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.