Apple Wins Patents for Extendable Port Hatch, Retail Packing & More
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published seventeen new granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In our final patent report of the day, we cover Apple's port hatch, which debuted with the original MacBook Air, Apple's wireless keyboard, five design patents and a list of other patents in our final round-up.
Apple Wins Patent for I/O Connectors with Extendable Faraday Cage
Apple has received a Granted Patent for the original MacBook Air's Port Hatch which includes a Faraday cage associated with a flex cable. The design first appeared in late 2008. Apple has since redesigned the MacBook Air's connectivity options (see the bottom of the linked page for details).
Apple's First Claim: An apparatus for electrically shielding an interior element, comprising: a chassis defining a notch; a first gasket electrically coupled to a first portion of the notch; a second gasket electrically coupled to a second portion of the notch; a conductive sock placed between the first gasket and the second gasket and electrically coupled to both the first gasket and the second gasket; and a connector shell electrically coupled to the conductive sock; wherein the chassis, the first gasket, the second gasket, the conductive sock and the connector shell collectively prevent at least some noise from entering or exiting an interior of the chassis.
To review Apple's other 17 patent claims and invention detailing, see granted patent 8,067,701. Apple credits Steven Keiper, John Brock, Eugene Kim, John Schen, Steve Cabral and Dave Hardell as the inventors of this patent which was originally filed in Q3 2008.
Granted Design Patents Issued to Apple
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple five design patents today which cover their wireless keyboard, Magic Mouse and iPhone retail packaging, the icon for Maps + Compass and the iOS GUI for Notes.
Final Patent Round-Up
Over and above the granted patents that were specifically reported on today, we present you with links to all of the other granted patents in our Final Patent Round-Up as follows:
8,069,438 Class declaration in a non-class-based programming environment
8,069,307 Accessing metadata with an external host
8,069,279 Data flow control within and between DMA channels
8,069,051 Zero-gap playback using predictive mixing
8,068,692 Methods and apparatuses for pixel transformations
8,068,146 Opponent color detail enhancement for saturated colors
8,068,103 User-interface design
8,068,925 Dynamic routing of audio among multiple audio devices
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. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.
I recall it. I just wanted to add my two cents opposing it's usage in the future.
Posted by: Marc Driftmeyer | December 01, 2011 at 01:05 PM
@ Mark. This was already used by Apple in their 2008 MacBook Air as shown in Apple's graphic (blue)
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2728
Apple has since advanced the MacBook Air and dropped this feature. It was cool for it's day and they may use in the future for something else.
Posted by: Randy | November 30, 2011 at 12:56 PM
Not a big fan of the retractable hatch for the micro-DVI/audio/usb.
The less movable parts the better resulting in stronger connections.
However, I doubt fig 4. would be the final structural design. It's missing tension pins where a groove would allow the slot to open up and lock into place.
Posted by: Marc Driftmeyer | November 30, 2011 at 12:47 PM