Granted Design Patents: MagSafe

Apple has been granted a design patent for Magsafe which appears to be associated with Apple's fire resistant design that was published in April. The design differs from their January 2010 design win.

Apple credits 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, Douglas Satzger, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer as the inventors of Granted Patent D639,748, originally filed in Q4 2010.

Granted Patent: Light Transmissive Display System

Apple has won their second patent relating to a Light Transmissive Display System. Their first win came in February of this year.

Apple's granted patent covers an invisible, light-transmissive display system with a light resistant material is provided. Technically speaking, the light resistant material has a first side and a second side. Substantially invisible holes penetrate between the first surface and the second surface in a predetermined light-transmissive display pattern. The second surface is exposed to a side curing light that is substantially parallel to the second surface at the invisible holes there adjacent. A light-conducting curable filler is applied into the invisible holes from the first surface. Surfaces of the light-conducting curable filler are cured in the invisible holes at the second surface with the side curing light. The remaining curable filler in the invisible holes is cured.

Apple credits John Payne as the sole inventor of Granted Patent 7,960,684 originally filed in Q3 2007. Other patent reports covering this technology: one, two.  

Granted Patent: Modifying an iOS Display's Brightness

Apple has been granted a patent relating to methods for modifying a display's brightness by automatically adapting to ambient lighting conditions.

In various aspects, Apple's invention employs light sensors integrated with or positioned within a portion of a transmissive display. A light sensor may include, without limitation, one or more photodiodes and/or phototransistors. The display illumination level may be adjusted automatically based on the amount of ambient light measured by the light sensor. To accurately measure the ambient light without interference from the display illumination, the device processor does not read the sensor values until the display illumination intensity is below a determined light interference level. The light interference level and the time it takes for the illumination intensity to decay to such a level may be determined by the manufacturer of the display. Alternatively, the illumination decay duration can be calculated by the processor using various factors.

Apple's patent FIG. 3B is a diagram of a LCD-based display system including a backlight, embedded light sensors, and a backlight controller that controls the brightness of the light emitted from the backlight.

For more details on this patent, see granted patent 7,960,682. Apple credits Bryson Gardner as the sole inventor of this patent which was originally filed in Q4 2007.

Other Granted Patents Published Today  

Replaying memory operation assigned a load/store buffer entry occupied by store operation processed beyond exception reporting stage and retired from scheduler

Submission of metadata content and media content to a media distribution system

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