iTunes interface and two for LCD related technologies. Yet the one that is likely the most important for Apple today is a major motion, gesturing and touch related patent that covers all of Apple's iOS related devices that will certainly provide Apple with a larger sledgehammer going into any law suit current or future.

Who knew that the Summer of 2010, and particularly August, would produce two of the most popular patents of the year? Who knew that the Summer of 2010 would unravel so many interesting surprises? In today's report we'll review some of the more interesting twists and turns that came to light this summer that are definitely pointing to some rather exciting new developments that are bound to dominate the news cycle in the second half of 2011. Yet let it be said that the summer of 2010 didn't go without its share of controversies and we'll cover the ones that definitely made their mark. But at the end of the day it's really all about some of the products that are in Apple's future; products that will once again have the competition scrambling in panic for many years to come.

 
One of Apple's new patent applications published yesterday describes a possible future iPhone audio Jack with built-in mic combination so as to save space should Apple decide to add new ports or future features.

 
Today, in a newly published patent application from Apple Inc., we get to see a glimpse behind one of the many processes behind their new powerhouse A4 processor. Apple's patent reveals systems and methods for providing a system-on-a-substrate. In particular, this patent relates to systems and methods for reducing the total size of a system's circuitry by providing all of the components of the system on the same microchip. A microchip that the patent reveals is behind the iPad, iPhone and likely to be used in other future Apple products such as Apple TV.

 
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of nine newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. The notables within this group include design wins for both the original iPod and the iPod touch along with other patents covering Apple's now defunct Shake application, the technology behind multi-conic graphic gradients and most importantly, a major touch related patent that may have played a role in Apple's latest Magic Trackpad desktop device.  

 
While most of us were getting ready for the iPad's arrival in January and Patently Apple hard at work preparing our major series called the Tablet Prophecies, a major iMac Touch patent was being quietly published in Europe. And while some of the graphic figures of today's patent did slip out in Europe, we were never able to verify whether they were legitimate or not. Well, today we finally get to post the Mother Lode of all information concerning the iMac Touch and it's absolutely brilliant! Ironically we had just posted a report on Saturday titled "Apple Patents Point to Future MacBooks with IPS & Touch Displays" when we discovered the European Filing. The naysayers will have to eat crow on this one, because Apple's method of transitioning from OS X to iOS is clearly outlined for both the iMac and MacBook – and it's a grand slam home run. Imagine having an iMac on your desktop one minute and a gigantic iPad the next. Imagine playing iGames on this dream machine - Wow! Imagine reading a double-page book on this - Unbelievable! Apple takes the mystery out of how OS X could finally co-exist with iOS on a Mac and you've got to see this one to believe it.

On July 19, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a series of ten meticulously detailed Apple patent applications covering the technology behind Apple's high-resolution LED-backlit IPS displays. These high-end displays could be found on today's iPad, iPhone 4 and even on the latest upgraded iMacs. According to Apple's newly published patents, it appears that Apple's MacBook line-up is destined to gain these incredible displays as well – even though they already possess a pristine LED-backlit display with wide-angle viewing, today. Yet the big news buried deep within all ten of this week's display-centric patents is a clear-cut fact that the MacBook is destined to also gain a multi-touch display. There's no wishy-washy lingo about it and today's report will show you the details. 

 
Apple's new advertising centric webpage states that "iAd rich media ads bring motion and emotion to mobile advertising through branded experiences that entertain and inform. With the iAd logo on each ad, your target Apple audience will know a great experience awaits them behind the banner." Yeeeesss, Apple is taking Target Marketing seriously – very seriously. In fact we learned just yesterday that Apple has recently acquired a new powerful geo-location patent that packs quite the punch. It's focused on delivering informative content proactively rather than reactively in response to a person's manual query to a service or human. Beyond delivering advanced marketing retail services, the patent provides us with a series of other feasible life-based scenarios. For instance, the new service could give home users the ability to announce a Garage Sale that they're having to anyone in a given vicinity or send emergency live Amber Alerts to your iPhone along with photos of the missing child in question. Advanced geolocation services could go far beyond just commerce.

 
On August 19, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that appears to be describing a next generation autofocus feature for future iOS devices that will add speed enhanced autofocus operations. Technically speaking, any of the camera features described in Apple's patent could equally apply to iSight.

 
Being the leading portable devices company in the world, Apple is constantly advancing new security features so that consumers and business executives could be assured that their sensitive data is locked down. Apple's iOS based devices currently come with a certain degree of security with features like "Find My iPhone" (or iPad etc), high end encryption and remote wipe. Apple is also working on advanced biometrics such as using heart sensors to detect an unauthorized user which is once again covered in today's security patent. Some of the other new security features that may one day work themselves into Apple's portable devices include the device taking a photo of the thief (smile now) or recording the thief's voice. Apple's iOS security is getting so smart, that it'll even know what kind of vehicle that the thief is using your device in – be it a plane, train or automobile and notify the proper authorities.

 
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 23 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. yesterday. The notables within that group included one relating to design wins for the iMac and the iPhone's Unlock feature as well as patents for Apple's Final Cut Pro Audio and the MacBook's magnetic latch. Yet the major wins of the day went to Apple's Multi-Touch/Multi-Event touch screen patent and their Media Player's Audio-centric UI that has only surfaced in-part. The advanced audio UI described in the patent goes far beyond the simplistic usage of audio commands that are being implemented in Apple's current iPod Shuffle and iPhone via Voice Control. Let's hope that Apple could get their advanced audio-centric user interface technology to market this year so that they could further challenge Google's latest Android features relating to voice commands.