Granted Design Patents Issued to Apple

The US Patent and Trademark Office have officially granted Apple 10 design patents today. The first one worth noting is that of the original White iPhone 4 which had a slightly different design than the final White iPhone 4 that debuted in April of this year. The original design had more rounded edges with the band around the iPhone not covering the headphone jack area. It also had a tiny visible bezel which was dropped in the final design. Apple admitted it was having problems with the White iPhone 4's design in June 2010.

Apple credits CEO Steve Jobs, VP Industrial Design Jonathan Ive and team members Jody Akana, Bartley Andre, Jeremy Bataillou, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Richard Howarth, Duncan Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer as the inventors of Granted Patent D644,218, originally filed in Q3 2010.

This failed design proves that Steve Jobs is only human after all and goofs just like the rest of us. Caution: Just don't tell him that to his face – ha!

Apple's second design patent win is for the iOS's Virtual keyboard. Shown below are the various layers associated with their virtual keyboard on an iPhone.

Apple credits Bas Ording as the inventor of granted patent D644,238 which was filed in November 2009. A related patent was filed in June 2007 just prior to the debut of the iPhone.

Apple's other design patent wins cover the iPhone's user interface along with five related icons covering Camera, Podcasts, Photos, Artists and Featured as noted in the graphic below" with their associated patent numbers.

Apple credits Freddy Anzures, Marcel van OS, Stephen Lemay, Imran Chaudhri and Mike Matas as designers of the iOS User Interface under granted patent number D644,239. Mike Matas is the sole designer for the following icons: Camera (two design patents), Podcasts, Photos & Artists. Stephen Lemay also gets credit for the "Featured" icon.

Apple's last design patent win today was for a Dock Insert under D644,208 which was filed in Q2 2010.

In these litigious times, every design patent victory is important to Apple, as the ongoing battle against Samsung proves out.  

Other Granted Patents Published Today

Granted Patent 8,010,937: Title: "Method and apparatus for application building using build styles." Apple's invention relates to compilers and software development tools. More specifically, the present invention relates to the building of applications and the construction of software code.

Granted Patent 8,010,370: Title: "Bitrate control for perceptual coding." Apple's invention relates generally to digital media processing and, more specifically, to controlling bitrate by accounting for human perception

Granted Patents 8,009,736 and 8,009,737: Title: "Method and apparatus for variable accuracy inter-picture timing specification for digital video encoding with reduced requirements for division operations." Apple's invention relates to the field of multimedia compression systems. In particular the present invention discloses methods and systems for specifying variable accuracy inter-picture timing with reduced requirements for processor intensive division operation.

Granted Patent 8,009,176: Title: "System and method for processing graphics operations with graphics processing unit."

Update Note: See our second patent report of the day titled: Apple Wins iPhone Ambient Light Sensor, Time Machine & Final Cut Pro Patents.

Notice: Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details.

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