Apple's 36 Patent Wins Include Original MacBook Air & iPod touch
Santa, who is a secret agent of The US Patent and Trademark Office, officially dropped thirty-six shiny new granted patent certificates down Apple's chimney this morning at 12:05 A.M., according to Elf 101 who is Santa's official spokesperson. The Elf told Patently Apple that there were two special patents of interest. The first one was for the fourth generation iPod touch's design which may have been one of the last design patents for a product that lists the late Steve Jobs as one of the inventors. The second patent is for the MacBook Air which the late Steve Jobs proudly introduced back in 2008. Apple's patent, which isn't a design patent, covers many aspects of the MacBook Air's design. The MacBook Air is one of the best notebook designs on the market today. So much so that Intel and their band cloners have copied Apple's design form factor and called it the "Ultrabook."
Apple Receives Granted Patent for MacBook Air
Apple has received a Granted Patent for their MacBook Air. It was the first Apple notebook to eliminate the optical drive that bulked up a notebook. Apple's revolutionary wedge design won the public over to the point that Intel and their partners had to come up with the "Ultrabook" design which is a direct copycat design.
Steve Jobs introduced the first MacBook Air during his keynote at the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"- only model and was initially promoted as the world's thinnest notebook.
Intel showed off their Ultrabook design form factor at Computex 2011. The first company to promote the Ultrabook design was Asus with their UX21 model as illustrated below.
Apple credits Brett Degner, Euan Abraham, John Brock, Matthew Casebolt, Robert Coish, Laura DeForest, Michelle Goldberg, Bradley Hamel, Ron Hopkinson, Jim Hwang, Caitlin Kalinowski, Steven Keiper, Patrick Kessler, Eugene Kim, Chris Ligtenberg, Jay Osborn, John Raff, Nicolas Rundle and David Yeh as the inventors of this patent. To review Apple's 26 patent claims, see Apple's patent 8,339,775. Apple has won several design patents for the Macbook Air. The first was issued in 2009.
The iPod touch is granted a Design Patent
The US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a design patent for their fourth generation iPod touch which was first introduced in September 2010. This particular generation introduced both rear and front-facing cameras along with the Apple A4 chip. It was one of the last patents crediting the late Steve Jobs as an inventor.
It's Granted Patent Day
Readers should be aware that every Tuesday the US Patent and Trademark Office publish Apple's Granted Patents. Granted patents are approved patent applications that Apple applied for months or even years ago. In the vast majority of cases, "granted patents" aren't covering any new kind of technology on the day the patent is being granted. New Apple technologies are generally revealed on Thursdays by the US Patent Office in the form of published patent applications. Some Mac sites confuse this process by making claims and presenting bylines on Tuesday that insinuate that Apple has just revealed a new technology or process. In 99% of cases, this is simply untrue and readers should be made aware of this fact. Known exceptions would include patents that were recently acquired by Apple or a domestic and/or foreign patent application that Apple had never presented in the US before under its own brand name.
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.
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Now that's funny - ha! Did you bother to see the bottom photo of that site you link to? Do you need glasses. Entertaining you are, 8800GTX. It's only about 3x thicker than the Macbook Air.
Posted by: Jack Purcher | December 25, 2012 at 07:22 PM
I hate to ruin your fun but Intel did not copy the Macbook Air when they introduced the ultrabook air. Nooo. Intel had already been there for at least a full year.
http://www.slashgear.com/intel-wows-with-ultra-thin-notebook-245425/
Posted by: 8800GTX | December 25, 2012 at 05:42 PM