While some Apple fans think of patent reports as some form of rumors, the vast majority understand that patent filings, while pointing to possible new areas of interest for Apple in terms of products and services, the importance of patents is to protect key potential products and the features that will make them successuful in the market place.

Apple's patent for MacBooks with Space Black was filed in 2020 and only granted in September 2023. Apple introduced their new Space Black finish for the MacBook Pro on October 30^th. That's a relatively short timeframe for an original Apple patent to come to market. Those that Patently Apple has covered like iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro and others took closer to a decade or more before coming to market as the excitement grew. The recently rumored "cellular" MacBook is nothing new. We covered a minimum of 21 patents regarding this concept with some of them dating back to 2010 or 14 years ago.

Yet whether a patent takes 2 years or a decade to come to market, each product concept on Apple's roadmap carries dozens of patents over time as Apple's engineers update and add new technologies to a potential product in order to protect their inventions from competitors.

Apple admitted during their Vision Pro introduction in June that 5,000 patents covered their new Spatial Computer. While we had covered 460+ of them prior to its introduction, we'll be covering more of these patents weekly for years to come.

Apple is now in a patent war with Masimo over key sensors and features regarding Apple Watch. Samsung is in a patent war with BOE over OLED display technology (01and 02). Patents are the way that innovative companies like Apple protect their products and billions of dollars in R&D.

The latest patent war that we're learning of this morning from the United Daily News is one between Apple Suppliers Largan and Yujingguang in China and Taiwan.

As we learned from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo just yesterday, Largan is the exclusive iPhone 15 and 16 supplier of Apple's tetraprism zoom lens. Largan wants to stop or hinder Yujingguang from entering Apple's supply chain as a tetraprism zoom lens supplier due to their patented technologies.

Whether there are additional reasons behind the lawsuit is unknown at this time as UDN narrowed their focus of the lawsuits to the iPhone's zoom lens.

For the record, Yujingguang is reportedly a major Apple's supply chain partner regarding VR lenses for Vision Pro, according to a June 21 report from Ming-Chi Kuo (01 and 02).