Granted Design Patents: MacBook Air

On the eve of Apple unveiling their all new 2010 MacBook Air at a special "Back to the Mac" event, they've been granted a design patent for their current model.

Apple credits CEO Steve Jobs, Senior VP Industrial Design Jonathan (Jony) Ive, Bartley Andre; Bartley Daniele De Iuliis, , Evans Hankey, Richard Howarth, Jonathan Ive, Duncan Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas Satzger, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer as the inventors of Granted Patents D625,716 D625,717 that were originally filed in Q4 2009.

Apple has also been granted a design patent for their iPhone compass icon under D625,733 with Freddy Anzures noted as the sole inventor.

Granted Patent: Apple's Quartz Extreme Compositor

Apple's invention relates generally to the presentation of stereo image information on a display for computer systems and, more particularly, to an OS X system level windowing system having the capability to render stereo content. In OS X that illustrative stereo display system is embodied within the Quartz compositor.

When you move, resize, or scroll a window in Mac OS X, you're witnessing the power of Quartz Extreme. Harnessing the performance of the graphics processor in your Mac, Quartz Extreme delivers responsive, accelerated window compositing with full support for transparency. Every time a window moves, scrolls, or resizes, Quartz Extreme efficiently directs the GPU to update the display. The GPU focuses on what it does best — graphics — and frees the CPU for other tasks.

The Quartz compositor provides windowing system services that applications use to generate windowed displays. As presented in this patent, a compositor is a window system component that blends (also referred to as alpha-blends) the contents of various application backing stores to the display, mixing the contents of each window depending upon its opacity. In general, a compositor may be implemented entirely in software or it may be implemented as a combination of software and hardware. Apple's patent FIG. 3 noted above is presenting a stereo display system.

Apple credits Michael Paquette; Michael J. as the sole inventor of Granted Patent 7,817,166 originally filed in Q4 2006. Quartz Extreme was first presented at a Seybold Conference in 2002.

Granted Patent: iChat

Apple has been granted a patent for iChat which is an instant messaging software application exclusively for its Mac OS X operating system. It has audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities as well as text messaging. It uses a XMPP-like protocol, Bonjour for user discovery, and it also allows for LAN communication. Apple introduced iChat in the summer of 2002.

Technically, Apple's summary describing iChat states that the patent is about an "architecture for establishing multi-participant video conferences. This architecture has a central distributor that receives video images from two or more participants. From the received images, the central distributor generates composite images that the central distributor transmits back to the participants. Each composite image includes a set of sub images, where each sub image belongs to one participant. In some embodiments, the central distributor saves network bandwidth by removing each particular participant's image from the composite image that the central distributor sends to the particular participant. In some embodiments, images received from each participant are arranged in the composite in a non-interleaved manner. For instance, in some embodiments, the composite image includes at most one sub-image for each participant, and no two sub-images are interleaved.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 illustrates how some embodiments exchange video content in a multi-participant video conference. FIG. 4 shows an exemplary arrangement of participants' images on one of the participants' display. Patent FIG. 14 illustrates a non-focus point module which performs encoding and decoding operations.

During the video conference, a camera attached to the non-focus computer films the video-conference participant who is using the non-focus point computer. During the encoding operation, the local image capture module receives and captures video frames that are produced by the camera. At a particular sampling rate that is specified by the frame rate controller, the local image capture module directs the captured frames to the encoder, which then encodes and transmits the frames to focus-point computer.

Apple credits Hyeonkuk Jeong, Joe Abuan, and Jim Normile as the inventors of Granted Patent 7,817,180 titled "Video processing in a multi-participant video conference," originally filed in Q2 2005. 

Granted Patent: Window Server Event Taps

Apple's granted patent generally relates to graphically-oriented computer operating systems and more particularly to a method and system for processing events in general and human interface device events in particular.

Event tap routines, are separate from and not necessarily associated with the application to which the event is targeted. Illustrative applications include, but are not limited to, user-level applications such as audio, video and multimedia applications--each of which may present one or more windows to the user. Illustrative human interface devices include, but are not limited to, pointer devices (e.g., a mouse, trackpad, trackball and joystick), keyboards, control devices (e.g., a front panel knob, switch or button or a game's data glove, throttle or steering wheel) and display devices. As used herein, events are user actions initiated through one or more human interface devices.

Apple credits Michael Paquette as the sole inventor of Granted Patent 7,818,755, originally filed in Q4 2004.

Other Granted Patents (GP) Published Today

GP - 7,818,029 - Wireless Communications Circuitry with Antenna Sharing Capabilities for Handheld Electronic Devices. Apple was granted a related patent in July 2010.

GP - 7,818,659 - News Feed Viewer: Apple's invention is about RSS used in OS X. It generally relates to software tools for accessing a news feed, and more particularly to software tools for viewing, bookmarking, and creating a news feed.

GP - 7,816,811 - Portable Power Source to Provide Power to an Electronic Device via an Interface

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. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.