Archive for February, 2007

Management of files in a personal communication device

Monday, February 19th, 2007

Title:  Management of files in a personal communication device

Patent application publication number:  20070038941

Publication date:  February 15, 2007

Filing date:  December 5, 2005 (priority to July 30, 2002)

Link to PDF:    (89 pages)

AIPW Summary:  This application relates to the iPod’s user interface, the multiple screens involved, and navigating through those screens. Claim 1 recites a multi-level UI, each level including a list that is related to a list on another level. Also of note is that dependent claim 2, independent claim 3, and Figure 6 all describe the UI in connection with a cell phone. However, the phone-based interface shown in Figure 6 utilizes keys, and is nothing like the iPhone interface.

Valentine’s Day 2007

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

I had ranted previously about how much I hate Valentine’s Day (see them all here), with its contrived notions of what to do to make the day “special”. Hint: it’s diamonds.

Things are a little different now, since I’m married. But the more important factor is Victoria, age 7 1/2. Valentine’s Day is apparently a big deal for little girls, so neither Karen nor I could be our usual sour selves to ruin it for her. But Mother Nature didn’t help, by interjecting a snowy, slushy, icy mess that canceled school.

I still went to work, since I take public transportation and Karen couldn’t stand having me underfoot all day. There was a payoff when I got home: Victoria loved her presents. I picked up a couple of kids’ joke books, since I had been getting the line “please tell me a joke” when I would tuck her in for the night. I’m not much of a joke teller; more of an observational humorist, though I throw far more stuff out there than is actually funny. (I never figured out the “funny average”, but I imagine it’s quite low.) And I certainly don’t know any age-appropriate jokes. So these books will both entertain Victoria and save my neck. The only drawback is that jokes that amuse a 7 1/2 year old child don’t do much for adults – more puns than anything else. Oh, I also realized that trying to avoid a knock-knock joke by staying quiet, like you’re pretending nobody’s home, doesn’t work either.

For any hopeless romantics reading this, Karen and I do have dinner out scheduled for Saturday.

Method for providing stand-in objects

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Title:  Method for providing stand-in objects

Patent application publication number:  20070039008

Publication date:  Februsary 15, 2007

Filing date:  July 31, 2006 (priority to December 7, 1994)

Link to PDF:    (17 pages)

AIPW Summary:  A method for using stand-in objects to resolve relationships in an object oriented environment. When a first piece of data is fetched in an object oriented relational database (for example), data related to the first piece of data is also fetched, which wastes processing time to resolve all the relationships. This invention delays instantiation of the related data by using stand-in objects. The stand-in objects belong to a “fault” class and are transformed into the actual data the first time the object is accessed. The stand-in object can exist for as long as it can handle messages sent to it. Once the stand-in object receives a message it can’t handle, the actual data is fetched. A list of messages that the stand-in object can handle is described in paragraphs 0049-0062. This application is a bit odd in that it only has one claim; though since it is application #6 in this family, that it understandable.

Music synthesizer; generating a synthesizer output with a constant beat

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Title:  Music synthesizer and a method of generating a synthesizer output with a constant beat

Type:  issued patent

Patent number:  7,176,374

Issue date:  February 13, 2007

Filing date:  November 14, 2005 (priority to April 30, 2003)

Link to PDF:    (4 pages)

AIPW Summary:  A music synthesizer that provides a constant beat across a range of tones. The beat frequency is independent of pitch or octave. For those of you who thought music and math were different, this invention shows otherwise by deriving the beat frequency according to an equation. This patent is rather short, so there’s not much to discuss.

Cache management using historical access information

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Title:  Cache management using historical access information

Type:  issued patent

Patent number:  7,177,984

Issue date:  February 13, 2007

Filing date:  April 16, 2004

Link to PDF:    (9 pages)

AIPW Summary:  A cache priority for an item is calculated based on access frequency, retrieval cost, and item size. The cache priority is dynamically updated as items are accessed. The cache priorities are used to determine which items remain in the cache when the cache is running low on space. The claims of this patent are fairly broad and follow the basic overview above.

Nano trademarked (without the iPod prefix)

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Apple trademarked the term “Nano” by itself, apart from the phrase “iPod Nano“, for which it holds a separate trademark. The goods and services listed are: Computer hardware; Computer software to control and improve computer and audio equipment sound quality; Computer software for the storage, reproduction, transmission and editing of sound, data, and text; computer peripherals; digital audio players and recorders; loudspeakers and manuals distributed therewith.

This by itself is not really all that interesting. What is interesting is that Apple received rights in “Nano” by way of an assignment from Creative.

Securing and controlling access to digital data

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Title:  Securing and controlling access to digital data

Patent application publication number:  20070030963

Publication date:  February 8, 2007

Filing date:  August 4, 2005

Link to PDF:    (23 pages)

AIPW Summary:  This application relates to the security code lock on an iPod (see Figure 7B). In general, content is locked and can be unlocked using any movement-detecting input means (e.g., joystick, touch pad, keyboard) that permits a user to enter a security code.

Managing permissions data and/or indexes

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Title:  Methods and systems for managing permissions data and/or indexes

Patent application publication number:  20070033191

Publication date:  February 8, 2007

Filing date:  August 4, 2006 (priority to June 25, 2004)

Link to PDF:    (117 pages)

AIPW Summary:  This application relates to searching and indexing data (i.e., the Spotlight search feature), including file contents and metadata. An index can be partitioned into multiple sub-indexes, based on a variety of criteria. In one embodiment, a user may be permitted to search sub-indexes even if the user does not have permission to access the underlying data. In another embodiment, the user is restricted to searching indexes for which they can access the underlying data. Metadata captured from various application programs can be used to facilitate the searching.

Note: The size of this application is due to the fact that there are 84 pages of drawings.

Synchronizing three or more electronic devices

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Title: Method of synchronising three or more electronic devices and a computer system for implementing that method

Patent application publication number: 20070033271

Publication date: February 8, 2007

Filing date: October 12, 2006 (priority to September 9, 2002)

Link to PDF: (26 pages)

AIPW Summary: You have to do a little digging into this application to find out that it’s an Apple case (see paragraph 0015). This application is about synching three or more devices. An original value for each item of information is stored. When one item is changed, that change is stored along with the original value and the changed value is replicated to the other devices. The changes are also retained in one of the devices, so that any other devices that had the original information can sync properly when that new device is present (paragraph 0047). Multiple changes can be compressed, in order to save memory space and synchronization time. An example given in the application shows a change from value x to value y, and then a change from value y to value z. This can be compressed to a change from value x to value z (see Figure 3 and paragraphs 0048-0049). The number of changes to track can be limited to avoid overloading during synchronization, and an indication that a larger chunk of information needs to be copied.

This application surprisingly has only one claim – albeit a very broad one.

Related case: 20040044920 (28 pages)

Generating object-oriented world wide web pages

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Title:  Method and apparatus for generating object-oriented world wide web pages

Patent application publication number:  20070033280

Publication date:  February 8, 2007

Filing date:  July 31, 2006 (priority to August 14, 1995)

Link to PDF:    (20 pages)

AIPW Summary:  This application relates to WebObjects. HTML elements are mapped to objects in a one-to-one relationship to be able to programmatically manipulate HTML documents and each HTML element within the document. In particular, this application claims dynamically generating a display page using an object tree.

Related cases: